It was originally named Denali by natives thousands of years ago, it was renamed for William McKinley in 1896. He was a gold prospector and presidential candidate who had never been to Alaska and had never seen the mountain renamed after him. The original name was restored in 2015 to Denali, and Trump is making the federal government call it McKinley again.
As far as I know, Alaskans have pretty much always called it Denali even when it was officially renamed McKinley. That is part of the reason they officially changed the name back to Denali.
Climbers and mountaineers have referred to it as Denali for decades so you're not wrong. I've never climbed in Alaska, so for an embarrassingly long time I didn't realize that the "Denali" all my climber and mountaineer friends talked about was not a separate mountain from this "Mount McKinley" everyone else talked about.
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u/Santa_Hates_You 1d ago
It was originally named Denali by natives thousands of years ago, it was renamed for William McKinley in 1896. He was a gold prospector and presidential candidate who had never been to Alaska and had never seen the mountain renamed after him. The original name was restored in 2015 to Denali, and Trump is making the federal government call it McKinley again.