Hanover, N.H. ? One of the most vivid memories of a New England childhood is the mountain descent on the Jewell Trail, across the Ammonoosuc River, past cascades and through brooks, affording unforgettable views of the western White Mountains and the Dartmouth Range. The path leads down from Mount Clay in New Hampshire’s Presidential Range.

There are several things incongruous about this geological feature, not the least of which is its namesake — despite at least three presidential campaigns, including one of the most controversial in American history, Henry Clay never won the White House. Then there is the matter of Mount Clay itself. It’s probably not a mountain at all, just a shoulder on the ridge north of Mount Washington. If you take your definitions seriously, “Mount Clay” is an abomination.

Which makes it all the more curious is that a group of admirers of Ronald Reagan is determined to rename the mountain for the 40th president, removing a well-loved place name belonging to the man who tried but failed to become the sixth, seventh or eighth president.

In fact, the state legislature did vote seven years ago to rename the peak Mount Reagan. But this month the U.S. Board on Geographic Names voted, 11-0 with one abstention, to overrule the state lawmakers. You can imagine what Reagan would have thought about that exercise of federal authority in defiance of local wishes.

Still, the fight goes on. Republicans in New Hampshire are determined to keep the battle alive, just as activists in Nevada are mobilizing to name a peak for Reagan before the 100th anniversary of his birth on Feb. 6.

Here in New Hampshire, where grown men fight about whether a summit with less than a 200-foot differential from the col that separates it from a neighboring peak can actually be called a mountain, the fight over Mount Clay has taken on great meaning. Mountains are cultural touchstones in this state; it cannot be a coincidence that the Appalachian Trail passes only steps from Dartmouth’s arts center.

But politics is part of the state’s culture, too. Today, most historians, even Princeton’s liberal Sean Wilentz, acknowledge that Reagan, who lost the 1976 New Hampshire primary but won here in 1980 and 1984, was a significant, even great, president. He is deserving of an important place in the American memory, and in fact more than 3,000 highways, buildings and schools are named for him.

Yet why should Reagan be remembered in favor of Clay, who is on almost everybody’s list, along with New Hampshire native son Daniel Webster and South Carolina’s John C. Calhoun, of the three top senators in American history?

This speaks of a larger problem in today’s America, where a society that is built on disposable bottles and diapers also considers history disposable.

Exactly a year ago this week, I wrote about the effort in St. Paul, Minn., to change the Webster School to Barack and Michelle Obama Service Learning Elementary — a crime against history and, if you read that name aloud, against the English language. The Obamas deserve recognition, but not at the expense of Webster, perhaps America’s greatest secretary of state and surely, along with Obama, one of its greatest orators.

The Presidential Range is one of the distinguishing characteristics of New Hampshire, studded with peaks bearing names such as Mount Pierce, Mount Eisenhower, Mount Monroe, Mount Jefferson, Mount Adams, Mount Madison and the grandest one of all, Mount Washington.

It also includes Mount Webster (named for Daniel Webster, who lost a string of presidential elections, in 1836, 1848 and 1852). But beware: Mount Jackson isn’t named for the seventh president but for Charles T. Jackson, a beloved state geologist, and Mount Clinton (named for DeWitt Clinton, the New York governor and senator who didn’t win the presidency in 1812, not for Bill Clinton, who did win in 1992 and 1996) is the same peak as Mount Pierce.

East of the Presidential Range, in the Carter-Moriah Range, is Carter Dome, named for a hunter, not for Jimmy Carter. Today it is possible to stay overnight at the backcountry Carter Notch Hut, though in winter you’ll need snowshoes, not hiking boots.

Even so, there are other named peaks in the Presidentials that don’t have presidential names, such as Boott Spur, Nelson Crag and Mount Isolation, which perhaps should be considered to have been named for Richard Nixon.

Mount Eisenhower is only recently renamed from Mount Pleasant, though if you are up there on a blustery day it can be anything but pleasant. Just across the border in Maine there is a Pleasant Mountain, but to keep things confusing, it is now known as Shawnee Peak. The Shawnees are not generally identified with New England. No one said this was simple.

Let’s leave Mount Clay the way it is. Countless maps of this region, as difficult and, to use a word Clay abhorred, uncompromising as any in the country, identify this peak of 5,533 feet as Mount Clay, and changing it would complicate safety and rescue operations.

But that’s the least of it. Clay was an American giant, described in a new biography published this month by David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler as “a man who always pursued political goals within the limits of the possible.” His legacy as a great compromiser should be prized now more than ever in an era that regards compromise as weakness.

(John F. Kennedy wrote in the opening chapter of “Profiles of Courage” that political leaders should “compromise our political positions, but not ourselves” — a good guide for any age. There is no Mount Kennedy in New Hampshire, where Kennedy won his first 1960 primary, but there is one in the Saint Elias Mountains in the Yukon in Canada.)

There are plenty of what college fundraisers call “naming opportunities” elsewhere in the Granite State, where names like Mount Clay are, or should be, carved in stone. Any one of these mountains could be named for Reagan.

Let me suggest one: the nice unnamed peak along the Bemis Ridge in historic Crawford Notch. The president would be pleased to know that from one of the ledges on the east side there is a clear view of a peak called Mount Hope.

— David Shribman is executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.