Efforts to change the name of the highest mountain in North America from Mount McKinley to Denali have been going on for decades.
William McKinley, who would go on to be the 25th president of the United States, was governor of Ohio when the peak was named for him -- a connection that's meant name-change efforts were stalemated in an on-again-off-again rivalry between Ohio and Alaska on the subject. An Alaska congressional delegation would introduce legislation to give the mountain back its Koyukon Athabascan name; an Ohio representative would block it.
When Sen. Dan Sullivan, who has extensive ties in the Buckeye State, was elected last fall, observers wondered whether he could get Ohioans to relent. Sullivan joined on as a sponsor to legislation from Sen. Lisa Murkowski to change the name, but a competing bill from U.S. Rep. Bob Gibbs ensured the usual stalemate would continue this year.
Now, though, proponents of the name change might have an ally with even more effective Ohio connections: The Columbus Dispatch.
In an editorial published Thursday, the newspaper of Ohio's capital city weighed in, arguing, "Ohio's congressional representatives should let Denali be Denali."
"It's time to end the perennial defensive action against Alaskans who want to allow one of their state's grandest natural features to be known officially by its real name," the unsigned editorial read, calling procedural moves to block the renaming " a rather unseemly effort on behalf of a politician who never set foot near the mountain and had no known interest in it."