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As he takes office, Trump says he's changing the name of Denali to Mount McKinley

Sean Maguire, Anchorage Daily News on

Published in Political News

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — President Donald Trump on Monday vowed to change the name of North America’s highest mountain from Denali back to Mount McKinley.

“We will restore the name of a great president, William McKinley to Mount McKinley, where it should be and where it belongs,” Trump said during his second inaugural address from the U.S. Capitol rotunda.

“President McKinley made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent. He was a natural businessman, and gave Teddy Roosevelt the money for many of the great things he did, including the Panama Canal, which has foolishly been given to the country of Panama,” he added.

Multiple national media outlets reported on Monday that Trump would rename Denali as McKinley through an executive order on his first day of office. He is expected to sign dozens of other executive orders related to energy, immigration and how federal bureaucracy operates.

Trump also said he plans to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”

The federal government named the peak McKinley in 1896. Former President Barack Obama’s administration ordered that the mountain be renamed as Denali in 2015. The name change followed years of advocacy by Alaska Native officials and groups.

Trump floated reverting the mountain’s name to McKinley during his first term in office. But the effort never advanced. In December, he vowed to rename the peak in honor of William McKinley — a former Ohio president who was assassinated in 1901.

Alaska’s two Republican senators strongly opposed Trump’s proposed name change.

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, on social media in December, said, “There is only one name worthy of North America’s tallest mountain: Denali — the Great One.”

Sen. Dan Sullivan, though an aide, said at the time that he “prefers the name that the very tough, very strong, very patriotic Athabaskan people gave the mountain thousands of years ago — Denali.”

Sullivan and Murkowski watched Trump’s second inauguration live from inside the Capitol rotunda, according to social media.

 

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a Trump ally, has not spoken publicly about the Republican president’s plans to rename Alaska and North America’s highest mountain — neither has U.S. GOP Rep. Nick Begich.

Begich and Dunleavy did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Neither did Sullivan or Murkowski.

The name “Denali” is derived from the Koyukon name and is based on a verb theme meaning “high” or “tall,” according to linguist James Kari of the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, in the book“Shem Pete’s Alaska.”

Trump suggested changing the name back when he was president in 2017 and both Murkowski and Sullivan objected, Sullivan said in remarks to the Alaska Federation of Natives annual conference, according to an ADN article at the time. The senators met at the White House with Trump and then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to discuss Alaska issues, Sullivan said, including reversing Obama executive actions the senators had opposed.

At the end of the meeting, Sullivan said, “He looked at me and said, ‘I heard that the big mountain in Alaska also had — also its name was changed by executive action. Do you want us to reverse that?’”

He and Murkowski “jumped over the desk — we said, ‘no! No. Don’t want to reverse that,’ " Sullivan said.

Sullivan said he told the president Denali was the name given to the mountain by the Athabascan people more than 10,000 years ago. And Sullivan’s wife is Athabascan. If “you change that name back now, she’s going to be really, really mad,” he said he told the president.

“So he’s like, ‘all right, we won’t do that,’ " Sullivan said.

______


©2025 Anchorage Daily News. Visit at adn.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

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