In 1896, just 29 years after the United States purchased Alaska from Russia, William Dickey led a journey through Alaska. He and his three companions heard of gold discovered in the Cook Inlet and decided to test their luck. That was when they saw the “wonderful wilderness” of the tallest mountain in North America, to which they looked with “unbounded admiration.”
When Dickey returned from the Alaskan wilderness, the first news he heard was that William McKinley, the former governor of Ohio, had been elected president. Dickey and his comrades decided to bestow the name McKinley onto the tallest peak as a way of commemorating him. He used the name in an 1897 New York Sun article. Although the new president had no direct connection to Alaska, the name Mount McKinley caught on and became popular following the president’s 1901 assassination.
21 years later, on February 26th, 1917, the name became official. Legislation was first drafted in 1916 to establish a new national park to protect the Alaskan wildlife in that region, and there was disagreement over what the park should be named. This legislation was signed into law in 1917 officially naming the park “Mount McKinley National Park” and the mountain peak “Mount McKinley.”
What none of these people took into consideration was that the mountain already had a name: Denali. The Alaskan Athabaskan Native tribes, who are the original inhabitants of the interior of Alaska, have named it “deenaalee.” Koyukon is the most widespread Athabaskan language spoken in Alaska, and in Koyukon the name “Denali” means “the high one” or “the great one.” The mountain, being North America’s tallest peak, plays a central role in the creation story of the Athabaskan people.
In 2015, President Obama officially restored that name, noting that McKinley had “never set foot in Alaska” and recognizing that “Denali is a site of significant cultural importance to many Alaska Natives.”
10 years later, in 2025, President Trump is elected for his second term. On January 20th, 2025, the day of his inauguration, he issued Executive Order 14172, entitled “Restoring Names that Honor American Greatness.” In it, he orders the reinstatement of the name “Mount McKinley” to the highest peak in North America, reversing Obama’s 2015 decision to call it by its centuries-old name Denali. This is the same executive order in which he renames the northern part of the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America.”
In Section 3 of this executive order, he outlines his reasoning for the renaming of Mount McKinley. He states that President William McKinley, the 25th president, “heroically led our Nation to victory in the Spanish-American War.” Under his presidency, the United States “enjoyed rapid economic growth and prosperity,” and territorial gains after the war (Cuba, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines). The executive order directly mentions President McKinley’s tariff policy, which is credited with protecting U.S. manufacturing, boosting domestic production, and driving U.S. industrialization. Thus, to name North America’s highest peak after President McKinley is to honor his presidency and “historic legacy.” President Obama’s decision to change the name was “an affront to President McKinley’s life, his achievements, and his sacrifice,” according to the executive order.
The name controversy begs the question–do we really need another mountain named after a president?
The Presidential Range in the White Mountains of New Hampshire is one of the most iconic mountain ranges in the United States. It comprises thirteen mountains, seven of which are named after U.S. presidents. The process for naming these peaks was simple and happened in a single day in 1820. Mount Washington, the tallest peak, was named after the first president. The second tallest peak, Mountain Adams, was named after the second president. After naming Mount Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, two peaks remained. These were named Mount Franklin, after Benjamin Franklin, and Mount Pleasant, later renamed to Mount Eisenhower by a vote in the New Hampshire legislature in 1969.
At the time, no protocol or formal organization was dealing with naming peaks, as there is now the United States Geological Survey. The use of these names spread by word of mouth in local communities. The rest of the peaks in the Presidential Range are named not after presidents but a variety of other important men. Mount Webster was named after Daniel Webster, a lawyer and U.S. Congressman. Mount Jackson was named after Charles Thomas Jackson, a prominent geologist. Mount Sam Adams was named after Samuel Adams, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Mount Clay was named after Henry Clay, another U.S. Congressman.
The name controversy also begs the question, why McKinley specifically? There are over a dozen other mountains or ridges in the country named McKinley, including in Arkansas, California, Colorado, Montana, New York, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Washington, according to the Geographic Names Information System.
Perhaps it’s because William McKinley seems to be a personal favorite of President Trump. The executive order references the successes of McKinley’s tariffs, and we have seen Trump also implementing tariffs in the few months of his new presidency.
Even before announcing the executive order, a poll found that Alaskans opposed it two to one. The Alaska Legislature formally opposes Trump’s renaming of Denali as Mount McKinley, passing a resolution urging the president to reverse the decision. In a public statement, Lisa Murkowski, one of the two Alaskan Republican senators, said “In Alaska, it’s Denali.”
Emily Edenshaw, president and chief executive of the Alaska Native Heritage Center, said that the name Denali “reflects a profound spiritual and cultural relationship with the land” and “recognizes the enduring contributions of Alaska Native peoples.”
It’s important to recognize that President Trump’s executive order has significance beyond just the name. The controversy in general is not just about choosing the most aesthetically pleasing name. Replacing Native American names with those of European Americans, as Dickey did 129 years ago, is a form of cultural imperialism. As sociologist and historian James W. Loewen writes, such actions declare that “the new rulers of the landscape can afford to ignore what Native names mean and connote in favor of new names that typically have no relation to what is named.”
We must not write this issue off as having minimal importance. Shakespeare may have famously said “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.” But in this case, I believe that the name itself is important, and is a core component of the Athabaskan natives’ culture. We must not have the arrogance to change the name just because our voice is louder than that of the Athabaskan people who live around the mountain.
The case of Mount Denali is just one conflict among many that has raged between those who want to preserve the original Native names of localities and geographic features and those who want to name them for European American people, towns, or words.
Why should William A. Dickey, a mere gold prospector, get to name it? According to C. H. Merriam, testifying before the U.S. Geographical Board in 1917, “The right of the discoverer to name geographical features has never been questioned,” but Dickey didn’t even discover the mountain. Native peoples discovered the mountain thousands of years ago. Even if we only take into account white people who have “discovered” it, Russian explorers in the early 1800s, such as explorer Andrew Glazunov in 1834, preceded Dickey. Even if we only consider English-speaking white people who “discovered” it, George Vancouver saw it in 1794. Dickey wasn’t even the first white American to see it; others preceded him by a quarter century. So even to those who do believe we have the right to rename the mountain to something fitting American culture, Dickey had no authority to change it.
William McKinley’s presidency hadn’t even begun when the mountain was named in his honor. Dickey’s reasons for naming the mountain McKinley were petty. Most people in the West wanted to expand the amount of money in circulation by minting more silver coins. Dickey was irritated that he lost arguments with these “free silver” partisans on his trip and retaliated by naming the mountain after the gold standard champion. It’s simply luck that the name McKinley turned out to be the name of a president, and a martyred president at that.
“This mountain is the largest in North America. It was named by the Natives long before we arrived,” said Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska in 1991. “It’s time we listened to the Native people of Alaska.”
In 1975, a compromise was proposed in Alaska’s legislature to name the mountain Denali and leave the national park surrounding it named McKinley, but this was blocked by Rep. Ralph Regula from Canton, William McKinley’s hometown. Regula purposefully left the legislation pending, thus preventing any action by the Board on Geographic Names.
Barbara Wainman, Regula’s aide, emphasized that “The congressman feels that a lot of money goes into maps, and names shouldn’t be changed lightly.” She noted that if they win Denali, Native groups will want to change other names.
On that last point, she’s right. Native groups do want to change other names all across America, and they have succeeded in some instances. Memphis renamed DeSoto Bluff “Chickasaw Heritage State Park.” “Custer’s Last Stand” is now entitled “The Little Bighorn Battlefield.” Also, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names adopted a policy in 1990 to favor names derived from Inuit, American Indian, and Polynesian languages.
As writer Cassidy Randall states, President Trump’s decision is a “slap in the face” of recent efforts to “acknowledge America’s history of colonialism” and restore Indigenous place names. This spectacular national treasure will always be named Mount Denali, regardless of what the government says.
“This mountain is the largest in North America. It was named by the Natives long before we arrived,” said Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska in 1991. “It’s time we listened to the Native people of Alaska.”