Photo: Joseph Corl//Unsplash
U.S. President Elect Donald Trump’s latest troll came on Sunday when he vowed to rename North America’s highest peak. The announcement came more than 2,630 miles away from the Alaskan mountain, Denali, where Trump told a crowd in Arizona that the mountain’s name should be changed back to Mt. McKinley because, “I think he deserves it.”
“President McKinley was the president that was responsible for creating a vast sum of money in the United States that Teddy Roosevelt then spent,” Trump said in Phoenix. “So let’s say they were both excellent presidents. But McKinley did that, and that’s one of the reasons that we’re going to bring back the name of Mt. McKinley because I think he deserves it.”
Denali, of course, is the preferred name chosen by the people of Alaska, but it was named Mount McKinley in 1896 to honor William McKinley, who went on to win the presidency and served in office from 1897 to 1901. McKinley had no ties to the mountain or even to the region — he was a Governor of Ohio who, wait for it, championed a tariff bill that was passed by Congress in 1890. Ironically, he never even took a trip to visit the 20,310-foot peak, which played a major role in the U.S. Department of the Interior’s 2015 order that gave the name back to the Alaskan people.
Denali is the mountain’s Athabascan name, meaning “the High One,” which the state officially adopted in 1975. Alaskans campaigned the U.S. Board on Geographic Names to adopt their chosen name as well but petitions were blocked for decades until they finally won the right to name their own mountain during the Obama administration. Like anything else in politics, there was plenty of heated debate, but the prevailing belief held that the move wasn’t an affront to McKinley, but to honor the natives of Alaska.
“I wouldn’t want people from Alaska telling me what things in Ohio should be. So I guess we shouldn’t tell people from Alaska what they should do in their own state,” Ohio Secretary of State Jon A. Husted said at the time.
“Alaska’s place names should reflect and respect the rich cultural history of our state, and officially recognizing the name Denali does just that.,” said Alaska Governor Bill Walker.
On Sunday, following Trump’s declaration, Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski repeated a similar sentiment on social media, writing, “There is only one name worthy of North America’s tallest mountain: Denali – the Great One.”
There is only one name worthy of North America’s tallest mountain: Denali – the Great One.https://t.co/eT248xLxJC
— Sen. Lisa Murkowski (@lisamurkowski) December 23, 2024
