US President Donald Trump pledged on Monday to rename North America’s highest peak, Denali in Alaska, to Mount McKinley, reviving an idea he floated years ago that at the time saw strong opposition from political leaders in the state.
Trump, who took office for the second time on Monday, said he intends to “restore the name of a great president, William McKinley, to Mount McKinley, where it should be and where it belongs. President McKinley has made our country very rich with his tariffs and taxes.” Through talent.”
Trump also announced plans to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to America’s Gulf.
Messages left for Alaska’s three-member Republican congressional delegation and Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy were not immediately returned. Alaska’s U.S. senators in 2017 strongly opposed an earlier proposal by Trump to change Denali’s name back to Mount McKinley.
In 2015, then-President Barack Obama Changed the name to Denali To reflect Alaska Native traditions and acknowledge the preference of many Alaskans. In recent years, the US federal government has sought to change place names deemed disrespectful to indigenous people.
Denali is an Athabaskan word meaning “highest” or “great.” The famous 6,190-metre-high mountain, covered in snow and dotted with glaciers, is located in Denali National Park and Preserve.
A prospector in 1896 named the peak “Mount McKinley” after President William McKinley, who had never visited 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.
Trump raised the idea of changing the name again during a rally late last year, after his election.
“McKinley was a very good, perhaps great, president,” Trump said in December. “They took his name off Mount McKinley, didn’t they? That’s what they do to people.”
Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski was among those who expressed opposition to changing the name from Denali.
“You cannot improve upon the name given by the Athabaskans of Alaska to the highest peak in North America, Denali — the Great Peak,” she said at the time, adding that the issue “should not be brought up.”
The Tanana Chiefs’ Conference, a confederation of Athabaskan tribes in interior Alaska, has spent years advocating for the summit to be recognized as Denali.
McKinley, an Ohio Republican who was the 25th president, was assassinated early in his second term in 1901 in Buffalo, New York.
Alaska and Ohio have been at loggerheads over the name since at least the 1970s. Alaska has had a standing request to change the name since 1975, when the legislature passed a resolution and then-Gov. Jay Hammond appealed to the federal government.
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