Dominating the Alaska landscape, Denali, the tallest peak in North America, is nothing short of breathtaking. It stands at 20,310 feet, its white peaks and rocky terrain towering above the horizon. For generations, Native people lived in and around the mountain. Different tribes had a variety of names for it, but they all largely meant the same thing: “the great one” or “the high one.”
“On clear days, you can see it from many directions, and it’s magnificent,” says Joan Antonson, executive director of the Alaska Historical Society.
The U.S. purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million and took possession of the territory. And in the late 19th century, prospectors rushed toward Alaska and the Yukon in search of gold. Upon encountering the mountain, one of these prospectors, William Dickey, became captivated by its geography—and size. Motivated by the recent nomination of Republican candidate William McKinley for president, he called the Alaska mountain “Mount McKinley” in an article he published in the New York Sun.
The name stuck and became official in 1917. Nearly a century later, in 2015, the Obama administration officially renamed the peak Denali, a name Alaskans had historically championed and that originated from Alaska’s Athabascan tribe, translating roughly to “The Great One.”
To many, the name Denali honors and preserves the mountain’s Native American history. Those who advocated for “Mount McKinley”—including Republican politicians from Ohio, McKinley’s home state—wanted to recognize the legacy of a historic national figure.
1896: William Dickey Names Mount McKinley
In August 1896, after the discovery of gold near the Klondike River in Canada’s Yukon territory, roughly 100,000 miners headed toward the Yukon (in northwest Canada) and Alaska in a frantic search for gold. Among them was prospector William Dickey, a Princeton University graduate.
“It was just a time of incredible change for the interior Native people with the coming of non-Natives, who not only came through—they stayed,” Antonson says.
In his 1897 New York Sun article, titled “Discoveries in Alaska,” Dickey estimates the height of the recently discovered mountain at 20,000 feet. He dubbed the peak “Mount McKinley” soon after hearing that McKinley had clinched the Republican nomination.
“That fact was the first news we received on our way out of that wonderful wilderness,” Dickey wrote. (Some had previously known the mountain as Densmore’s Peak, named for prospector Frank Densmore in 1889.)
Dickey supported the presidential candidate’s commitment to the gold standard, which would keep the value of gold high, in contrast to Democratic candidate Williams Jennings Bryan, who advocated for a silver standard. McKinley defeated Bryan in the 1896 presidential election. And the name Mount McKinley stuck.
1917: Creation of Mount McKinley National Park
In the next two decades, many conservationists and explorers who ascended the mountain began calling for the formation of a national park there to preserve its beauty and wildlife and regulate hunting. Among the staunchest advocates were Belmore Browne, who had made three attempts to ascend Denali, and American conservationist and naturalist Charles Sheldon.
“Sheldon was the powerbroker; he really was a political powerhouse,” says Tracy Salcedo, author of Historic Denali National Park and Preserve: The Stories Behind One of America's Great Treasures. He had explored Denali for two years and went to Washington, D.C., to lobby for the name change.
The establishment of national parks across the United States began in the previous decade under Theodore Roosevelt, who became president after President McKinley was assassinated in 1901.
Many advocates for the national park at Mount McKinley wanted to name it “Denali National Park.” They were, in part, inspired by Alaskan missionary Hudson Stuck, who led the mountain’s first successful ascent and referred to the mountain as Denali.
“[Stuck] felt strongly that it should retain the Native name—that there’s no reason it should be named after a politician who had never been to Alaska,” says Brian Okonek, who organized and led expeditions at Denali from 1979 to 2000.
Historically, the tradition in U.S. geographic naming was to use the name of a well-known figure, rather than the Native name, Salcedo says. According to the National Park Service, Thomas Riggs of the Alaska Engineering Commission said, “I don’t like the name of Denali. It is not descriptive. Everybody in the United States knows of Mt. McKinley and the various efforts made to climb it.”
Sheldon and Browne wanted to ensure the bill’s quick passage and, though they disagreed with Riggs, left the final decision in his hands. In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson signed the creation of Mount McKinley National Park into law.
1970s: The Debate Resurfaces
Even into the early 1970s, “That effort to call it ‘Denali’ never died from the time of Hudson Stuck,” especially among those who attempted to climb the mountain over the years, says Tom Walker, author of Denali Journal and McKinley Station: The People of the Pioneer Park that Became Denali.
By the 1970s, Alaskans became inspired by the movement to pass the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. Alaska, which gained statehood in 1959, petitioned the U.S. Board on Geographic Names in 1975 to change the peak’s name to Denali. But Ohio representatives of Congress continuously blocked these efforts on a federal level.
Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska told the New York Times in 1977 that changing the peak’s name to Denali “will rectify a long-standing injustice.” Rep. Ralph S. Regula, who represented McKinley’s home district, told the Times in 1980 that the name Denali “has only limited and local recognition” while the peak is “public land that belongs to all Americans.” Some travel and business groups also argued that a name change would require updates to books, guides and maps.
President Jimmy Carter signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in 1980 to greatly expand land conservation efforts across Alaska. It tripled the size of the national park at Denali. As part of an intended compromise, the peak’s surrounding areas became Denali National Park and Preserve, while the name of the mountain itself remained Mount McKinley, according to the National Park Service.
2015: Name Change to Denali
In 2015, President Barack Obama officially renamed the mountain Denali, under a Secretarial Order signed by U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell. The Obama administration cited a 1947 law that allows the Interior Secretary to weigh in on geographic names.
“We are simply reflecting the desire of most Alaskans to have an authentically Alaskan name for this iconic Alaskan feature,” Interior Department officials said in prepared documents, per The Washington Post. They said they “intend no disrespect” toward President McKinley’s legacy.
