“By the authority vested in me as President,” Donald Trump officially declared the nation’s tallest mountain is now to be called Mount McKinley and the former Gulf of Mexico the new Gulf of America, according to his Jan. 20 executive order “Restoring Names that Honor American Greatness.”
As for Alaska’s peak, the name change is a reversal of President Barack Obama’s 2015 decision to honor the mountain’s original name, Denali, in recognition of Alaska’s indigenous roots, which is translated to mean “the great one.” The mountain tops 20,000 feet and is the highest in all of North America.
The United States took possession of Alaska in 1867. Legend has it that a gold prospector, perhaps unaware of the significance of the mountain’s name, began referring to it as Mount McKinley in honor of William McKinley, a presidential candidate in the late 1890s. It officially was named Mount McKinley in 1917.
The impetus for Trump to revert back to McKinley, whom historians refer to as a mediocre president lucky to serve at a propitious time, 1897-1901, probably has more to do with taking a dig at Obama than resuscitating McKinley’s memory.
But that’s true to form of Trump’s transactional nature.
The Gulf of America is harder to swallow in that it overturns a 400-year tradition.
Only U.S. agencies will be required to recognize the new name. Cuba and Mexico, which also border the Gulf, are letting the slight pass. They’ve got bigger fish to fry.
Nor will we quibble with the president’s decisions, only because they are so characteristically him, and love him or hate him, he’s ours.
— Susan Lynn
