President Obama Will Restore Mt. McKinley's Name to Its Original Name of Denali

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On his trip to Alaska, ending a 40 year battle. More here.


WASHINGTON, Aug 30 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Monday will officially restore Denali as the name of North America's tallest mountain, siding with the state of Alaska in ending a 40-year battle over what to call a peak that has been known as Mount McKinley.

The historic change, coming at the beginning of a three-day presidential trip to Alaska, is a sign of how hard the White House will push during Obama's remaining 16 months as president to ensure his fight to address climate change is part of his legacy.

Renaming the mountain, which has an elevation of more than 20,000 feet (6,100 meters), makes headlines for his climate quest while also creating goodwill in a state that has not been broadly supportive to the Democratic president.

Obama is slated to tour a receding glacier and meet people in remote Arctic communities whose way of life is affected by rising ocean levels, creating images designed to build support for regulations to curb carbon emissions.

The peak was named Mount McKinley in 1896 after a gold prospector exploring the region heard that Ohioan William McKinley, a champion of the gold standard, had won the Republican nomination for president.

But Alaska natives had long before called the mountain Denali, meaning "the High One." In 1975, the state of Alaska officially designated the mountain as Denali, and has since been pressing the federal government to do the same.

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Alaskans had been blocked in Congress by Ohio politicians, who wanted to stick with McKinley as a lasting tribute to the 25th U.S. president, who served from 1897 until his assassination in 1901.

Under Obama's action, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell will use her legal authority to end the long debate and rename the mountain.

The move elicited praise from Alaska Governor Bill Walker, a Republican turned independent, and Republican elected officials, who more typically are critical of an administration they see as hostile to the oil and gas interests of their state.

"I'd like to thank the president for working with us to achieve this significant change to show honor, respect, and gratitude to the Athabascan people of Alaska," said Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, who led the fight for the Denali name in Congress.
 

Mount Sarah Palin

This proves how childish people can be. Firstly, Obama didn't "rename" anything, he merely restored the original name of the mountain that the Alaskans had used for years and had been fighting to restore, Denali. Now they want to name a hill after Sarah Palin. Source.


The Ohio vs. Alaska mountain name change game continued Friday -- only this time Denali wasn’t actually involved, but instead Ohio’s tallest peak.

A White House petition was filed Thursday by a person from Texas only identified by the initials “M.R.” to change the name of Campbell Hill, the tallest peak in Ohio, to “Mount Sarah Palin” in honor of Alaska’s “most famous governor,” the petition states.

“Campbell Hill is a testament to the men and woman (sic) who strived to reach its well manicured, landscaped peak, some never to return,” the petition states. “If the people of Ohio feel it is their right to name Alaska's highest mountain, then it would only be fitting for Alaska to rename Ohio's highest peak.”

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Campbell Hill stands at a mere 1,550 feet, while Denali stands at 20,310 feet. The petition would need 100,000 signatures by Oct. 3 to prompt a response from the White House. At 3:25 p.m. Friday, it only had five.

Anyone age 13 or older can start a White House petition online -- the form can be completed in four steps. Around 11:30 a.m. Friday, there were only 85 open petitions, including ones to keep Britney Spears in Las Vegas, designate the Black Lives Matter movement as a terrorist organization and to apologize to Japan for the 1945 nuclear bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The “Mount Sarah Palin” petition follows the renaming of Mount McKinley to Denali, a decision announced Sunday by Interior Secretary Sally Jewell. Ohio is the home state of 25th President William McKinley, whom the mountain was previously named for.
 
chic said:
There are far more important tasks to accomplish as President of the US.
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Our President is accomplishing many other tasks, and I admire him for not pushing this one aside, as it is very important to the people of Alaska, and after all, Alaska is part of the United States of America.

Re-named by a gold prospector after McKinley, because he supported the "gold standard", and never even was in Alaska, all attempts over the years to restore its native name were blocked by Ohio lawmakers...more here.


The native Koyukon Athabascan people call the mountain Denali, which is usually translated as "The Great One." However, linguist James Kari of the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, wrote in the book “Shem Pete’s Alaska” that the name is based on a verb theme meaning “high” or “tall.”

A gold prospector, William Dickey, named it Mount McKinley in 1896, after President William McKinley. Dickey was among a large group of prospectors who were part of the Cook Inlet gold rush.

When asked why he chose to name the mountain after then-presidential nominee McKinley, he cited McKinley’s support of the gold standard. McKinley, who was from Ohio, never visited his namesake mountain or any part of Alaska.

A number of efforts had tried to switch the name to Denali. Hudson Stuck, who made the first ascent of the mountain in 1913, wrote a book titled "The Ascent of Denali." In the preface of the book, he called for "the restoration to the greatest mountain in North America of its immemorial native name." Past attempts were blocked by lawmakers from Ohio.
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Falcon said:
I say let the Alaskans decide what to call it. None of the president's business.
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'Scuse me.... but Alaskans have been TRYING to get the name changed back... BUT two GOP Ohio senators have voted against it... NOW it's changed... and that's that.. It's about time... What the heck did McKinley have to do with Alaska and the mountain anyway?
 
QuickSilver said:
'Scuse me.... but Alaskans have been TRYING to get the name changed back... BUT two GOP Ohio senators have voted against it... NOW it's changed... and that's that.. It's about time... What the heck did McKinley have to do with Alaska and the mountain anyway?
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Out of all the Senators, 2 from Ohio have been stopping it? Ridiculous! What were the rest of the Senators doing during those vote times. That uncounted total would be 98 Senators. And just what were they doing?
 
Seems like no contest to me. McKinley who? What does naming a mountain after him in Alaska do for Ohio?
Denali/High One certainly seems appropriate enough to me. I think we ought to be able to give the native Americans back something!!
 
Why oh why don't some people read the story before they post crap...and prove to all of us they don't understand what is going on?

It is the latest bid by the president to fulfill his 2008 campaign promise to improve relations between the federal government and the nation’s Native American tribes, an important political constituency that has a long history of grievances against the government.

Denali’s name has long been seen as one such slight, regarded as an example of cultural imperialism in which a Native American name with historical roots was replaced by an American one having little to do with the place.

The central Alaska mountain has officially been called Mount McKinley for almost a century. In announcing that Sally Jewell, the secretary of the interior, had used her power to rename it, Mr. Obama was paying tribute to the state’s Native population, which has referred to the site for generations as Denali, meaning “the high one” or “the great one.”
The peak, at more than 20,000 feet, plays a central role in the creation story of the Koyukon Athabascans, a group that has lived in Alaska for thousands of years.

Mr. Obama, freed from the political constraints of an impending election in the latter half of his second term, was also moving to put to rest a yearslong fight over the name of the mountain that has pit Alaska against electorally powerful Ohio, the birthplace of President William McKinley, for whom it was christened in 1896.

The government formally recognized the name in 1917, and efforts to reverse the move began in Alaska in 1975. In an awkward compromise struck in 1980, the national park surrounding it was named Denali National Park and Preserve, but the mountain continued to be called Mount McKinley.

Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, introduced legislation in January to rename the peak, but Ohio lawmakers sought to block the move. In June, an Interior Department official said in testimony before Congress that the administration had “no objection” to Ms. Murkowski’s proposed change.
In a video released on Sunday, Ms. Murkowski cheered Mr. Obama’s decision.



“For generations, Alaskans have known this majestic mountain as ‘the great one,’” she said in the video, appearing in front of the snow-topped mountain, its peak reaching above the clouds. “I’d like to thank the president for working with us to achieve this significant change to show honor, respect and gratitude to the Athabascan people of Alaska.”

The mountain came to be known as Mount McKinley after a gold prospector who had just emerged from exploring the Alaska Range heard that Mr. McKinley had won the Republican presidential nomination, and declared that the tallest peak should be named in his honor as a show of support.
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Mr. McKinley was assassinated in 1901, six months into his second term, and never visited Alaska. Mr. Obama’s trip there starting on Monday will be his first major visit to the state, and he will become the first sitting American president to visit the Alaskan Arctic.
The White House also announced on Sunday that Mr. Obama was expanding government support for programs to allow Alaska Natives to be more involved in developing their own natural resources, including an initiative to include them in the management of Chinook salmon fisheries, a youth exchange council focusing on promoting “an Arctic way of life,” and a program allowing them to serve as advisers to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.
Mr. Obama has stepped up his engagement with Native Americans since June last year, when he visited Cannon Ball, N.D., in the ancestral lands of Chief Sitting Bull and took part in a powwow to honor American Indians who have served in America’s foreign wars. That was the first visit by a sitting president in 15 years to land under tribal jurisdiction.

“There’s no denying that for some Americans, the deck’s been stacked against them, sometimes for generations, and that’s been true of many Native Americans,” Mr. Obama said at the time. “But if we’re working together, we can make things better.”
 
That's true QuickSilver, and seems like the Ohio congressmen did it in a very underhanded way...not surprised. The efforts of the Alaskans to restore the mountains original name of Denali would always be blocked by these politicians, thanks to the President now, this nonsense had been halted. http://www.adn.com/article/20150122/ohio-congressman-climbs-back-mckinley-name-change-battle


For many years, Ohio Rep. Ralph Regula blocked the Denali debate in Congress by including a rider on legislation.

Starting in 1991, he introduced a one-sentence bill every two years to accomplish the same end: "Notwithstanding any other authority of law, the mountain located 63 degrees 04 minutes 12 seconds north, by 151 degrees 00 minutes 18 seconds west shall continue to be named and referred to for all purposes as Mount McKinley."

After his retirement six years ago, other members of the Ohio delegation began to carry the McKinley banner.

As long as someone from McKinley country remembers to file a bill every two years and the U.S. Board on Geographic Names keeps its current policy, the official federal name will remain McKinley, unless the Denali forces can get a bill through Congress -- which may be as difficult as Lonnie Dupre's winter solo ascent of the mountain this month.
 


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