So there was this guy from New Hampshire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He moved to Seattle. Then, during the Yukon Gold Rush, he went north in search of riches. In 1897, his exploits were featured in an article in the New York Sun that included his comment that he had named a prominent mountain \u201cMt. McKinley,\u201d because in the upcoming presidential election, the Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan was in favor of a silver standard, but the Republican nominee William McKinley \u2013 the Governor of Ohio \u2013 favored gold. When McKinley was elected the 25th president, the name stuck. And that\u2019s how the highest peak in North America was named by a man from New Hampshire for a man from Ohio, who had nothing to do with said mountain, never saw it, and had no apparent interest in it whatsoever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most folks in Alaska have always disliked the name, and commonly refer to the mountain by the name used for thousands of years by the native Koyukon Athabascan people, \u201cDenali,\u201d which means, \u201cThe High One.\u201d But all efforts to rename it were blocked for a century by the Ohio delegation in Washington DC. Until President Obama, supported by Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, officially changed the name back to Denali. Proponents of the change cheered that it signaled respect for native traditions in America; opponents snidely remarked that Obama\u2019s nickname from his partying days in college was probably, \u201cthe high one,\u201d and so this arrogant president was actually renaming Mt. McKinley in honor of himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All of which raises a larger geo-historo-etymo-logical question: are there any other mountains out there that might benefit from a retro-indigeno-name-o?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How about the mountain upon which the successor to President McKinley was sitting when he learned that McKinley had been assassinated? Yep, Vice President Theodore Roosevelt was on the shoulder of New York\u2019s highest peak when a runner arrived to inform him he was the new president! Now I ask you, should that seminal American story refer to that mountain as merely \u201cMt. Marcy\u201d (named for the Governor of New York), or the much more evocative native name, \u201cTahawus,\u201d which means \u201cCloud Splitter.\u201d Think of the possibilities: Teddy atop Tahawus, the Big Stick on Cloud Splitter. Bully!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How many of you crunchy Californians have climbed Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the continental US, which is named for a geologist? Wouldn\u2019t it be groovier to ascend \u201cTumanguya,\u201d which means \u201cVery Old Man\u201d in Paiute? Gnarly!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When you visit the Rocky Mountains, do you want to climb \u201cPike\u2019s Peak,\u201d (named for an explorer with the ridiculous first name Zebulon who never made it to the summit) when instead you can say you climbed \u201cTava\u201d (\u201cSun Mountain\u201d in native Ute), or even better, \u201c\u201dHeey-otoyoo\u201d (\u201cLong Mountain\u201d in Arapaho)? Far out!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And finally, let\u2019s go back to where we started, New Hampshire, and to Mount Washington, the highest peak in the White Mountains. It was once thought to be the highest peak in the East. But it has since been proven to be shorter than its counterpart, Mt. Mitchell, in the Black Mountains of North Carolina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oh come now! The father of our country memorialized by a mountain shorter than one named in honor of a professor from UNC? Sorry, that\u2019s an insult. It\u2019s time to take \u201cWashington\u201d off that mountain and honor it with a better name. A native name that means, \u201cHome of the Great Spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You could have a bumper sticker that says, \u201cThis car climbed Mt. Agiocochook.” That\u2019s wicked cool.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"So there was this guy from New Hampshire. He moved to Seattle. Then, during the Yukon Gold Rush, he went north in search of riches. In 1897, his exploits were featured in an article in the New York Sun that included his comment that he had named a prominent mountain…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1010,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Denali.jpg?fit=800%2C545&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2144"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2147,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2144\/revisions\/2147"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}