Its Name is DENALI – The Denali–Mount McKinley Naming Dispute

I’ve delayed writing this article for about a week and a half due to illness and wanting to give myself a chance to calm down. But this issue has me hot under the collar, and I have a lot of opinions.

North America’s tallest mountain is named DENALI, and it will stay that way in this blog, all communications, and social media posts.

History of Denali’s Name

Indigenous History of the Name

Denali has had a fair number of names over the 10,000 years of human inhabitation in Alaska. While the written word didn’t arrive in Alaska until the late 1700s with the European explorers, the names are recorded in the oral histories of the many Alaskan Native groups.

Denali sits within the traditional lands of the Koyukon Athabascan (or Dena) people and is visible to many other Indigenous groups in the area. The name “Denali” comes from the Koyukon word “Deenaalee” which roughly translates to “the high one.”

Uniquely, the other Alaskan Native group name for Denali is similar to the Koyukon word. For groups north of the mountain, their name translates to “the high one.” For the groups to the south, it usually translates to “big mountain”

Other native language names for Denali include:

• Lower Tanana language – Deenadheet, Deenadhee
• Middle Tanana language – Diineezi
• Upper Kuskokwim language – Denaze
• Deg Xinag language – Dengadh, Dengadhi
• Holikachuk language – Denadhe
• Ahtna language – Dghelaay Ce’e, Deghilaay Ce’e
• Upper Inlet Dena’ina language – Dghelay Ka’a
• Lower Inlet Dena’ina language – Dghili Ka’a

Becoming “Mt. McKinley”

One of the most significant issues of the 1896 presidential election was the gold standard vs the silver standard. Basically, both of these systems fix currency to a specific amount of gold/silver. The US had used the gold standard since 1873, but Democratic candidate William Jenning Bryan supported the silver standard. His opponent, Republican William McKinley, was for preserving the gold standard.

While Alaska wasn’t a US state at the time of the 1896 election, the issue of the gold standard was a high property with the gold miners of Alaska. Alaska has several silver mines, but there are far more gold mines and gold miners. Without the gold standard, it would be harder for gold miners to know how much the gold they produced would be worth and subject to debate.

Enter a gold prospector named William Dickey. The New Hampshire-born Dickey was prospecting in the sands of Susitna River, and he realized that a Byran’s victory would be very bad for his business. So he got creative, and he started calling Denali ‘Mt. McKinley” and wrote an article in a New York newspaper, The Sun, (re)naming the mountain Mt. McKinley. Dickey’s name choice was pure political propaganda to support his own personal economic interests.

Mt. McKinley was used by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) reports in 1900 and 1911. The name was officially adopted by the US Government in 1917. It is important to remember that Alaska at this time was a territory of the United States. It would be another 42 years before Alaska would gain statehood.

Alaska Fights for Denali

In 1975, Alaska’s Alaska State Board on Geographic Names changed the name of the mountain to Denali, and the Alaska Legislature officially requested that the United States Board on Geographic Names (BGN) return the mountain’s name to Denali. At this point, Denali had only been officially referred to as Mt. McKinley for 58 years, and Alaska had only been a state for 16 years.

For the next 34, Ohio Congressman Ralph Regula opposed Alaska’s motion with the BGN using several different procedural tricks suck as filing legislative introducing language into Interior Department appropriation bills or introducing a stand-alone bill that directed that the name of Mount McKinley should not be changed. Per policy, the BGN does not consider name changes if there is pending congressional legislation.

In 2009, Regula retired, and Alaska pushed for the change, but Ohio’s new crop of Congresspeople were the same level of assholes as Regula and took up in his fight.

Finally, in 2015, President Obama and Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell took action. They returned the mountain to its traditional name under federal law, which permits her as Secretary of the Interior to name geographic features if the Board on Geographic Names does not act within a “reasonable” period of time.

Some of Ohio was upset, and I’m personally glad that Regula was still alive at the time to see the change (and frankly, I’d stick a protest sticker on his gravesite if I knew where he was buried). But I really like then Ohio Secretary of State Jon A. Husted’s statement, “I wouldn’t want people from Alaska telling me what things in Ohio should be. So I guess we shouldn’t tell people from Alaska what they should do in their own state.”

I also love Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski’s statement as well. “There’s a lot of things in Ohio that are already named after McKinley. This is no affront to our former president; this is all about ensuring that respect for the land and respect for the native people of the region is afforded.”

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump announced his plans to rename the mountain. Probably as a political move to sway some political favor in the critical swing state of Ohio under the guise of calling the Obama era name change a political stunt and that a mountain in a state that has nothing to do with McKinley should be named to honor him.

On his first day in office, President Trump issued an executive order that “changed” the name back to Mt. McKinley regardless of Alaska’s wishes and the history of the mountain.

My final thoughts

THE MOUNTAIN’S NAME IS DENALI. President Trump can sign any order he’d like to change the name, but I’m going to call it Denali. Alaska will call it Denali, and in a few years, the next president will be more respectful of the state’s right to name locations within their borders.

If not, I hope Alaska starts filing bills to rename shit in Ohio after important Alaskas. I’d start with small-town post offices.

Be sure to check out our Denali/Mount McKinley Naming Protest Collection.