Rep. Maxine Dibert of Fairbanks got the first piece of legislation out of the House. On a vote of 28-10, the lawmakers agreed to ask, or rather to beg, President Donald Trump to change the name of Mount McKinley back to Denali.
One of Trump’s first acts last week after being sworn in was to reverse an executive order made by President Barack Obama in 2015 that renamed the mountain “Denali,” which is a native-derived word to describe a big mountain.
The vote came after Republicans tried but failed to amend House Joint Resolution 4. The resolution states that it should be up to the people of Alaska what the name of the mountain — and apparently all geographic places in the state — should be.
But while the bill moves to the Alaska Senate, even Google Maps said it will change the name of the peak back to Mount McKinley, and the Associated Press has adopted the former name. The U.S. Board on Geographic Names is already in the process of handling the mechanics on federal maps and documents.
The mountain has been called by other names besides Denali and Mount McKinley. Even the name “Denali” is bastardized from the Koyukon word “deenaalee,” in the language that was spoken by people on the north side of the mountain.
Athabaskans called it some version of “Tenada,” which also means “great mountain.” Russian explorers called the mountain Bulshaia Gora, which means “big one.” It was named McKinley by American prospectors, particularly William Dickey, who wrote about it in an 1897 article in the New York Sun. The name stuck after President McKinley was assassinated in 1901.
