Feds implement ‘Gulf of America,’ ‘Mount McKinley’ name changes
The federal government is formally implementing President Trump’s directive to rename the Gulf of Mexico and Denali.
The Interior Department issued a press release saying that the “the Gulf of Mexico will now officially be known as the Gulf of America.”
It also said it was reversing an Obama-era decision to rename Alaska’s Mount McKinley to Denali.
The department said the U.S. Board on Geographic Names was working “expeditiously” to update the names of these features in the Geographic Names Information System and that the changes are “effective immediately for federal use.”
While the Gulf of Mexico change is new, what to call the nation’s highest peak has been a matter of debate for years.
In 2015, the Obama administration decided to formally call it Denali, the name that local Natives once used.
Former President McKinley, for whom the mountain is once again named, never visited Alaska. His name was first used for the summit in an article written by a gold prospector in 1897 and was popularized after his 1901 assassination.
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