Trump Vows to Reverse Name Change of Tallest Mountain in North America

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

President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday said he would revert the name of Denali, the tallest mountain in the United States, back to Mount McKinley after he takes office.

President Barack Obama in 2015 officially renamed the Alaska mountain as Denali, ending a decades-long battle over its name. The peak was officially named Mount McKinley in 1917, after the 25th president, William McKinley.

“They took his name off Mount McKinley,” Trump said in a speech that concludes the Turning Point’s annual AmericaFest event in Arizona on Sunday.

“He was a great president,” Trump said, referring to McKinley.

Trump’s administration will “bring back the name of Mount McKinley because I think he deserves it,” Trump added.

The mountain, which has an elevation of 20,310 feet, was named Mount McKinley in 1896 after a gold prospector exploring the region heard that McKinley, a champion of the gold standard, had won the Republican nomination for president. McKinley was president from 1897 until 1901 when he was assassinated by anarchist and socialist Leon Czolgosz.

The U.S. Department of the Interior in 2015 issued an order, signed by Obama, that changed the mountain’s name to Denali. The order said that McKinley never visited the mountain and had no “significant historical connection to the mountain or to Alaska” other than the name.

Denali is a local Athabascan native language name for “the tall one” or “high mountain.”

Located in the Alaska Range, Denali is the tallest mountain in the United States and North America, although the tallest mountain in the contiguous 48 states is Mt. Whitney, located in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains. For climbers, Denali is considered among the most dangerous mountains in the world to summit due to unpredictable weather conditions, its altitude, cold temperatures, and technical difficulty.

McKinley had served two terms as governor of Ohio before becoming president in 1897, led the country to victory in the Spanish-American War, and raised protective tariffs to promote U.S. industry, according to the White House website on presidents.

Trump made reference to McKinley’s tariff activity on Sunday, saying he was a “strong believer in tariffs” and a “very successful businessman.”

In the midst of the 2016 election, Trump also suggested on social media that he would change the name back. “President Obama wants to change the name of Mt. McKinley to Denali after more than 100 years. Great insult to Ohio. I will change back!” Trump wrote in mid-2015.

However, when Trump took office in his first term, his attempts to rename the mountain fizzled after Alaska’s two senators pushed back.

“He looked at me and said, ‘I heard that the big mountain in Alaska also had—also its name was changed by executive action,’” Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) told a local media outlet in 2017, referring to Trump. “‘Do you want us to reverse that?’” he recalled him asking.

Sullivan said that he and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) both “jumped over the desk, we said, ‘No! No. Don’t want to reverse that.'”

On Sunday, Trump also signaled at the Arizona event that he will rename several military bases, including renaming Fort Liberty back to Fort Bragg.

“And as commander in chief, I will restore the proud and historic names of our great military bases like Fort Bragg,” Trump said. “We’re going to get them back. And woke has to stop because along with everything else, it’s destroying our country.”

Reuters contributed to this report.