Denali–Mount McKinley naming dispute
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The name of the highest mountain in North America became a subject of dispute in 1975, when the Alaska Legislature asked the U.S. federal government to officially change its name from Mount McKinley to Denali. The mountain had been unofficially named Mount McKinley in 1896 by a gold prospector, and officially by the United States government in 1917 to commemorate William McKinley, who was president of the United States from 1897 until his assassination in 1901.
The name Denali is based on the Koyukon name of the mountain, Deenaalee ("the high one"). The Koyukon are a people of Alaskan Athabaskans settling in the area north of the mountain.
Alaska in 1975 requested that the mountain be officially recognized as Denali, as it was still the common name used in the state. Attempts by the Alaskan state government to have Mount McKinley's name changed by the federal government were blocked by members of the congressional delegation from Ohio, the home state of the mountain's presidential namesake. In August 2015, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell announced the name would officially be changed in all federal documents. While on an Alaskan visit in the first week of September 2015, President Barack Obama announced the renaming of the mountain.
Numerous indigenous peoples of the area had their own names for this prominent peak. The local Koyukon Athabaskan name for the mountain, the name used by the indigenous Americans with access to the flanks of the mountain (living in the Yukon, Tanana and Kuskokwim basins), is Dinale or Denali /dᵻˈnæli/ or /dᵻˈnɑːli/). To the South the Dena'ina people in the Susitna River valley used the name Dghelay Ka'a ("the big mountain"), anglicized as Doleika or Traleika in Traleika Glacier).
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