President Donald Trump announced Monday that he would change the name of North America's highest peak, Alaska's Denali, to Mount McKinley, resurrecting an idea he floated years ago that was met with strong opposition at the time from the state's political leaders.
Trump, who took office for the second time on Monday, said he plans to “return the name of the great President William McKinley to Mount McKinley, where it belongs and where it belongs. President McKinley has greatly enriched our country through tariffs and through talent.”
Trump also announced plans to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the American Gulf.
Messages left for Alaska's three-member Republican congressional delegation and Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy were not immediately returned. In 2017, U.S. senators from Alaska strongly opposed Trump's earlier suggestion to change Denali's name back to Mount McKinley.
In 2015, then-President Barack Obama changed its name to Denali reflect Alaska Native traditions and accommodate the preferences of many Alaskans. In recent years, the U.S. federal government has attempted to change place names deemed disrespectful to indigenous peoples.
Denali is an Athabascan word meaning “the tall one” or “the great one”. The famous 6,190-meter-high mountain, covered in snow and dotted with glaciers, is located in Denali National Park and Preserve.
In 1896, a prospector named the peak “Mount McKinley” after President William McKinley, who had never been to Alaska. The name was formally recognized by the US government until Obama changed it – despite opposition from lawmakers in McKinley's home state of Ohio.
Trump raised the name change issue again at a rally late last year after his election.
“McKinley was a very good, maybe a great president,” Trump said in December. “They took his name from Mount McKinley, didn't they? That's what they do to people.”
Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski was among those expressing opposition to the name change from Denali.
“The name given by the Koyukon Athabascans of Alaska to the highest peak in North America, Denali the Great, cannot be corrected,” she said at the time, adding that the issue “should not be revisited.”
The Tanana Chiefs Conference, a consortium of Athabascan tribes in interior Alaska, has advocated for years for the peak to be recognized as Denali.
McKinley, a Republican from Ohio who was the 25th president, was assassinated early in his second term in 1901 in Buffalo, New York.
Alaska and Ohio have been arguing over the name since at least the 1970s. Alaska has had a standing request for a name change since 1975, when the Legislature passed a resolution and then-Gov. Jay Hammond appealed to the federal government.