32 However, there were many instances of changing the name of this mountain. The main name that people of the United States wanted to change the mountain name to was Mount McKinley. The effort to change it to this name started in 1897 by William Dickey, a gold prospector.13 Dickey was a McKinley admirer and he started using the name in a New York Sun article after the president was elected. This name started sticking to the mountain after the assassination of President McKinley. The funny thing about this is that there was no correlation between this and the mountain. In 1916, Thomas Riggs believed that “It is not descriptive. Everybody in the United States knows of Mt. McKinley and the various efforts made to climb it. In consequence, both Mr. Yard and I think that the name McKinley should stick.”14 The name of this mountain did end up changing in 1917. However, this did not last forever. In 2015, Obama decided that the name of the mountain had to change back to its original name. This was impacted by the politicians in Alaska and Congress continued these efforts. According to the 1947 law that Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell cited, they are able to use authority when the USBGN “does not act within a reasonable time” as a justification to make the change.15 With Obama changing the name back to its original, people were able to continue to remember the tribe that was surrounding that area. If it was not for Obama’s efforts, the tribes surrounding the mountain would not have been preserved. Another example of a name change is Mount Rainier. This is a stratovolcano located in Washington State.16 Many do not know that this was once known as Mount Tacoma. This was home 13 “Denali or Mount McKinley?,” National Parks Service (U.S. Department of the Interior), https://www.nps.gov/dena/learn/historyculture/denali-origins.htm. 14 “Denali or Mount McKinley?,” National Parks Service (U.S. Department of the Interior), https://www.nps.gov/dena/learn/historyculture/denali-origins.htm. 15 Mufson, Steven. Obama will rename the highest U.S. peak, dropping McKinley for Denali (posted 2015-08-30 20:58:43): Mount Denali is the name used by generations of Alaska natives that means "the great one.” In WP Company LLC d/b/a The Washington Post [database online]. Washington, D.C., United States Washington, D.C., 2015. 16 “11 Fun Facts about Mount Rainier National Park,” U.S. Department of the Interior, February 28, 2020, https://www.doi.gov/blog/11-fun-facts-about-mount-rainier-national-park.
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