By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Donald Trump mentioned on Sunday he’ll rename Denali, Alaska natives’ identify for North America’s tallest mountain, after William McKinley, the twenty fifth U.S. president who was assassinated in 1901.
Democratic former President Barack Obama in 2015 formally renamed the mountain as Denali, siding with the state of Alaska and ending a decades-long naming battle. The height had been formally referred to as Mount McKinley since 1917.
“They took his name off Mount McKinley,” Trump mentioned in a speech to supporters in Phoenix. “He was a great president,” Trump, a Republican, mentioned, including that his administration will “bring back the name of Mount McKinley because I think he deserves it.”
The mountain, which has an elevation of greater than 20,000 ft (6,100 meters), was named Mount McKinley in 1896 after a gold prospector exploring the area heard that McKinley, a champion of the gold normal, had gained the Republican nomination for president.
The U.S. Division of the Inside, within the 2015 order that was signed by Obama altering the identify to Denali, famous that McKinley had by no means visited the mountain and had no “significant historical connection to the mountain or to Alaska.”
Denali, the native Athabascan identify, that means “the High One,” was formally designated as the height’s identify in 1975 by the state of Alaska, which then pressed the federal authorities to additionally undertake the identify.
McKinley, who served two phrases as governor of Ohio earlier than turning into president in 1897, led the nation to victory within the Spanish-American Struggle and raised protecting tariffs to advertise U.S. trade, in keeping with the White Home web site on presidents.
