After President Donald Trump announced that his administration will soon change the name of Denali back to Mount McKinley, the state’s top two federal lawmakers said they do not support the change.
In a video posted on X, Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said that he prefers the Denali name. Sullivan said that the media in Washington has been “obsessed” with the name change.
“I prefer the name Denali, which was given to that great mountain by the great patriotic Koyukon Athabascan people thousands of years ago,” Sullivan said.
In December, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, also said she opposed the name change.
“You can’t improve upon the name that Alaska’s Koyukon Athabascans bestowed on North America’s tallest peak, Denali – the Great One,” Murkowski said in December when then President-elect Trump first suggested the name change. “For years, I advocated in Congress to restore the rightful name for this majestic mountain to respect Alaska’s first people, who have lived on these lands for thousands of years. This is an issue that should not be relitigated.”
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For decades, the mountain was officially named Mount McKinley in honor of President William McKinley, an Ohio Republican who served from 1897 until his assassination in 1901.
According to the National Park Service, “Mount McKinley” emerged as its name after gold prospector William Dickey, an admirer of McKinley, used the name in an 1897 New York Sun article. McKinley had no connection to Alaska.
“As Mount McKinley became more established in American vernacular in the early 1900s, there were still many people with connections to Interior Alaska who were disturbed by the dismissal of Native antecedents,” the National Park Service said.
In 1975, the State of Alaska petitioned the U.S. Board on Geographic Names to change the name from Mount McKinley to Denali. The federal government did not officially adopt the Denali moniker until President Barack Obama and Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell ordered the name change in 2015.
According to President Trump’s order, Denali would go back to being called Mount McKinley, but the national park would retain the Denali name. Denali is the only mountain in North America to top 20,000 feet.
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