Mt. Denali or Mt. McKinley?
Contributed by Marilyn Bennett
Should Mt Denali be renamed Mt McKinley? Perhaps some history needs to be revisited. It seems the Athabaskans people had always referred to the peak as "Denali" which is a word meaning high or tall. Mt Denali is the highest mountain peak in North America with a summit elevation of 20,310 feet.
The mountain was first designated "Mount McKinley" by a New Hampshire born man from Seattle named William Dickey, who led a gold prospecting dig in June 1896. An account written on his return to the lower 48 appeared in the New York Sun on January 24,1897, under the title "Discoveries in Alaska".
Dickey wrote, "We named our great peak Mount McKinley, after William McKinley of Ohio". McKinley had been nominated for the presidency and became President in 1897. The United States formally recognized the name Mount McKinley after President Wilson signed the Mount McKinley National Park Act on February 26, 1917. McKinley never visited Alaska nor had any connection to the mountain; however, he was assassinated in September of 1901 and this led to a widespread sentiment favoring a commemoration to his memory.
The name of the mountain has been the subject of controversy ever since, as most Alaskans continued to refer to the mountain as Denali. On March 11, 1975, Governor Jay S. Hammond of the State of Alaska formally requested that the Secretary of the Interior direct the United States Board on Geographic Names to change the name of "Mount McKinley" back to "Mount Denali". The name Denali had been commonly used in Alaska and was traditional among Alaska's Native people. This change action was repeatedly blocked by members of the Ohio delegation from the home state of President McKinley.
In 2015, President Barack Obama officially changed the mountain’s name back to Denali. It took Alaskans over 100 years to get the name changed back to the Athabaskan name of Denali. Now the controversy begins anew as on January 20, 2025, President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order requiring the Secretary of the Interior to revert the name of the mountain back to Mount McKinley. The executive order does not change the name of Denali National Park, but even so, the change was strongly opposed by both of Alaska's U.S. Senators who expressed Alaskan's preference for Denali.
In 1999, a group of five young Alaskan ladies calling themselves the "Denali Devas" attempted to climb the Muldrow route on the remote North side of Denali. Due to weather and other concerns, the summit eluded them, but they gave it a damn good shot on their 40-day expedition. Since my daughter was one of those five Denali Devas on that mountain climbing through snow for 40 days and nights, I cannot imagine how I could agree to change the name of the mountain.
After all, I still have a t-shirt with the Denali Devas emblem on it and cannot see how I could change either the name on the shirt or ever agree or consider any name other than Denali for our mountain. This is not an Ohio mountain it is an Alaskan mountain.
Therefore, my vote is to write to the Trump Administration as well as our representatives here in Alaska and vigorously object to renaming this Alaskan mountain. Perhaps a huge outcry from the people of Alaska will give weight to the Administration reconsidering renaming out mountain.