The mountain had been unofficially named Mount McKinley in 1896 by a gold prospector and officially by the federal government in 1917 to commemorate William McKinley, who was President of the United States from 1897 until his assassination in 1901. The name Denali is based on the Koyukon name of the mountain, Deenaalee ('the high one').

Jan 17, 2025 · 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 ...

Jan 26, 2025 · King and many others who live in the mountain’s shadow say most Alaskans will never stop calling the peak Denali, its Alaska Native name, despite President Donald Trump’s executive order that the name revert to Mount McKinley-- an identifier inspired by President William McKinley, who was from Ohio and never set foot in Alaska.

Denali tinged pink by alpenglow On the eve of the National Park Service’s 100th anniversary in 2016, the name of the highest peak in North America changed from “Mount McKinley” to “Denali.” The timing of the change not only helped mark the agency’s centennial, it shines a light on the long human history of the park, and illuminates ...

Jan 20, 2025 · Topline. President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday renaming Denali—the highest peak in North America—to Mount McKinley, the Alaska mountain’s name prior to 2015, a move he has ...

Jan 23, 2025 · In 1980, the park’s name was changed to Denali National Park and Preserve, but the mountain remained McKinley. Over a span of decades, Alaska’s congressional delegation repeatedly introduced ...

Jan 20, 2025 · Ahead of his inauguration on Monday, it was revealed that Trump would sign an order to rename Denali as Mount McKinley (and rename the Gulf of Mexico).

Jan 20, 2025 · According to the National Park Service, a prospector in 1896 dubbed the peak “Mount McKinley” for William McKinley, who was elected president that year. McKinley had never been to Alaska . The name was formally recognized by the U.S. government until it was changed in 2015 by the Obama administration to Denali, to reflect the traditions of ...

Jan 20, 2025 · During his inaugural address, President Donald Trump suggested he wants to revert the name of North America’s tallest mountain — Alaska’s Denali — to Mount McKinley, originally named after the...

Prospectors all along the Yukon River started calling the mountain “Densmore Mountain” or “Densmore Peak.” “Mount McKinley” emerged after a gold prospector named William Dickey (who was an admirer of President-elect McKinley) used the name in an 1897 New York Sun article.