Denali or Mount McKinley?

The tall one

At least nine Alaska Native groups have their own names for the mountain. The Athabascan peoples to its north and west use words that translate as “the tall one”, and those to the south use words meaning “mountain-big”. Denali comes from “deenaalee”, in the Koyukon language spoken on the north side.^[2]

Outsiders added names of their own. In 1834 the Russian explorer Andrei Glazunov called the peak Tenada, a Deg Hit’an name meaning “the great mountain”, and another Russian name was Bulshaia Gora, “Big One”. After the United States bought Alaska in 1867, prospectors along the Yukon called it Densmore Mountain, after the gold prospector Frank Densmore.^[2]

A prospector’s tribute

In 1896 a prospector came out of the mountains of central Alaska to the news that William McKinley had been nominated for president, and named the tallest peak of the Alaska Range after him.^[1] The prospector, William Dickey, used the name in an article in the New York Sun in 1897.^[2] McKinley never set foot in Alaska.^[1]

The name spread after McKinley was assassinated in 1901.^[2] When Congress created a national park around the mountain in 1917, it was called Mount McKinley National Park.^[2]

Forty years of asking

On 11 March 1975 Alaska’s governor, Jay Hammond, asked the Interior Department to have the US Board on Geographic Names change the name to Denali, following a resolution of the state legislature. Alaska has used Denali as its official name since then.^[1] Ohio’s members of Congress, from McKinley’s home state, blocked the change for four decades.^[2]

In 1980 the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act enlarged the park and renamed it Denali National Park and Preserve, but the mountain kept its federal name.^[1] On 30 August 2015 Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced a secretarial order, endorsed by President Obama, making Denali the official name for all federal use.^[1]

“This name change recognizes the sacred status of Denali to many Alaska Natives.”^[1]

Back to McKinley

On 20 January 2025 President Trump signed Executive Order 14172, Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness. It told the Interior Secretary to bring back the name Mount McKinley within 30 days, and said the national park around it would keep the name Denali National Park and Preserve.^[4] The same order renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America for federal use.^[4]

The Interior Department announced on 24 January 2025 that the mountain would again be called Mount McKinley, effective immediately for federal use.^[3] So today the federal government calls the mountain Mount McKinley, and the park around it is Denali.^[2]