Donald Trump oddly mentioned Mount Denali in Alaska yesterday during his rambling speech after his inauguration. He said he wants to change the name of Mt. Denali back to Mt. McKinley, the name it had before President Obama gave it the name that native people have used for the mountain for centuries. Trump signed an executive order on January 20, renaming North America’s highest peak. Can Trump change the name with the stroke of a pen? What motivates this “order”? What will it cost and who will pay?
Mt. Denali, or “Denali” as it is referred to in Alaska and elsewhere, stands in a six-million-acre national park by the same name. The mountain is part of the Alaska Range, formed by collisions between tectonic plates. Denali National Park is famous for its wildlife, including wolves and grizzly bears, and for its fantastic climbing opportunities for those who do technical climbing. Tourists, many from cruise ships, take bus tours through the park by the tens of thousands.
People change the names of geographic features from time to time. For example, the US Geologic Survey (USGS) recently removed the word “squaw” from 660 geographic features after a board of federal officials appointed by then-Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland concluded this word had racist connotations. Her Secretarial Order made the name changes official.
Enter Trump to do the opposite on his first day in office. He decided to remove a native name, Mt. Denali, and replace it with the name of a dead white president, William McKinley, who was president from 1897 to 1901. McKinley was a big fan of tariffs and the gold standard and managed to expand US territorial holdings after our war with Spain. He oversaw a surge in the popularity of the Republican party. Trump probably learned about him from people discussing tariffs, a favorite economic tool in Trump’s mind.
Mt. Denali is a name given the mountain by the Koyukon people, to mean “high one.” The State of Alaska’s legislature asked the federal government to officially change the name to Denali in 1975. However, the congressional delegation from Ohio blocked the move in deference to President McKinley, who was from Ohio. (President McKinley never saw Denali, just as President Zachary Taylor never saw Mt. Taylor in New Mexico.)
Finally, in 2015, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced that Denali would be the mountain’s official name after further lobbying by Alaska politicians. President Obama made the name change official, honoring the Athabaskan people and the wishes of the Alaskan people.
It is hard to know what motivated Trump to change the name of a mountain on his first day in office. He has also said he wants to return the names of Confederate leaders from the Civil War to Army bases. President Biden removed those names since they are offensive to Black people (and others) who serve in the military in large numbers. Trump’s motivations on the army bases are obviously racist and it is difficult not to interpret his interest in Denali the same way. Having a major American feature bearing a Native American name seems to bother Trump and his top advisor, Steve Miller, who is Donald’s immigration policy person. Miller is famous for devising the Muslim travel ban and family separation policies of Trump’s first term where immigration police forcibly took children from their parents, including nursing infants, and put them in prisons. (Russia has done the same thing in Ukraine and these actions have been judged a war crime by the International Criminal Court.)
Trump made it clear that he is motivated by his obsession with “woke” politics, seeing the Denali name change as a partisan move by “them”. At a December rally he said, “McKinley was a very good, maybe a great president. They took his name off Mount McKinley, right? That’s what they do to people.” Who are “they”? They are people disloyal to Trump’s views. Apparently, this now includes the Republican congressional delegation from Alaska and members of the Alaska legislature and the Native people of Alaska, all of whom have strongly protested his renaming move.
Finally, this Trump order will cost millions of dollars for the National Park Service which manages Denali National Park for the American people. Park staff will have to change hundreds of signs, web pages, and printed materials to rename the mountain. The National Park Service is already suffering from serious underfunding at all its units. It has cut staff to the bone in recent years, compromising their ability to carry out their congressionally mandated mission. It is likely that Musk’s “government efficiency department” will target the National Park Service for further cuts when Musk gives his report to Trump’s staff later this year. The National Park Service budget is a fraction of a fraction of a percentage of the federal budget.
It is also possible the National Park Service could choose to maintain the Denali National Park name and just rename the mountain itself. This would avoid these costs and please Alaskans.
