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"McKinley" Since 1917, Alaska's Highest Peak Is Redesignated "Denali"
NPR reports that the Alaskan mountain which has for nearly a century been known officially as Mt. McKinley will revert to the name under which it's been known for a much longer time: Denali. President Obama is to "make a public announcement of the name change in Anchorage Monday, during a three-day visit to Alaska." Interior Secretary Sally Jewell's secretarial order of August 28th declares the name change to be immediately effective, and directs the United States Board on Geographic Names "to immediately
implement this name change, including changing the mountain's name in the Board's Geographic
Names Information System and notifying all interested parties of the name change."
How is it that the Interior Secretary can unilaterally declare a name change? There has been a long congressional issue over this. It was a congressional act that named it in 1917. Note that it's mostly an Ohio (President McKinley was from Niles, Ohio) delegation that's previously resisted the name change.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Just another day in Paradise
Actually, there's a better place for this. New Hampshire has a range of mountains known as the Presidential Range. Mount Washington is probably the best known of these. There are several peaks in this range that don't have names associated with Presidents (or patriots like Samuel Adams and Benjamin Franklin). I'd propose renaming one of those mountains after McKinley. New Hampshire actually renamed Mt. Clay (named for Henry Clay) to Mt. Reagan, though the US government still considers the peak to be Mt. Clay.
I can't remember who it was... it might have been Halldór Laxnes... who said that a piece of nature isn't really a piece of nature unless it doesn't have a name. That is, the first thing people do once they start interacting with an object or place is to give it a name, and so once something is named it starts to become about the history of people rather than the history of the land itself. And that if you want to establish a real connection with nature, you don't go sit on top of that well-known named peak that people climb... you go to that little nameless stream or that remote nameless cliff or whatnot - places which tell only their own story.
Stale pastry is hollow succor to one who is bereft of ostrich.
As long as President Obama is will to pay the 300 million dollars or so to replace every textbook and reference book that says the highest mountain in the US is Mount McKiney out of his own pocket I am fine with it.
I wonder who paid the money out of their own pockets to change all the textbooks when the changed the name of Cape Canaveral to Cape Kennedy, then back to Cape Canaveral.
Perhaps that is not as important, depending on one's political stripe?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
When I lived in Alaska, I never heard anyone call it anything else. Denali is its name (no Mt. in front of it). Only imbeciles from the Lower 48 think it should be referred to any other way. Living up there gives you a different view of the country, that's for sure. Seattle is the capitol of the world, Texas exists to be used as the butt of size jokes, and inhabitants of the Lower 48 are wimpy and clueless.
Well, for one thing, Mount McKinley was just named that by some asshole during William McKinley's Presidential campaign, and somehow it took. It was still 'Denali' right up until Woodrow Wilson established McKinley National Park when the name was made official. There's no historical reason for naming that particular mountain after William McKinley, who's sole contribution to Alaskan history basically involves not offering to sell it back to Russia (who, while owning Alaska, named the mountain "Bolshaya Gora" which means "Big Mountain").
Of all the things to get upset about, this just isn't one of them.
Signed,
Someone sitting in Ohio right now, where we're supposed to be all fired up and angry about a mountain that bore the name of an Ohioan President being renamed by Presidential fiat.
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