Denali naming dispute
Encyclopedia
Geographical renaming
Geographical renaming is the changing of the name of a geographical feature or area. This can range from the uncontroversial change of a street name to a highly disputed change to the name of a country. Some names are changed locally but the new names are not recognised by other countries,...
of the mountain listed by the United States Board of Geographic Names as "Mount McKinley
Mount McKinley
Mount McKinley or Denali in Alaska, United States is the highest mountain peak in North America and the United States, with a summit elevation of above sea level. It is the centerpiece of Denali National Park and Preserve.- Geology and features :Mount McKinley is a granitic pluton...
" and by the Alaska Board of Geographic Names as "Denali", located in Alaska
Alaska
Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...
as the centerpiece of Denali National Park and Preserve
Denali National Park and Preserve
Denali National Park and Preserve is located in Interior Alaska and contains Denali , the highest mountain in North America. The park and preserve together cover 9,492 mi² .The longest glacier is the Kalhiltna glacier....
. Alaska maintains that the mountain is "Denali", meaning "the great one" in the Athabaskan languages
Athabaskan languages
Athabaskan or Athabascan is a large group of indigenous peoples of North America, located in two main Southern and Northern groups in western North America, and of their language family...
of the Alaska Natives living around the mountain, which is the common name in Alaska. Attempts by Alaska to have the name changed nationally have been blocked by members of the congressional delegation from Ohio
Ohio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...
, the homestate of mountain namesake William McKinley
William McKinley
William McKinley, Jr. was the 25th President of the United States . He is best known for winning fiercely fought elections, while supporting the gold standard and high tariffs; he succeeded in forging a Republican coalition that for the most part dominated national politics until the 1930s...
.
Background
Numerous native peoples of the area had their own names for this prominent peak. The local KoyukonKoyukon language
Koyukon is an Athabaskan language spoken along the Koyukuk and middle Yukon River in western interior Alaska. It has about 300 speakers - generally older adults bilingual in English - from an ethnic population of 2,300....
Athabaskan
Athabaskan languages
Athabaskan or Athabascan is a large group of indigenous peoples of North America, located in two main Southern and Northern groups in western North America, and of their language family...
name for the mountain, the name used by the Native Americans with access to the flanks of the mountain (living in the Yukon
Yukon River
The Yukon River is a major watercourse of northwestern North America. The source of the river is located in British Columbia, Canada. The next portion lies in, and gives its name to Yukon Territory. The lower half of the river lies in the U.S. state of Alaska. The river is long and empties into...
, Tanana
Tanana River
The Tanana River is a tributary of the Yukon River in the U.S. state of Alaska. According to linguist and anthropologist William Bright, the name is from the Koyukon tene no, tenene, literally "trail river"....
and Kuskokwim basins), is Dinale or Denali d or d). To the South the Dena’ina
Dena’ina
The Dena'ina are an Alaska Native people, an extended tribe of American Indian lineage. They are the original inhabitants of the southcentral Alaska region ranging from Seldovia in the south to Chickaloon in the northeast, Talkeetna in the north, Lime Village in the Northwest and Pedro Bay in the...
people in the Susitna river
Susitna River
The Susitna River is a long river in the Southcentral Alaska. It is the 15th largest river in the United States of America, ranked by average discharge volume at its mouth. The river stretches from the Susitna Glacier to Cook Inlet....
valley used the name Dghelay Ka’a (anglicized as Doleika), meaning "the big mountain", while the Aleuts called it Traleika.
The historical first European sighting of Mount McKinley took place on May 6, 1794, when George Vancouver
George Vancouver
Captain George Vancouver RN was an English officer of the British Royal Navy, best known for his 1791-95 expedition, which explored and charted North America's northwestern Pacific Coast regions, including the coasts of contemporary Alaska, British Columbia, Washington and Oregon...
was surveying the Knik Arm of the Cook Inlet and mentioned “distant stupendous mountains” in his journal. However, he uncharacteristically left the mountain unnamed. The mountain is first named on a map by Ferdinand von Wrangell in 1839; the names Tschigmit and Tenada correspond to the locations of Mount Foraker and Mount McKinley, respectively. Von Wrangell had been chief administrator of the Russian settlements in North America from 1829–1835.
McKinley name change
The first English name applied to the peak was Densmore’s Mountain or Densmore's Peak, for the gold prospector Frank Densmore who in 1889 had fervently praised the mountain’s majesty; however, the name persevered only locally and informally. That changed when William Dickey, a New Hampshire-born Seattleite who had been digging for gold in the sands of the Susitna River, wrote, after his return to the lower states, an account in the New York SunNew York Sun
The New York Sun was a weekday daily newspaper published in New York City from 2002 to 2008. When it debuted on April 16, 2002, adopting the name, motto, and masthead of an otherwise unrelated earlier New York paper, The Sun , it became the first general-interest broadsheet newspaper to be started...
that appeared on January 24, 1897. Dickey wrote, “We named our great peak Mount McKinley, after William McKinley
William McKinley
William McKinley, Jr. was the 25th President of the United States . He is best known for winning fiercely fought elections, while supporting the gold standard and high tariffs; he succeeded in forging a Republican coalition that for the most part dominated national politics until the 1930s...
of Ohio, who had been nominated for the Presidency." By most accounts, the naming was politically driven; Dickey had met many silver miners who zealously promoted Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan
William Jennings Bryan
William Jennings Bryan was an American politician in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. He was a dominant force in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, standing three times as its candidate for President of the United States...
's ideal of a silver standard
Cross of Gold speech
The Cross of Gold speech was delivered by William Jennings Bryan at the 1896 Democratic National Convention in Chicago on July 8, 1896. The speech advocated bimetallism. Following the Coinage Act , the United States abandoned its policy of bimetallism and began to operate a de facto gold...
, inspiring him to retaliate by naming the mountain after a strong proponent of the gold standard
Gold standard
The gold standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is a fixed mass of gold. There are distinct kinds of gold standard...
.
Alaska Board of Geographic Names changes name
Mount McKinley is commonly referred to by its Koyukon Athabaskan name Denali, especially by Alaskans, mountaineers, and Alaska Natives. In 1975, the Alaska Board of Geographic Names officially changed the name of mountain to Denali and, at Governor Jay HammondJay Hammond
Jay Sterner Hammond was an American politician of the Republican Party, who served as the fourth Governor of Alaska from 1974 to 1982.-Early life:...
's behest, the Alaska Legislature
Alaska Legislature
The Alaska Legislature is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Alaska. It is a bicameral institution, consisting of the lower Alaska House of Representatives, with 40 members, and the upper house Alaska Senate, with 20 members...
officially requested that the U.S. Board on Geographic Names
United States Board on Geographic Names
The United States Board on Geographic Names is a United States federal body whose purpose is to establish and maintain uniform usage of geographic names throughout the U.S. government.-Overview:...
, the federal governmental body responsible for naming geographic features in the United States, change the name of the mountain from Mount McKinley to "Mount Denali."
Action by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names was staved off by the determined political maneuvering of Ohio congressman Ralph Regula
Ralph Regula
Ralph Straus Regula was a Representative in the United States Congress from the 16th District of the State of Ohio. He retired in January 2009 after 18 consecutive terms. He is a member of the Republican Party. In the 110th Congress , he was the second longest serving Republican member of the U.S...
, whose district includes Canton
Canton, Ohio
Canton is the county seat of Stark County in northeastern Ohio, approximately south of Akron and south of Cleveland.The City of Caton is the largest incorporated area within the Canton-Massillon Metropolitan Statistical Area...
, where McKinley spent much of his life. At first, Board on Geographic Names consideration was delayed by resistance from Secretary of the Interior
United States Secretary of the Interior
The United States Secretary of the Interior is the head of the United States Department of the Interior.The US Department of the Interior should not be confused with the concept of Ministries of the Interior as used in other countries...
Rogers Morton
Rogers Morton
Rogers Clark Ballard Morton was an American politician who served as Secretary of the Interior and Secretary of Commerce under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, respectively...
, under whose purview the Board on Geographic Names fell, as he personally did not favor a change of the mountain's name. Later, in 1977, with Secretary Morton no longer at the helm of the Department of the Interior, the Board on Geographic Names again prepared to consider the name change, but Congressman Regula gathered signatures from every member of the Ohio congressional delegation warning against renaming Mount McKinley and the Board on Geographic Names again held off on making a ruling. On December 2, 1980, with President Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
's signing of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act
Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act
The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act was a United States federal law passed in 1980 by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Jimmy Carter on December 2 of that year....
(ANILCA), McKinley National Park — which had been created on February 26, 1917 — was incorporated into a larger protected area named Denali National Park and Preserve
Denali National Park and Preserve
Denali National Park and Preserve is located in Interior Alaska and contains Denali , the highest mountain in North America. The park and preserve together cover 9,492 mi² .The longest glacier is the Kalhiltna glacier....
. Naming the new, larger park Denali while retaining the name Mount McKinley for the actual mountain was thought to be a compromise by many "Mount McKinley" partisans. However, "Denali" advocates, including Alaska Congressman Don Young
Don Young
Donald Edwin "Don" Young is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1973. He is a member of the Republican Party.Young is the 6th most senior U.S. Representative and the 2nd most senior Republican Representative, as well as the 2nd most senior Republican in Congress as a whole...
, vehemently disagree that the 1980 action constitutes a real compromise and instead argue that naming the mountain and park by different names only creates confusion. While the Board on Geographic Names was originally set to make a ruling on December 10, 1980, with the passage of ANILCA on December 2, the Board on Geographic Names opted to defer their ruling.
The following year, Congressman Regula devised a new tactic to support the Mount McKinley name. Capitalizing on a Board on Geographic Names policy that states the Board cannot consider any name-change proposal if congressional legislation relating to that name is pending, Regula began a biennial legislative tradition of either introducing language into Interior Department appropriation bills or introducing a standalone bill that states that the name of Mount McKinley shall not be changed. This effectively killed the Denali name-change proposal pending with the Board on Geographic Names.
Recent activity
In 2009, following the retirement of Congressman Regula, interest in renaming the mountain renewed. Alaska State Representative Scott KawasakiScott Kawasaki
Scott Jiu Wo Kawasaki is a healthcare professional and politician from Alaska. A Democrat, he is a member of the Alaska House of Representatives representing the state's ninth district, which includes neighborhoods within the city limits of Fairbanks.- Biography :Scott Kawasaki was born in Tokyo,...
sponsored Alaska House Joint Resolution 15, which urges the U.S. Congress to rename the mountain Denali. Despite efforts in Alaska, U.S. Representatives Betty Sutton
Betty Sutton
Betty Sue Sutton is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 2007. She is a member of the Democratic Party.The district includes most of the western and southern suburbs of Cleveland, and includes North Royalton, Akron, Lorain, Elyria, Strongsville, Avon and Cuyahoga Falls.-Early life and...
and Tim Ryan, both of Ohio, have assumed Regula's role as congressional guardians of the Mount McKinley name and introduced H.R. 229 which reads: "Notwithstanding any other authority of law, the mountain located 63 degrees 04 minutes 12 seconds north, by 151 degrees 00 minutes 18 seconds west shall continue to be named and referred to for all purposes as Mount McKinley."