Trump has promised to rename North America’s tallest peak from Denali to Mount McKinley.
President Donald Trump has been tipped to name North America’s tallest peak, Denali in Alaska, as Mount McKinley — reviving a proposal he floated years ago that saw strong pushback from government political leaders at the time.
Trump, who took office for a second term on Monday, said he plans to “return to Mount McKinley, where the name of the great President William McKinley was and is. In a capacity.”
Trump also announced plans to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
Messages left for Alaska’s three-member Republican congressional delegation and Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy were not immediately returned. In the year In 2017, Alaska’s US senators strongly opposed Trump’s proposal to change the name Denali to Mount McKinley.
In the year In 2015, then-President Barack Obama changed the name to Denali to reflect Alaska Native traditions and to acknowledge the choice of many Alaskans. The US federal government has tried to change place names in recent years that are considered disrespectful to indigenous peoples.
Denali is an Athabaskan word meaning “high” or “great”. The snow-covered and snow-covered 6,190-meter iconic mountain is located in Denali National Park and Preserve.
In the year In 1896, a prospector named the peak “Mount McKinley” after President William McKinley, who had never been to Alaska. The name was officially recognized by the US government until Obama changed it – despite opposition from lawmakers in McKinley’s home state of Ohio.
At a rally late last year, Trump floated the idea of a name change following his election.
“McKinley was a great, maybe a great president,” Trump said in December. “They took his name from Mount McKinley, right? That’s what they do to people.”
Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski was among those opposed to Denali’s name change.
“You can’t improve the name the Athabascans of Alaska’s Koyukon gave to North America’s highest peak, Denali – The Great,” she said at the time, adding that the issue “should not be resolved.”
The Tanana Chiefs Conference, a confederation of Athabaskan tribes in Alaska, has spent years advocating that the peak be recognized as Denali.
McKinley, an Ohio Republican who became the 25th president, was assassinated in Buffalo, New York in 1901, early in his second term.
Alaska and Ohio have been opposites in name since at least the 1970s. Alaska has had a standing request to change its name since 1975, when the Legislature passed a resolution and then-Gov. Jay Hammond appealed to the federal government.
