Trump pledges to restore McKinley's name to tallest peak in North America

Lila Seidman, Los Angeles Times on Jan 20, 2025

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President Donald Trump vowed Monday to revert the name of Alaska’s 20,310-foot Denali, the tallest peak in North America, to Mount McKinley, reigniting a long-running dispute.

“We will restore the name of a great president, William McKinley, to Mount McKinley, where it should be and where it belongs,” Trump said Monday after he was sworn into office at the U.S. Capitol.

Trump also said he planned change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, and signaled he would sign executive orders to enact the changes during his first day in office.

Trump described McKinley, the 25th president, as “a natural businessman” and hailed the former president for “making our country very rich through tariffs and through talent.” McKinley, a Republican, also expanded U.S. territory in the wake of the Spanish-American war.

A prospector dubbed the peak Mount McKinley in 1896 as a tribute to William McKinley upon his nomination as a candidate for president — and the name stuck. However, disagreement has dogged the name for decades.

In 2015, then-President Barack Obama redesignated the mountain Denali, a name long championed by Alaskans, which roughly translates to “the great one” in Koyukon Athabascan, a Native Alaskan language.

The pledge to rename Denali was opposed by environmental groups and Alaskan politicians, including Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

“There is only one name worthy of North America’s tallest mountain: Denali — the Great One,” Murkowski wrote on X after Trump referenced the plan in a speech last month.

“Nope! It is Denali!”, Alaska state Sen. Scott Kawaski, a Democrat, wrote alongside a photo of the snow-capped mountain on Bluesky last month.

The Sierra Club, a conservation organization, said renaming the peak “goes against the desires of Alaska Natives, Alaska’s elected officials, and centuries of tradition.”

“The Koyukon people have known this mountain as ‘Denali’ for centuries, and even the state’s elected officials oppose this attempt to rename it,” Athan Manuel, the director of Sierra Club’s Lands Protection Program, said in a statement. “It’s clear that Donald Trump is more interested in culture war stunts than addressing the concerns of the American people.”

U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., a staunch Trump supporter, said last week that she would direct her staff to draft legislation for the renaming that would make it effective on federal maps and administrative policy, CBS New reported.

The debate over the mountain’s name dates back more than 100 years — before the founding of national park where the mountain rises, according to the National Park Service.

A team drafting legislation to create a park to protect wildlife disagreed on the name. One hunter-naturalist involved pushed for the park to be called “Mount Denali National Park” in 1916, referencing a name bestowed to the mountain by native people.

The federal government ultimately anointed the towering peak in the Alaska Range “Mount McKinley” in 1917, honoring the president who held office from 1897 to his assassination in 1901. The park became Mount McKinley National Park.

The debate reemerged in 1975, when the state of Alaska called for the mountain to be called Denali. While the change was blocked for decades, the park in 1980 was renamed Denali National Park and Preserve.

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