Interior Department Formally Implements ‘Gulf of America,’ ‘Mount McKinley’ Name Changes

Visitors take in the view of Denali, formerly known as Mt. McKinley, in Denali National Park, Alaska, on Sept. 1, 2015. Lance King/Getty Images

The U.S. Department of the Interior announced on Jan. 24 that it is formally implementing President Donald Trump’s efforts to rename the Gulf of Mexico and Denali, the tallest mountain in North America.

In a Friday statement, the Interior Department said, “The Gulf of Mexico will now officially be known as the Gulf of America” and that it would revert to Denali’s former official name, Mount McKinley.

The agency is directing the U.S. Board on Geographic Names to “expeditiously” update official federal classifications in the Geographic Names Information System to reflect these changes, “effective immediately for federal use.”

The president first floated these renaming suggestions after winning the 2024 election. Hours after his inauguration, Trump signed an executive order, “Restoring Names that Honor American Greatness,” which called for referring to the large southeast Atlantic Ocean basin as the “Gulf of America” and renaming Denali as Mount McKinley.

Trump’s move to rename the Gulf of Mexico is unprecedented, particularly since multiple nations share the body of water. However, the name of the nation’s highest mountain has been in dispute for decades.

After the United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867, a gold prospector named William Dickey referred to its highest peak as “Mount McKinley” in an 1897 New York Sun article. Dickey named the mountain after President William McKinley, who had just been inaugurated as the 25th president.

However, Native Alaskan groups inhabiting the area have used their own names for the mountain for centuries. The name “Denali” is an Athabascan word that translates to “the great one” or “the high one.” A consortium of Athabascan tribes in Alaska called the Tanana Chiefs Conference had advocated for years to use their name for North America’s tallest mountain.

In 1975, the State of Alaska moved to officially recognize the peak as Denali and requested the U.S. Board on Geographic Names to follow, but for decades, then-Rep. Ralph Regula (R-Ohio), who represented the district in which McKinley had lived, opposed those efforts.

President Barack Obama signed an executive order in 2015 renaming the 20,237-foot peak Denali in honor of Native Alaskans.

In the Interior Department’s Friday statement, the agency criticized Obama’s decision.

“Yet after nearly a century, President Obama’s administration, in 2015, stripped the McKinley name from federal nomenclature, an affront to President McKinley’s life, his achievements, and his sacrifice. The decision to return the peak to its historical name is a meaningful recognition of President McKinley’s enduring legacy,” the statement reads.

After Trump directed the government to revert to using the Mount McKinley name, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who has long supported using the name Denali, said she strongly disagrees with the president’s efforts.

“Our nation’s tallest mountain, which has been called Denali for thousands of years, must continue to be known by the rightful name bestowed by Alaska’s Koyukon Athabascans, who have stewarded the land since time immemorial,” she said in a statement.

Murkowski led an effort to use the Denali name in 2013, two years before Obama’s order.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.