Mt. McKinley

Former national park worker speaks out on Trump renaming tallest U.S. peak

By Walt Meyer

March 2, 2025 (San Diego) -- Because I worked in Denali National Park during the summer of 2024, lately people have asked me about the naming of Mount McKinley. I talked about this in one of the lectures I gave at the Denali Education Center.

I spent that entire summer in Alaska, visiting five of its eight national parks, including Gates of the Arctic, far north of the Arctic Circle, and I learned a great deal about the 49^th state and its indigenous people.

Prior to my extended stay up north, for some reason, I had thought that Mount McKinley was renamed for the 25^th president after he was shot, just as after John F. Kennedy was assassinated many post offices, schools, and even an airport were renamed for him. If that had been the case, taking away the name of Denali might have been a little more forgivable.

But that was not the case with Mount McKinley. Denali was renamed for William McKinley before that governor of Ohio was even president. In 1896, some gold miners from Ohio who were trying to strike it rich in Alaska (along with thousands of others from all over the world), had the brilliant idea to rename the biggest mountain they had seen for McKinley who was then running for the Republican nomination for president.

In addition to wanting to support a fellow Ohioan, they had another motive: money. McKinley was running on the gold standard and these miners reasoned that if he was successful in taking the White House, and the US dollar was to be backed by gold, the government would have to buy up tons of the precious metal and that would drive up the price of gold and make them all rich.

The locals, even the white men who climbed it in the coming decades, still referred to it as Denali, which in the Athabascan language of the local indigenous peoples, meant “the big one” or “the tall one” or “the great one.” The name Mount McKinley was only used by “outsiders” as people from the lower 48 were called by the “Sourdoughs,” the people who came to Alaska to stay.

When the boundaries of Mount McKinley were vastly enlarged under the terms of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) in 1980, the indigenous people were given a seat at the table, which had been a rare thing in the US government’s treatment of native peoples. Among the things the tribes asked for was the restoration of some of their hunting rights in the expanded park and the restoration of their name for the highest mountain in North America. The National Park Service agreed and changed the name of the park to Denali National Park.

But the tall peak itself was under the purview of the US Geological Survey which is in charge of place names. Anytime the government hinted at changing the name, they were met with a mountain of resistance, primarily from the Ohio congressional delegation who did not want their home state’s martyred president stripped of his namesake mount.

Any president who tried to rename the mountain risked losing the key state of Ohio in the next election, so the park was Denali, but the mountain stayed McKinley for over two and a half decades, when President Barack Obama, as he was nearing the end of his second term, signed an executive order restoring the name. He waited until his term was almost over so he would not have to deal with the fallout for long. Alaska rejoiced. Ohio pouted.

When people would ask me why they “renamed” the mountain to Denali, I would politely correct them and say that the name of Denali was restored, not renamed. It had been Denali for millennia until some Ohio gold miners renamed it as a political stunt.

William McKinley never set foot in Alaska and never saw the mountain, so it makes more sense for it to have its ancient name, a name that means something. 

Walt Meyer is a San Diego-based author who has worked at multiple national parks. 

The views in this editorial reflect the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of East County Magazine. To submit an editorial for consideration, contact editor@eastcountymagazine.org.