Alaska Republicans have offered resistance to President-elect Donald Trump's proposal to change the name of the highest mountain in North America, Denali, back to Mount McKinley.
At Turning Point USA's AmericaFest on Sunday, Trump spoke highly of former President William McKinley of Ohio, suggesting that the name of the mountain be reverted to what it once was in order to honor him, reported Anchorage Daily News.
"William McKinley, the 25th president of the United States...the vast sums of money that he brought into our country," Trump told a crowd of his supporters. "The person really who got us the money that President Theodore Roosevelt used to build the Panama Canal and a lot of other things. McKinley was a very good, maybe a great president. They took his name off Mount McKinley, right? That's what they do to people....But President McKinley was the president that was responsible for creating a vast sum of money in the United States that Teddy Roosevelt then spent."
"So let's say that they were both excellent presidents, but McKinley did that, and that's one of the reasons that we're going to bring back the name of Mount McKinley because I think he deserves it," he continued. "I think he deserves it. There are lots of things we can name, but I think he deserves it. That was not very gracious to somebody that did a good job."
McKinley was an advocate of protective tariffs, a stance which Trump shares. Furthermore, McKinley never once visited the state of Alaska.
Both of the state's Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, voiced opposition to the name change and reiterated their support for the mountain's Koyukon Athabascan place name. The name Denali has been used by the state's indigenous population for centuries.
"There is only one name worthy of North America's tallest mountain: Denali - the Great One," Murkowski wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
There is only one name worthy of North America’s tallest mountain: Denali - the Great One.https://t.co/eT248xLxJC
— Sen. Lisa Murkowski (@lisamurkowski) December 23, 2024
Trump previously suggested restoring the mountain to its former moniker to the two Alaskan senators during a meeting in March of 2017, Sen. Sullivan told Anchorage Daily News.
"He looked at me and said, 'I heard that the big mountain in Alaska also had – also its name was changed by executive action. Do you want us to reverse that?'" Sullivan said.
Sullivan then recounted how he and Murkowski "jumped over the desk, we said, 'No! No. Don't want to reverse that.' "
Sullivan further revealed that his wife is Athabascan.
"If you change that name back now, she's going to be really, really mad," the Alaskan senator told Trump.
In 2015, President Barack Obama changed the mountain's name from Mount McKinley, which it had been named in 1896, to Denali to honor the state's native populations.
