ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — North America’s tallest peak is a focal point of Jeff King’s life.
The four-time winner of the 1,000-mile (1,609-kilometer) Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race operates his kennel and mushing tourism business just 8 miles (12.87 kilometers) from Denali National Park and Preserve’s entrance, and the 20,310-foot (6,190-meter) mountain looms large as he trains his dogs on nearby trails.
King and many others who live in the mountain’s shadow say most Alaskans will never stop calling the peak Denali, its Alaska Native name, despite President Donald Trump’s executive order that the name revert to Mount McKinley — an identifier inspired by President William McKinley, who was from Ohio and never set foot in Alaska.
For many who live near Denali, Trump’s suggestion was peculiar.
“I don’t know a single person that likes the idea, and we’re pretty vocal about it,” King said. “Denali respects the Indigenous people that have been here and around Denali for tens of thousands of years.”
The mountain was named after McKinley when a prospector walked out of the Alaska wilderness in 1896, and the first news he heard was that the Republican had been nominated for president.
The name was quickly challenged, but maps had already been circulated with the mountain’s name in place.
At the time, there was no recognition of the name Denali, or “the high one,” bestowed on the mountain in interior Alaska by Athabascan tribal members, who have lived in the region for centuries.
The McKinley name stuck until 2015, when President Barack Obama’s administration changed it to Denali as a symbolic gesture to Alaska Natives on the eve of his Alaska visit to highlight climate change.
Trump said he issued the order to “restore the name of a great president, William McKinley, to Mount McKinley, where it should be and where it belongs. President McKinley made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent.”
The area lies solely in the United States, and Trump, as president, has the authority to change federal geographical names within the country.
In Ohio, Trump’s move drew praise.
“I was really excited to see President Trump do that executive order,” former U.S. Rep. Bob Gibbs, R-Ohio, told The Associated Press by telephone Thursday. McKinley “was a great president,” Gibbs said. “It was the appropriate thing to do.”
That’s not how Alaskans see it.
Trump injected “a jarring note” into Alaska affairs, Steve Haycox, professor emeritus of history at the University of Alaska Anchorage, wrote in the Anchorage Daily News.
“Historical analysis confirms that William McKinley is the wrong public figure for Alaskans to commemorate,” he said.
McKinley served as president from 1897 until he was assassinated in 1901. He was an imperial colonialist who oversaw the expansion of the American empire with the occupation of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines and Hawaii, pushed by business interests and Christian missionaries wanting to convert Indigenous peoples, Haycox said.
“Trump’s push to rescind the name Denali for the colonialist and white elitist McKinley is insulting to all Alaskans, especially to Alaska’s Native people, and should be soundly rejected,” Haycox said.
John Wayne Howe, who unsuccessfully ran for U.S. House last year representing the Alaskan Independence Party, which holds that Alaskans should be allowed to vote on becoming an independent nation, said he is tired of “people changing the names of stuff, period.”
He also is not in favor of naming anything after people because “the persons that we consider absolutely perfect change over time, and it just leads to confusion.”
Howe said he prefers Denali because he knows McKinley’s history and it’s the name most preferred by Alaskans.
This past week, two resolutions were introduced in the Alaska Legislature to keep the name Denali.
Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a Trump ally who praised another order by the president aimed at spurring resource development in the state, said he had not had a chance to speak with Trump about the issue but hoped to have a conversation next month in Washington about what Denali means to Alaskans, Americans and “our Native folks.”
But Sarah Palin, a former Republican governor who is also a Trump supporter, said the McKinley name should never have been removed.
Palin’s Secret Service code name was Denali in 2008 when she was GOP presidential nominee John McCain’s running mate the year they lost to Obama and Joe Biden.
But in an interview with Al Arabiya News this past week, Palin said she didn’t see why the mountain’s name needed to be changed to begin with.
“It’s always been Mount McKinley,” said Palin, who didn’t respond to a message from The Associated Press. “Nobody was begging for a change in name in that peak. Just put it back the way it was, more common sense.”
Alaska’s U.S. senators, Republicans Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, have supported the name Denali. U.S. Rep. Nick Begich, a first-term Republican, sidestepped the debate.
“I’m focused on job creation, opportunities in Alaska,” Begich told Politico. “And what we call a mountain in Alaska is of little concern to me.”
The Alaska Native Heritage Center, the statewide Indigenous cultural center in Anchorage, supports preserving Indigenous place names.
“Restoring and honoring them acknowledges the deep, millennia-old connection Indigenous peoples maintain with these lands and is a step toward respect and reconciliation,” the center’s president, Emily Edenshaw, said in a statement.
The quirky Alaska community of Talkeetna, about 140 miles (225.3 kilometers) south of the park and where a cat was once mayor, is the jumping off point for climbers before making the ascent of the peak. The historic community long rumored to be the inspiration for the 1990s television series “Northern Exposure” is also a popular tourist stop.
Joe McAneney of Talkeetna worked as a summer raft-guide for two years before moving to Alaska full time in 2012. He’s now a pilot for an air taxi company, ferrying climbers and tourists to the mountain in a small airplane outfitted with skis to land at base camp, located on Kahiltna Glacier at 7,200 feet (2,194.6 meters) above sea level.
He knows once tourist season comes around, he will have to answer their questions of what he thinks about Trump changing the name. He knows what his answer will be.
“It’s always been Denali, and it always will be,” he said.
The executive order can instigate the name change, but compliance is another issue.
“The only people that are going to adhere to that are probably the people that would have been still calling it McKinley anyway,” McAneney said
There is a long-standing Alaska trait of ignoring what the rest of the world thinks, and it’s usually expressed like this: “We don’t care how they do it Outside.” Outside, which is always capitalized, refers to every place that is not Alaska.
“I think unofficially and officially in Alaska, it’ll always be Denali,” McAneney said. “I don’t think the president can change that.”
For King, the decorated Iditarod musher and fan favorite, Trump’s decision had a whiff of arrogance.
“I’m surprised he doesn’t want to name it Trump Mountain,” he said.
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Associated Press writer Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska, contributed to this report.
However, old habits die hard, and for many Alaskans who grew up knowing the mountain as Mount McKinley, the transition to using Denali has been slow. Some argue that the name change is a political statement rather than a reflection of the true cultural significance of the mountain, while others simply find it difficult to break decades of ingrained usage.
Regardless of personal preferences, it is important to respect the heritage and traditions of the indigenous peoples of Alaska by acknowledging and using the name Denali. As the debate continues, it is clear that the mountain will always hold a special place in the hearts of Alaskans, no matter what name they choose to call it.
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