Opinion: We don’t need a vote to know Alaskans have long preferred Denali over McKinley

The highest mountain peak on North America has had many different names throughout history.

The pre-European contact Koyukon Athabaskan locals called it Denali or Dinale, translated to “the high one.” The Cook Inlet Dena’ina Athabaskans used Dghelay Ka’a, meaning “the big mountain.”

George Vancouver was probably the first European to see the mountain in the 18th century but failed to give it a name. I wonder what he would have picked. Maybe it would have been named after one of the HMS Discovery’s lieutenants, like Mount Baker or Puget Sound were. Or after one of Vancouver’s friends, like Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier were. Mount King George III or just Mount Vancouver also seem plausible, but, alas, he didn’t feel compelled to re-name it.

Ferdinand von Wrangel put the name Tenada on the map, but the common name used during Russian ownership was Bolshaya Gora, meaning “big mountain.” In the late 19th century, it was sometimes locally referred to as Densmore’s Peak, named after a gold prospector. However, it was another prospector, New Hampshire native William Dickey, who called it Mount McKinley after the presidential candidate he personally preferred while arguing over politics with other miners. Josiah Spurr reported in the 1900 USGS report that it was known as Mount Allen, Bulshaia, as well as Mount McKinley, and the president’s assassination in 1901 all but assured that the name Mount McKinley would stick for the next 100-plus years, at least to those far, far away in Washington, D.C., and Ohio.

Charles Sheldon, who personally lobbied for over a decade to preserve the area around the mountain as a national park, thought both the park and the mountain should be called Denali. Nevertheless, Congress and President Woodrow Wilson signed Mount McKinley National Park into law in 1917.

In 1975, the Alaska State Board of Geographic Names officially changed the mountain’s name from McKinley to Denali and requested the U.S. Board of Geographic Names to do the same. In 1978, President Jimmy Carter used the Antiquities Act (a law from 1906 signed by Theodore Roosevelt, who became president himself because of McKinley’s 1901 assassination) to create Denali National Monument. When federal law merged Mount McKinley National Park with Denali National Monument two years later in 1980, the combined parkland was now called Denali National Park and Preserve.

Forty years after the state of Alaska had formally requested to the U.S. Board of Geographic Names to change the name to Denali, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell used her legal authority to make the change to Denali official in 2015 because “the board had failed to respond to Alaska’s request in a reasonable time period.”

Most of the opposition to the name Denali seems to stem from Ohio politicians in Washington. Throughout history many names have been applied to “the high one.” Mount McKinley goes down in history as the name used by “outsiders” for their own political gains. President Donald Trump will be no exception to this.

In my view, the state of Alaska and Alaskans themselves have always had a clear record that they prefer to call North America’s tallest peak Denali. So, do we still need to vote on it?

Ryan Kenny is a hobbyist landscape photographer who lives and works in Anchorage and Nome.

The views expressed here are the writer’s and are not necessarily endorsed by the Anchorage Daily News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)adn.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@adn.com or click here to submit via any web browser. Read our full guidelines for letters and commentaries here.