How a 19th century political ‘joke’ turned into a 119-year-long debate
By Sarah Kaplan
August 31
... There was no reason, Stewart explained in his 1945 tome “Names on the Land,” why a New Hampshire gold prospector of little consequence should have been able to christen America’s tallest peak ...
Still, there was resistance to “Mount McKinley.” Missionary Hudson Stuck, a member of the first team to reach the mountain’s 20,237-foot summit in 1913, lobbied hard for the peak to be re-labeled Denali. According to a 1913 New York Times article, he appealed to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names and to his fellow Episcopal priests to support the name change. Stuck often spoke out against the mistreatment of Alaskan Natives and apparently believed that they were more in need of appreciation than McKinley (who was, after all, already on the $500 bill) ...
In 1975, the Alaskan legislature backed a proposal to switch the name back to Denali. But when the Board on Geographic Names requested public comment on the matter, Ohio Rep. Ralph Regula, who represents the district where McKinley grew up, swiftly came to Mount McKinley’s defense. He convinced the entire Ohio congressional delegation to oppose the recommendation, and the names committee put off the matter. He also added an amendment to the 1980 legislation expanding the national park around the mountain that would rename the park “Denali,” but keep “McKinley” for the peak, in hopes that a compromise would settle the debate ...
If Alaska’s congressional delegation thought that Regula’s retirement in 2009 might offer an opening for reviving the naming question, they were sorely disappointed. Other Ohio representatives soon took up his cause ...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/08/31/denali-or-mckinley-how-a-19th-century-political-joke-turned-into-a-119-year-long-debate/