By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said on Sunday he would rename Denali, the Alaska Native name for North America's highest mountain, after William McKinley, the 25th U.S. president who was assassinated in 1901.
Former Democratic President Barack Obama in 2015 officially named the mountain as Denali, which is adjacent to the state of Alaska and ended a decades-long naming war. The peak has been officially named Mount McKinley since 1917.
“They took his name off Mount McKinley,” Trump said in a speech to supporters in Phoenix. “He was a great president,” said Trump, a Republican, adding that his administration “will restore the name of Mount McKinley because I think it deserves it.”
The mountain, with an elevation of more than 20,000 feet (6,100 meters), was named Mount McKinley in 1896 after a prospector prospecting in the area heard that McKinley, a champion of the gold standard, had won the Republican nomination for president.
The US Department of the Interior, in the 2015 order signed by Obama changing the name to Denali, noted that McKinley had never visited the mountain and had no “significant historical connection to the mountain or Alaska.”
Denali, an Athabascan place name, meaning “The Highest,” was officially designated as the peak's name in 1975 by the state of Alaska, which pressured the federal government to adopt the name as well.
McKinley, who served two terms as governor of Ohio before becoming president in 1897, led the country to victory in the Spanish-American War and raised protective tariffs to encourage American industry, according to the White House website about the president.