UPDATE: Gold Country's Negro Creek Keeping Its Name

GRASS VALLEY, Calif. (AP) — Negro Creek in Nevada County will keep its name, after officials voted down a proposal to change it to something a local resident thought would be kinder.

County supervisors said Tuesday that changing the creek's name would negate the historical contributions African Americans made in the region during the Gold Rush.

Gail Smith had asked the U.S. Board of Geographic names to change it after she discovered the pejorative N-word on an assessor map of her property. The county changed it to Negro, as a 1963 federal edict had mandated.

›› WATCH: CBS13's Original Report On The Creek Name Considered Controversial By Some

At a meeting last month, she suggested the alternative Black Miners' Creek.

Supervisors say their constituents opposed the change and that NAACP officials did not respond to their request to weigh in.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.