Denali: North America’s highest peak
September 4, 2015
Last week, U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell made it official: Mount McKinley, the highest mountain in North America, the top of the continent, and the pride of central Alaska, had been officially renamed Denali—the name native Alaskans have called the peak for centuries. Denali means The Great One or The High One in the language of Alaska’s Athabaskan Indians. President Barack Obama trumpeted the long-awaited decision during this week’s visit to Alaska to raise alarms about the effects of climate change.
Mt Denali (formerly McKinley), Denali National Park, Alaska Credit: © wynnter/iStockphoto
Dissenters—generally descendants and fans of the 25th president, Ohioan William McKinley, and supporters of the long-unfashionable gold standard—bayed a chorus of “say it ain’t so’s.” All in all, however, the move was relatively noncontroversial. Republicans and Democrats in Alaska, heeding the wishes of the state’s American Indian population, had long pressed for the name change. The peak stands within Denali National Park, which was named Mount McKinley National Park from 1917 until 1980.
The peak was first dubbed McKinley in 1896 after a gold prospector stumbled out of the central Alaskan wilderness and heard that the Ohioan had won the Republican presidential nomination. McKinley had never been to Alaska and wasn’t much of a traveler—Alaskans noted that he remained in Canton, Ohio, during the presidential campaign and addressed visiting delegations from his front porch. But he was a supporter of the gold standard, a system in which the dollar was defined as worth a certain quantity of gold. His opponent, the windy Nebraskan free-silver champion William Jennings Bryan, famously told his yellow-metaled foes that they “shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” Promising not to crucify anyone, McKinley won the election, kept his gold standard, and got a very large and remote mountain named for him.
Days after Denali’s name was restored, it got smaller. Scientists used Global Positioning System (GPS) data to establish its height as 20,310 feet (6,190 meters). In the 1950’s, measurements had placed the peak at 20,320 feet (6,194 meters). Canada’s Mount Logan, at 19,551 feet (5,959 meters), is the second highest peak in North America.
