According to Reuters, on December 22, US President-elect Donald Trump announced that he would rename Denali Mountain to McKinley, based on the name of the 25th US President, William McKinley.
In 1917, the US government recognized McKinley as the official name of the mountain, but the name had been used long before.
The name McKinley began to be used and became popular in 1897, when a miner in the area learned that William McKinley was a gold standard supporter and won the Republican nomination for president.
However, former President Barack Obama renamed the mountain Denali in 2015, ending the debate over the name of the North American roof when he sided with the people of Alaska.
Trump said that late President William McKinley had never visited the mountain and that there was no significant historical connection to the mountain or the people of Alaska.
Denali, in the local Athabascan language, means The Great and was officially recognized by the state of Alaska as the mountains name in 1975. After that, people and authorities in Alaska fought for decades to call for the federal government to accept the name.
Denali Mountain (formerly McKinley) is about 6,000m high, located in the Denali National Park and Reserve in the state of Alaska.
Speaking to voters in Phoenix, Arizona (USA) on December 22, President-elect Donald Trump pledged to name the mountain McKinley when he took charge of the White House, because he thought the late President William McKinley was a great leader and completely deserving of it.
Before becoming President in 1897, William McKinley served two terms as Governor of Ohio. According to the White House, McKinley was the one who resolved the Spanish-US conflict in 1898 and contributed to the tax increase to protect US industry.
Despite being a Republican, Alaska lawmaker Lisa Murkowski opposed his opinion. There is only one name worthy of the highest mountain in North America: Denali - The Great, Murkowski wrote on social network X.
