Denali vs. McKinley: A brief history of the long debate over what to call North America’s highest mountain

On his first day back in the White House, President Donald Trump issued a flurry of executive orders — including one to change the official name of North America’s tallest mountain from Denali to Mount McKinley.

The order kicked off the latest chapter in a long struggle over what Alaska’s most prominent peak should be called — and why.

Not one but many Indigenous names

At 20,310 feet tall, Denali is visible for hundreds of miles around. For thousands of years, it has been called not just Denali but a variety of names by Alaska Native people living around the Alaska Range, according to language experts.

Athabascans to the north and west of the range referred to “the high one” with varying names, including Deenalee in the Koyukon language, Denaze in Upper Kuskokwim and Denadhe in Tanana, wrote University of Alaska linguist and professor emeritus James Kari in “Shem Pete’s Alaska,” a guide to Dena’ina place names.

Groups living to the south of the Alaska Range identified it as “the big mountain,” or Dghelay Ka’a in Upper Inlet Dena’ina, Dghili Ka’a in Lower Inlet Dena’ina and Dghelaay Ce’e in Ahtna, Kari wrote.

The name “Denali” is derived from the Koyukon name — which doesn’t actually mean “the great one,” as widely believed, Kari wrote. Instead, the word represents something nearer to “high” or “tall.”

McKinley roots

Non-Native settlers and visitors arriving in Alaska came up with their own names for the mountain. Among them: the Russian name “Bulshaia Gora,” which means “big one,” according to the National Park Service. In the late 1800s, the mountain was known locally by some as “Densmore Peak” after a particularly enthusiastic prospector named Frank Densmore.

Another gold prospector named William Dickey came up with the name “Mount McKinley,” after the then-president-elect, William McKinley. In an account of his summer in Alaska published in a New York newspaper in 1897, he wrote that just after leaving the Alaska wilderness he’d learned McKinley had been nominated to the presidency.

McKinley was shot by an anarchist in 1901, a few months into his second term. He survived the shooting but died from gangrene days later. He never set foot in Alaska.

But the name Mount McKinley stuck and began to appear on maps and in other publications. In 1917, the area officially became Mount McKinley National Park, and the peak, Mount McKinley — despite a debate between some early boosters over whether Denali was a more appropriate name, according to a National Park Service history.

Opposition from Ohio

After statehood, people in Alaska worked to get the name changed to Denali, but ran into a major barrier: Ohio — the home of former President McKinley.

In 1975, the state moved to change the name of the mountain to Denali with the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, but met resistance from Ohio’s congressional delegation.

In 1980, the park’s name was changed to Denali National Park and Preserve, but the mountain remained McKinley.

Over a span of decades, Alaska’s congressional delegation repeatedly introduced name change bills, but continued to be blocked by Ohio interests, the Daily News reported.

Finally, in 2015, President Barack Obama officially moved to change the name to Denali on the eve of a historic trip to Alaska. U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski released a video of herself calling the change a step to “show honor, respect and gratitude to the Athabascan people.”

Ohio officials were not happy.

“I’m deeply disappointed,” said former House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican.

“What’s he going to do next, change the Ohio River to the U.S. Freeway?” said Republican former Ohio lawmaker Ralph Regula, who had long opposed the change.

At the time, the Alaska Federation of Natives said the official recognition of Denali was part of an important and broader movement to acknowledge Indigenous place names.

“We are happy that Denali will now officially be known by the Koyukon Athabascan name that it has held for centuries,” wrote then-AFN President Julie Kitka. “Using traditional place names is one more way to celebrate and perpetuate our Alaska Native cultures.”

Another McKinley fan

Trump first floated the idea of renaming Denali as Mount McKinley in a White House meeting with Alaska U.S. Sens. Murkowski and Dan Sullivan in 2017, during his first term, calling it “the big mountain in Alaska” and asking if they wanted it changed, Sullivan told a gathering of the Alaska Federation of Natives.

The senators “jumped over the desk — we said, ‘No! No. Don’t want to reverse that,’” Sullivan said.

Then, after his reelection, Trump brought the idea up again in December, telling supporters in a speech that he thought the mountain’s name was wrongly taken from McKinley.

“McKinley was a very good, maybe a great president,” he said. “They took his name off Mount McKinley, right? That’s what they do to people ...”

The president, like the gold prospector who first popularized the name, appears to be a fan of McKinley. In his inauguration speech, Trump said McKinley “made our country very rich” and was a “very good businessman.”

The executive order, titled “Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness” says the U.S. Interior Department secretary must change the name to Mount McKinley within 30 days.

The name of Denali National Park and Preserve will not change.

Trump’s order also calls for the Gulf of Mexico to be renamed the Gulf of America.

“The naming of our national treasures, including breathtaking natural wonders and historic works of art, should honor the contributions of visionary and patriotic Americans in our Nation’s rich past,” the order says.

The order says McKinley “championed tariffs” and drove “U.S. industrialization and global reach to new heights” before being “tragically assassinated.”

The order contends the Obama administration “stripped the McKinley name from federal nomenclature, an affront to President McKinley’s life, his achievements, and his sacrifice” and says the name change “dutifully recognizes his historic legacy of protecting America’s interests and generating enormous wealth for all Americans.”

After Trump’s announcement Monday, Murkowski said she strongly disagreed with the name change effort.

“Our nation’s tallest mountain, which has been called Denali for thousands of years, must continue to be known by the rightful name bestowed by Alaska’s Koyukon Athabascans, who have stewarded the land since time immemorial,” Murkowski said in a statement.

Sullivan, generally a vocal Trump supporter, said in December he “prefers the name that the very tough, very strong, very patriotic Athabascan people gave the mountain thousands of years ago — Denali.”

Survey says: Denali

To most Alaskans, Denali will remain Denali. A recent survey by Ivan Moore of Alaska Survey Research found that Alaskans polled favored the name Denali over Mount McKinley by a two-to-one margin.

Are we really having this battle again, asked Alaska Writer Laureate Vera Starbard.

Starbard, who is Tlingit and Dena’ina, is a playwright and screenwriter — including for the PBS television show “Molly of Denali,” which has devoted airtime to an educational explanation of the history of the Athabascan name.

“It isn’t about claim of property, and I think that’s how some people see it,” she said in an interview. “It’s about honoring the land itself, and that’s something that I don’t think some people, who don’t live here, who haven’t been raised here, understand at all.”

When the name officially changed to Denali in 2015, it was a cause for celebration because it signaled that “people are starting to understand that Indigenous people have been here and have been stewards of this land for so much longer than can be recorded in Western history,” she said.

The frustration now, she said, is that “it sends, especially Indigenous people, into these battles where we have so many other important things and issues to be fighting for and advocating for, but now we have to spend time on this again. Here we go again.”