Lawmakers in Ohio are protesting Obama’s decision to rename Mount McKinley to its original native name, Denali.
The mountain, which is the tallest peak in North America, was originally named after President William McKinley, who was an Ohio Republican.
Senator Rob Portman of Ohio stated that the decision was another example of Obama “going around Congress.” John Kasich, Ohio’s Governor, stated that the President “overstepped his bounds”. Another state representative, Bob Gibbs, took the statement further, citing that it was a “constitutional overreach.”
Gibbs elaborated on his comment, stating that in renaming Mount McKinley, Obama was “ignoring an act of Congress,” and that the move was merely a way to promote the President’s “job-killing war on energy.”
The renaming of the mountain came after Obama’s three-day trip to Alaska to address climate change issues in the Arctic. However, disputes over the mountain’s name have been going on for decades.
Standing at 20,237-feet, the mountain’s original name was Denali, which translates to “the great one” in the aboriginal Alaskan language of Athabascan. Denali’s name would change after William Dickey, a Seattle man, rediscovered the mountain while prospecting for gold in 1896.
Dickey wrote in a dispatch to the New York Sun that they had named the peak Mount McKinley after William McKinley, the presidential nominee at the time. President Woodrow Wilson formalized the name in 1917 when signing the Mount McKinley National Park act.
The Alaska government petitioned the Interior Department to change the name back to Denali in 1975, but Ohio delegation was able to prevent a name change for decades by introducing new bills to preserve the McKinley name, even if those bills were never passed.
Obama’s decision to restore the mountain’s original name upset many Ohio lawmakers.
Gibbs has stated that he will work to overturn the name change legislatively. Portman stated he will ask the National Park Service if there is any way to preserve the McKinley name somewhere else in the national park.