President Donald Trump signed numerous executive orders on his first day in office on Monday—one of the executive orders was to rename Mt. Denali and the Gulf of Mexico.
On the day that Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th President of the United States, he signed a flurry of executive orders, including one that will rename Alaska's tallest peak to the name it held for almost a century.
President Donald Trump said the Gulf of Mexico will be called the Gulf of America, while the Denali mountain peak will revert to its former name, Mount McKinley.
Alaskans oppose reverting the name of Denali to Mount McKinley by more than a two-to-one margin, according to a survey of residents conducted several days before President Donald Trump announced he would make the change during his second inauguration speech Monday.
The tallest peak in North America has been named Denali since 2015 when its name was officially changed under former President Barack Obama.
Trump said he planned to “restore the name of a great president, William McKinley, to Mount McKinley, where it should be and where it belongs."
The president made the name change through one of dozens of executive orders he signed on Monday. Former President Barack Obama’s administration ordered that the mountain be renamed as Denali in 2015.
The peak was known as Mount McKinley until 2015, when President Obama changed it in recognition of its 10,000 year old original Alaskan name
In one of his first acts as president, Donald Trump used an executive order on Monday to rename the Gulf of Mexico and Denali in Alaska. To start, Trump re-named the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” following through on a promise he made during his campaign. The body of water borders Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida.
The 47th president is wading back into a century-long dispute over the name we give to North America’s tallest mountain
The move is likely to face some pushback in Alaska, where the Alaska Native name has long been favored for the continent’s tallest mountain.