Written by Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said on Sunday he would rename Denali, the name given by Alaska Natives to the tallest mountain in North America, after William McKinley, the 25th U.S. president who was assassinated in 1901.
Former Democratic President Barack Obama in 2015 officially renamed the mountain Denali, siding with Alaska and ending a decades-long naming battle. The peak has been officially named Mount McKinley since 1917.
“They removed his name from Mount McKinley,” Trump said in a speech to his supporters in Phoenix. “He was a great president,” said Trump, a Republican, adding that his administration would “bring back the name Mount McKinley because I think it deserves it.”
The mountain, more than 20,000 feet (6,100 m) high, was named Mount McKinley in 1896 after a gold prospector exploring the area heard that McKinley, a champion of the gold standard, had won the Republican nomination for president.
The U.S. Interior Department, in a 2015 order signed by Obama changing the name to Denali, noted that McKinley had never visited the mountain and had “no significant historical connection to the mountain or to Alaska.”
Denali, a local Athabascan name meaning “highest,” was officially designated as the name of the peak in 1975 by the state of Alaska, which then lobbied the federal government to adopt the name as well.
McKinley, who served two terms as Ohio's governor before becoming president in 1897, led the country to victory in the Spanish-American War and raised protective tariffs to boost American industry, according to the White House website for presidents.
