Mt. McKinley, Alaska

Cyd Gillett, Daniel Sadoff, Abe Sadoff (15), Lydia Sadoff (9). We just completed an Alaska family vacation and, of course, we took The Rake along.

We landed on Ruth, a glacier named after the daughter of a man, Frederick Cook, who falsely claimed to have both been the first person to scale Denali (Mt. McKinley) and to reach the north pole. Another Alaskan controversy, the official name of the highest mountain peak in North America, persists – it was named Denali “the tall (or great) one” for centuries by the natives until some Ohio newswriter in the late 1800’s decided to curry favor with a local politician who was running for president at the time and started calling it Mt McKinley in his reports. William F. McKinley never once set foot in Alaska. Alaskans current day attempts to get the mountain’s name of Denali federally recognized are perennially thwarted by congressional representatives from Ohio.