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Among the slew of executive orders signed by President Donald Trump on his first day in office was one titled “Restoring Names that Honor American Greatness”.
It said that the highest peak in North America would be again called Mount McKinley, the name that was in use before the administration of President Barack Obama renamed it Denali in 2015; and that the Gulf of Mexico would be renamed as the “Gulf of America”.
Earlier in the day, in his inaugural speech delivered in the Capitol Rotunda, the President had announced the changes in both these names.
He also mentioned that “President [William] McKinley (1897-1901) made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent”, two of the issues that Trump himself has repeatedly harped on.
According to the “Purpose and Policy” of the executive order, “It is in the national interest to promote the extraordinary heritage of our Nation and ensure future generations of American citizens celebrate the legacy of our American heroes. The naming of our national treasures, including breathtaking natural wonders and historic works of art, should honor the contributions of visionary and patriotic Americans in our Nation’s rich past.”
Make America Great Again has been the heart of Trump’s politics since the time of his first presidential campaign in 2016. He has described his return to the White House as the beginning of “America’s golden age”.
The continent’s highest peak is in the Alaska Range, in the US state of Alaska, and stands 20,310 feet (6,190 m) above sea level.
The indigenous Koyukon people, who lived in the valleys of the Koyukuk and Yukon rivers, called the peak Denali in their Athabascan language. Between the 1730s and 1890s, however, as colonial powers laid claim to Alaska, the mountain came to be known by various other names.
In 1897, a gold prospector in Alaska is said to have given the name McKinley to the peak in honour of the then newly-elected President.
Two decades later, in 1917, the federal government formally adopted the name and President Woodrow Wilson signed a bill to create Mount McKinley National Park, which had the mountain at its heart.
Then, in 1980, Mount McKinley National Park was combined with what was known as Denali National Monument to create the Denali National Park and Preserve.
At that time, the government of Alaska had changed the name of the mountain from Mount McKinley to Denali, but the US Board on Geographic Names, a federal body whose purpose is to establish and maintain uniform usage of geographic names in the country, did not recognise the change.
In August 2015, the Obama administration renamed the mountain Denali, the name given to it by the original people of the land.
The order recalls that President William McKinley “heroically led our Nation to victory in the Spanish-American War”, and that “under his leadership, the United States enjoyed rapid economic growth and prosperity, including an expansion of territorial gains for the Nation”. The Obama administration’s decision of 2015 was “an affront to President McKinley’s life, his achievements, and his sacrifice”, it says. (McKinley was assassinated six months into his second presidential term.)
The order says that “the Secretary of the Interior shall…reinstate the name Mount McKinley” within 30 days, and “shall subsequently update the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) to reflect the renaming and reinstatement of Mount McKinley”.
“The national park area surrounding Mount McKinley shall retain the name Denali National Park and Preserve,” the order says. Also, “the Secretary of the Interior shall work with Alaska Native entities and state and local organizations to adopt names for landmarks to honor the history and culture of the Alaskan people.”
There is a back story to Monday’s executive order.
The long debate about the name of the mountain gained fresh prominence during the first Trump presidency. According to a 2017 report by CNN, the President, during a meeting with the two Senators from Alaska at the time, Republicans Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski, asked them about reversing the decision made by the Obama administration.
The question was part of larger discussions between the President and the Senators over the Obama administration’s decisions that were seen as having limited development in Alaska. However, the discussions did not make much progress.
After winning the presidency for the second time, however, Trump reopened the subject. He said last year: “McKinley was a very good, maybe a great President. They took his name off Mount McKinley. That’s what they do to people. President McKinley was the President that was responsible for creating a vast sum of money. That’s one of the reasons that we’re going to bring back the name of Mount McKinley, because I think he deserves it.”
According to a December 2024 report by the Associated Press, US Senators from Alaska Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, both Republican, and the Alaska State Senator Scott Kawasaki (Democrat) opposed Trump’s decision.
Sen. Murkowski, who had for years pushed for legislation to change the name to Denali, wrote on X, “There is only one name worthy of North America’s tallest mountain: Denali — the Great One.”
