re: #236 HappyWarrior

Kind of like how Mount Everest has its current name and the original name that the Nepalis gave it. I prefer the latter. Native names often tell you much more about what a place actually is than when you name it for a white dude. That’s why Denali is a much better name than Mount McKinley.

Going beyond the mis-naming of Denali as McKinley, the history of why is became McKinley makes the nom even more outrageous.

Yup, it was the metal as currency morons.

The mountain was first designated “Mount McKinley” by a New Hampshire-born Seattleite named William Dickey, who led a gold prospectoring dig in the sands of the Susitna River in June 1896. An account written on his return to the contiguous United States appeared in The New York Sun on January 24, 1897, under the title Discoveries in Alaska (1896).[10][11] Dickey wrote, “We named our great peak Mount McKinley, after William McKinley of Ohio, who had been nominated for the Presidency, and that fact was the first news we received on our way out of that wonderful wilderness.”[10][11] By most accounts, the naming was politically driven; Dickey had met many silver miners who zealously promoted Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan’s ideal of a silver standard, inspiring him to retaliate by naming the mountain after a strong proponent of the gold standard.[11]