AN AMERICAN PLACE

Denali…

…at 20,310 feet, is North America’s highest peak. Two million years ago, in what is; another said , Kokuyon Athabaskan for “the High One.” Russians settled on —“Big Mountain”—but left the site off maps they provided when the United States bought Alaska in 1867. In 1889, from 65 miles away, prospector Frank Densmore spotted Bolshaya Gora, leading sourdoughs to call it “Densmore’s Peak.” In 1896, another prospector renamed the mountain for a Republican presidential candidate. In 1910 four Alaskans, wearing bearskin coats and fueled by doughnuts and hot chocolate, scaled Mount McKinley’s lesser North Peak. In 1913, Athabaskan mountaineer Walter Harper made the first summit of the higher South Peak. In 1917 President Woodrow Wilson created Mount McKinley National Park. The Obama administration renamed park and peak Denali in 2015. Each year, the mountain sees about 1,200 climbers seek the summit; half succeed. Since 1932, 126 climbers have died on Denali, most while descending