President Donald Trump made a series of sweeping pronouncements in his inaugural address, including a pledge to restore the name of Mount McKinley to North America’s tallest peak.
Denali was renamed in 2015 by former President Barack Obama’s Department of the Interior, honoring the peak’s name in Native American cultures within Alaska and at the request of numerous Alaskan state officials and organizations.
Trump said Monday he will sign an executive order to reverse that decision, ordering the Department of the Interior to restore the name Mount McKinley to honor William McKinley, the 25th president of the United States.
Here’s what to know.
Why was the name changed in the first place?
Mount McKinley was named in honor of the former president before he had been elected to office, according to Britannica, with a gold prospector renaming the peak over the then-presidential candidate.
The name was officially recognized by the federal government for more than a century, but was changed to Denali in 2015 by former President Barack Obama’s Department of the Interior.
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The word “Denali” is an Athbascan word meaning “the high one” or “the great one,” according to the Associated Press. The Alaskan Geographic Board designated the mountain as Denali in the 1970s, and the Alaskan legislature also passed a resolution urging the United States government to change the name.
Tribes that live around the mountain had also used the name Denali for centuries, according to officials.
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Denali is the tallest peak in North America, rising nearly 21,000 feet into the sky. It sits inside of Denali National Park, with the park’s territory covering 6.1 million acres, an area larger than the state of New Hampshire, according to the National Park Foundation.
Why does Trump want to change the name back?
The renaming of Denali is one of several Trump intends to undertake, including changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America via executive order.
He elaborated on those plans during his inaugural address Monday.
“A short time from now, we are going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, and we will restore the name of a great president, William McKinley, to Mount McKinley, where it should be and where it belongs,” he said. “President McKinley made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent. He was a natural businessman and gave Teddy Roosevelt the money for many of the great things he did, including the Panama Canal, which has foolishly been given to the country of Panama after the United States.”
In his address, Trump referred to McKinley’s protectionist policies, which included the Dingley Tariff, which was passed in 1897 and was the largest tariff in American history at the time of its implementation. It remained in effect until the end of the Roosevelt administration, according to Frank Fetter’s “Economics in Two Volumes” series.
McKinley oversaw a rapid expansion of the United States’ overseas holdings, including Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines, which were all ceded to the U.S. after the Spanish-American War.
Can Trump actually rename the mountain?
Since the mountain is on land controlled by the federal government, the Department of the Interior is ultimately responsible for its official name.
According to the New York Post however, the executive order may not apply in schools or non-federal settings. It is also unclear what the Alaskan government’s response will be to the decision to rename the peak.
What do Alaskan officials have to say about the plan?
Trump had initially floated the idea of renaming Denali in 2016, but did not do so after discussions with Alaskan officials.
When Trump renewed his call for Denali’s name to be changed, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski immediately spoke out against the idea.
“There is only one name worthy of North America’s tallest mountain: Denali – the Great One,” she said on X.
Alaska’s other senator, Dan Sullivan, also is opposed to the change, according to the Anchorage Daily News.