WASHINGTON, D. C. – When President Donald Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office changing the name of the highest peak in North America from Denali to Mount McKinley, he restored a name it was given more than a century ago to honor the nation’s 25th president, Canton’s William McKinley.
“We will restore the name of a great president, William McKinley, to Mount McKinley, where it should be and where it belongs,” Trump said in his inaugural address. “President McKinley made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent. He was a natural businessman and gave Teddy Roosevelt the money for many of the great things he did, including the Panama Canal.”
The order fulfilled a promise Trump made during his first presidential run in 2015 but also pays homage to a president he has regarded as a sort of policy muse.
Trump has cited McKinley’s tariff policies as a role model in his calls to impose 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico and 10% tariffs on goods from China as a way to boost domestic manufacturing, raise government revenue, and ensure greater cooperation from the countries on stopping illegal immigration and fentanyl smuggling.
Trump’s executive order renaming the mountain also applauded U.S. territorial expansions during McKinley’s term. Trump has discussed annexing Greenland from Denmark, taking back the Panama Canal, and has said he’d like to make Canada the 51st state.
“President William McKinley, the 25th President of the United States, heroically led our Nation to victory in the Spanish-American War,” the executive order said. “Under his leadership, the United States enjoyed rapid economic growth and prosperity, including an expansion of territorial gains for the Nation. President McKinley championed tariffs to protect U.S. manufacturing, boost domestic production, and drive U.S. industrialization and global reach to new heights. He was tragically assassinated in an attack on our Nation’s values and our success, and he should be honored for his steadfast commitment to American greatness.”
Trump’s move reversed a 2015 name change made by former President Barack Obama in response to requests from native Alaskans. When Obama announced the renaming, his administration released a statement that noted McKinley “never set foot in Alaska,” and the peak that rises some 20,000 feet above sea level was known by the name Denali for centuries before a prospector decided it should be named for McKinley.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the mountain was named for McKinley in 1896 by William Andrews Dickey, a prospector and McKinley backer who wrote an account of his Alaskan adventures in the January 24, 1897, edition of the New York Sun.
But the Athabaskan people who lived in the region had always called it “Denali” which means “the tall one.” Alaskan officials made that name official for state use in 1975, and the state of Alaska had sought the federal change since that year.
Before Obama’s action, former Holmes County GOP Rep. Bob Gibbs, whose congressional district includes parts of the Canton area, had introduced a bill in Congress to stave off the change. He was outraged over Obama’s action, and called it “constitutional overreach.”
Because Congress passed a law in 1917 to name the mountain after McKinley, Gibbs said “another act of Congress is required to make any future name changes.”
Trump had promised to change the mountain’s name back to McKinley while campaigning for president in 2015, calling Obama’s decision, a “great insult to Ohio.” But he didn’t make good on that promise during his first White House term, despite requests from Ohio members of Congress, led by Gibbs.
In an interview this week, Gibbs called Obama’s name change “disrespectful to President McKinley’s legacy,” as well as a political gesture by Obama to ingratiate himself to Alaskans before a visit to the state.
“President Trump’s doing the right thing by changing it back,” said Gibbs, who believes there are a fair number of parallels between McKinley’s policies and those sought by Trump, including promoting tariffs, and “pushing America first type policy.”
Alaska’s congressional delegation was less enthused about the change, with Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski saying she “strongly” disagrees with Trump.
“Our nation’s tallest mountain, which has been called Denali for thousands of years, must continue to be known by the rightful name bestowed by Alaska’s Koyukon Athabascans, who have stewarded the land since time immemorial,” said a statement Murkowski posted on social media.
When asked for the McKinley Presidential Library & Museum’s reaction to the name change, executive director Kimberly A. Kenney said the private non-profit that owns and operates the McKinley National Memorial always appreciates when his name comes up in national conversation.
Ryan Stenger, a McKinley Presidential Library & Museum board member who collects McKinley memorabilia and serves as Chief Operating Officer and co-founder of a government affairs firm called McKinley Strategies, said having a mountain named after McKinley “was always a point of pride for the region.”
“I’ve seen a good reaction from people in this area,” says Stenger.
Who was William McKinley?
McKinley was born in Niles, Ohio, in 1843. After serving in Ohio’s 23rd Volunteer Infantry Regiment during the Civil War, he became an attorney, moved to Canton. and became Stark county’s prosecuting attorney. At age 34, he successfully ran for the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican. He served there for 14 years, rising to chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.
In that post, he became a proponent of tariffs, arguing they were needed to ensure high wages. He gave his his name to an 1890 measure that raised import tariffs on many goods, while dropping them in other areas. Backlash to the tariffs was swift, contributing to GOP losses in the Senate and House of Representatives during that year’s elections, according to Dartmouth University economist Doug Irwin. McKinley himself lost his House of Representatives seat in the 1990 elections, after his district was gerrymandered by Democrats to be unfavorable to Republicans.
“Although the tariff was not entirely responsible for the Republican electoral disaster, many observers at the time believed that to be the case,” Irwin wrote in his 2017 book, “Clashing over Commerce: A History of U.S. Trade Policy.”
McKinley rebounded from losing his congressional seat by successfully seeking Ohio’s governorship in 1891 with help from wealthy Ohio industrialist Mark Hanna. During his gubernatorial service, the state’s tax system was improved; a railroad safety law was sanctioned; a state board of arbitration was established; and a coal miners’ strike was dealt with, according to a National Governors Association biography of McKinley.
What did he achieve?
With Hanna’s assistance, McKinley ran for president in 1896, defeating William Jennings Bryan. According to an account of the campaign on the U.S. Senate’s website, the “front porch” campaign McKinley ran from Canton “set a new standard in presidential politics.”
“While Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan roamed the country delivering ‘cross of gold’ speeches, William McKinley sat on his front porch, welcoming trainloads of voters who traveled to Ohio at Hanna’s expense to meet the Republican candidate,” it said.
McKinley triumphed in industrial centers and big cities with 51% of the popular vote and 271 electoral votes to Bryan’s 176.
According to a White House Historical Association biography of McKinley, as soon as he became president, McKinley called Congress into special session to enact the highest tariff in the nation’s history. The tariff and other domestic issues during his first term became dwarfed by the Cuban revolt against Spain, which began in the early 1890s, and created millions in losses for American interests. McKinley was pressured to intervene.
After the February 15, 1898, explosion of the battleship U.S.S. Maine in Havana Harbor, whose cause is still unknown, diplomatic negotiations failed and Congress declared war on Spain that April. As a result of the 100-day Spanish-American war, the United States took over Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines from Spain. The United States also annexed Hawaii during his presidency.
McKinley faced Bryan again in the 1900 election. His opponent advocated a free silver monetary policy and spoke out against imperialism while McKinley was reelected on his support for the gold standard and “the full dinner pail.” He died soon after being shot by anarchist Leon Czolgosz on September 6, 1901, as he stood on a receiving line at the Buffalo Pan-American Exposition. He was the third U.S. president to be assassinated.
Ohio’s state legislature named the red carnation as the state flower following McKinley’s death, as he was known for wearing the flowers in his lapel.
During the last speech he delivered in Buffalo, the day before he was shot, McKinley called for dropping tariffs that were no longer needed, saying “the period of exclusiveness is past.
“Reciprocity is the natural outgrowth of our wonderful industrial development under the domestic policy now firmly established,” said McKinley. “What we produce beyond our domestic consumption must have a vent abroad. The excess must be relieved through a foreign outlet and we should sell everywhere we can, and buy wherever the buying will enlarge our sales and productions, and thereby make a greater demand for home labor.”
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