President-elect Trump vowed this week to reverse former President Obama’s 2015 decision to change the name of North America’s highest peak to its Koyukon-Athabascan name of “Denali,” meaning “High One” or “Big One.” ” means.
Speaking to conservatives at a conference in Phoenix, Trump made that promise, noting that President William McKinley is also a Republican who believes in tariffs. He first promised and called for reversing Obama’s action in August 2015 an “insult to Ohio” where McKinley was born and raised.
During his Phoenix address, he also pledged to reverse Democrats’ renaming of Southern military bases named after Confederates – such as Fort Liberty in Fayetteville, North Carolina, which was formerly named after General Braxton Bragg.
The 20,320-foot mountain was first named Mount McKinley in 1896 by gold prospector William Dickey after he learned that the Ohioan had won the Republican presidential nomination – and in a swipe at silver prospectors, he hit out at those who supported Democrat William Jennings Bryan and his plan for Silver preferred standard for the dollar.
William McKinley (1843–1901) of Ohio was the 25th President of the United States, serving from March 4, 1897 until his assassination in September 1901. (Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Six months into his second term, McKinley was visiting Buffalo, New York, when anarchist worker Leon Czolgosz assassinated him in a gleeful line. Czolgosz believed that the root of economic inequality lay with the government and was reportedly inspired by the assassination of Italian King Umberto I in 1900.
However, many Alaskans have seemed to prefer the historical name Denali:
GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski KTUU said that Trump’s plan to “Mt. Bringing McKinley back was a “terrible idea.”
“We’ve already been through this with President Trump, at the very, very beginning of his first term,” she said Monday.
Murkowski said both she and Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, who is originally from McKinley’s Ohio, support the name Denali.
“(Denali) is a name that has been around for thousands of years… North America’s highest mountain – shouldn’t it have a name like ‘The Great One?'” Murkowski added.
MURKOWSKI SAYS SHE WASN’T “ASSOCIATED” WITH THE GOP LABEL.
Denali, near Talkeetna, Alaska (AP Photo/Becky Bohrer, File)
In 2015, Sullivan told the Anchorage Daily News that “Denali belongs to Alaska and its citizens” and that the naming rights belong to Alaska Natives.
In one Statement to KTUU This week, Sullivan said many Alaskans prefer the “name given by the very tough, very strong, very patriotic Athabascan people” to the climax.
Meanwhile, then-Rep. Ralph Regula, R-Ohio, spent decades in Congress trying to block any name change from McKinley to Denali – since the president with the same name came from his district in Canton.
Regula, who died in 2017, criticized Obama over the name change, saying he “thought he was a dictator.”
Regula apparently cited his own work outlining procedural hurdles and language on domestic legislation and said Obama could not change such a law “with the stroke of a pen.”
“You want to change the Ohio River?” he joked.
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Senator Lisa Murkowski speaks during a press conference. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
However, some officials in Ohio have also respected the wishes of Alaskans.
Current Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted said Dayton Daily News In 2015, he said that if Denali was what Alaskans wanted, then again he understood, as he did not want Alaskans to dictate Ohio’s name changes.
“Well, I guess we shouldn’t tell People in Alaska should do in their own state. “But I’m a big fan of Canton and McKinley and I’m glad he’s being talked about more,” he said at the time.
