President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to return the old name of America’s tallest mountain, nine years after then-President Barack Obama changed it in honor of Alaska’s native community.
The 20,000-foot peak in Denali National Park and Preserve in south-central Alaska had since 1917 been known as Mount McKinley, in honor of 25th president William McKinley, who was assassinated in 1901.
But Obama in 2015 renamed it Denali — the name the local native community preferred — a decision Trump said he plans to reverse.
“They took his name off Mount McKinley,” Trump told supporters in Phoenix Sunday.
“He was a great president,” Trump said McKinley. “That’s one of the reasons that we’re going to bring back the name of Mount McKinley because I think he deserves it.”
McKinley, known for raising protective tariffs to promote US industry, also led the country to victory in the Spanish-American War after becoming president in 1897, according to the White House.
The 2015 order, signed by Obama to change the mountain’s name, stated that McKinley had never visited the mountain and had no “significant historical connection to the mountain or to Alaska.”
Denali, the local Athabascan name, meaning “the High One,” was officially designated as the peak’s name in 1975 by the state of Alaska, which pressed the federal government to adopt it.
During Trump’s first term, he met with two of Alaska’s Republican senators in a private meeting in March 2017 to ask if they’d consider reversing Obama’s name, according to CNN.
However, the senators, Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, told Trump to keep Denali’s name intact.
“Lisa – Sen. Murkowski – and I jumped over the desk,” Sullivan said, according to the outlet. “We said no, no!”
With Post wires.
