Ohio lawmakers slam Obama plans to rename Mt. McKinley 'Denali' during Alaska trip

http://www.livescience.com/40595-denali-mount-mckinley.html

The native Athabascan people call the mountain Denali, meaning “The Great One.” A gold prospector, William Dickey, named it Mount McKinley in 1896, after President William McKinley.

Dickey was among a large group of prospectors who were part of the Cook Inlet gold rush. When asked why he chose to name the mountain after then-presidential nominee McKinley, he cited McKinley’s support of the gold standard. McKinley, who was from Ohio, never visited his namesake mountain or any part of Alaska.

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https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/l/loewen-lies.html

William A. Dickey renamed the peak, the tallest point in North America, Mt. McKinley in 1896. Why he got to name it is hard to fathom. Dickey had come to Alaska spurred by discoveries of gold in Cook Inlet. With three companions he made it to Talkeetna and saw Denali, “the great one” in the language of the nearby Tanaina Indians. According to C. H. Merriam, testifying before the U.S. Geographical Board in 1917, “The right of the discoverer to name geographical features has never been questioned,” but Dickey was no discoverer. Native people had discovered the mountain thousands of years earlier. Even if only white people “discover,” Russians saw it in the 1770s or 1780s and named it Bulshaia Gora, “big mountain.” Even if only English-speaking white people “discover,” George Vancouver saw Denali in 1794. Dickey was not even the first white American to see it; other Americans had preceded him by a quarter century.

Dickey had no serious reason to name the mountain as he did. William McKinley had not yet been martyred when he received the honor; indeed he had not even been elected president. Nor had McKinley ever been to the mountain, or even to Alaska. William Dickey favored conservative fiscal policies, while most people in the West wanted to expand the amount of money in circulation by minting more silver coins and certificates. Dickey was irritated by arguments he had lost with “free silver” partisans on his trip and decided to retaliate by naming Denali after the gold standard champion.

“The original naming was little more than a joke,” according to George R. Stewart, author of American Place-Names. From the first, some people preferred the Native name, and Dickey’s frivolous reason for choosing McKinley gave them ammunition. Nevertheless, probably because he wrote about his trip in the New York Sun, Dickey’s choice began to catch on. McKinley defeated William Jennings Bryan in 1896, so at least the mountain turned out to be named after a president, and, when McKinley was shot in Buffalo in 1901, after a martyred president.

Today however, many Americans consider the Native name more melodious and object to “McKinley” on aesthetic grounds—as if the Mississippi River had been renamed for, say, Zachary Taylor. Others support Native efforts to gain more acceptance, including better recognition on the landscape. “It’s time we listened to the Native people of Alaska,” declared Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska in 1991. “This mountain is the largest in North America. It was named by the Natives long before we arrived.”

The standard account of its naming comes in a dispatch from William A. Dickey, published in the New York Sun in January, 1897. Dickey, a Princeton alumnus and Seattle merchant known for throwing a nasty curveball, had returned from an exploration of the interior of Alaska, with word of a mountain so towering it defied belief:

http://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2015/08/how-mount-mckinley-actually-got-its-name/402934/

The sun., January 24, 1897, 3, Page 6, Image 26
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030272/1897-01-24/ed-1/seq-26/

That basic tale, of a patriotic explorer naming a mountain in tribute to the Republican nominee, is the one repeated in most histories, and which has been widely cited by those opposed to the decision to restore its native name. But in 1913, the explorer Belmore Browne offered a subtly different account, based on his own conversations with Dickey:

In Browne’s account, Dickey was stuck listening to supporters of unlimited silver coinage, the great political issue of the election, drone on endlessly about its merits. So he decided to name North America’s highest peak after McKinley, but not as a patriotic tribute—instead, an epic act of trolling.

This second account has a certain ring of truth to it. Anyone who’s ever been trapped with a political enthusiast of one persuasion or another can certainly sympathize with Dickey’s suffering. But if this is how Mount McKinley actually got its name, it’s hard to oppose switching it back to Denali.

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