Or Mt. Taylor on the Diné (Navaho) reservation. That one is not far from a deliberate insult from their viewpoint.
I suggest a nice nature preserve on Vieques Island, PR.
Maybe a strip-mall?
Ohioans have a state full of stuff to name and rename if they want – why would they get to decide what is named what in Alaska?
Gun shop.
Too soon!
Getting back to GQ territory, the mountain in question was named by law in the Mount McKinley National Park Act. Congress passed a law giving it the name Mt McKinley. President Woodrow Wilson (D) signed it into law.
It takes a new law to repeal or revise the prior law. Since the 1947 law cited as justification by the Obama administration for the renaming did not have specific language amending the prior law then it would seem critics of the administration’s move have a legitimate complaint.
It looks like authority is multiple and muddled. It really doesn’t matter. Other than that some folks have to get over the horrible fact that Obama Did It!, the change is about 90 years overdue and opposed only by the special interest of one state that has no other connection to the region, the mountain or the issue.
Undoing all the Anglo-explorer renaming of sites with known names from antiquity is not a trivial effort, and the mountain should have been restored to its former name, along with the park, long ago. It really doesn’t matter what chain of authority or bruised counter-authority does it.
Does this mean Mt. Rainier is up for a name change?
Is there a movement to change it?
OK, that seems like a legitimate issue. But, would the 1947 law have to specifically address all laws it might supersede? If Congress is approving a law saying that the BGN gets to name things from now on, wouldn’t it be implied that all previously-named things were fair game? Isn’t an understood amendment to the prior law (and any other laws naming things) sort of baked in to the new law?
It depends on the language of the 1947 law (which I don’t feel like looking up). There is a canon of statutory construction which says the general yields to the specific, even if the general is later in time. However, you only reach canons of construction if the general law is ambiguous.
Wow. Somebody’s got some butthurt here.
I’m sure it helps that “Denali” is a short, easy-to-say name. If the Native American name was Ithiqualarikihukuji, you could count on one hand the number of people objecting to “Mt. McKinley.”
Similarly, the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument (admittedly not the pinnacle of euphoniousness) was renamed to “Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument.” I doubt that many people actually call it that on a regular basis.
Nope.
The 1917 legislation didn’t name the mountain, it named the park. And the later-in-time legislation would control anyway. It is not necessary to specifically overrule a prior statute if the two cannot be reconciled.
I just hope they leave the Grand Tetons alone.
Because they are real…and marvelous.
We should change the Cleveland baseball team to the McKinley’s and have a caricature of him as our logo 
(ZJJ, huge Indians fan. Not a Wahoo fan.)
Poor Alaskan shopkeepers. Not they have to change all those postcards.
Exactly. If Ohio’s politicians want something named after their native son, find something in your own danged state to rename!
Which was, of course, itself renamed Denali National Park by Congress in 1980.