1. Denali or McKinley - North
America’s Largest Mountain
By Luis Li

2. Introduction
• Luis Li joined the United States Attorney’s Office in
California’s Central District in 1995, a role in which he
secured several convictions at trial in high-profile cases. He
became chief of the criminal branch of the Los Angeles City
Attorney’s Office in 2002, and supervised the office’s 270
prosecutors in achieving the highest conviction rate in more
than a decade. He currently has a thriving practice as a
partner at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP. Outside of the office,
Luis Li enjoys a broad range of recreational activities, and in
1997 he summited Denali.
Summiting Denali is no easy task, and requires careful
planning, good equipment, and significant mountaineering
skills.

3. North America’s Largest Mountain
• The first attempt to scale the mountain took place in 1903, but
it wasn’t until 1913 that a successful summiting was
confirmed. Of more than 1,200 attempts mounted in 2014,
just over 35 percent were successful.
The tallest mountain in North America and the third-largest
in the world, Denali looms 20,320 feet over central Alaska as
part of the Alaska Range, which stretches for more than 400
miles. Native Americans had at least nine names for the peak,
and the Russians two, but when the mountain was first
identified on a map in the 1880s, it was known as Densmore’s
Mountain. In 1896, the influence of American politics was felt
as the mountain was renamed Mount McKinley to honor the
then-candidate for the Presidency.

4. Conclusion
• The name was formally adopted with the enactment of
the Mount McKinley National Park Act in 1917.
In 1975, the Alaska Board of Geographic Names changed
the mountain’s name to Denali, the name by which it was
known for thousands of years by Native Alaskans and
modern Alaskans as well as tourists and mountaineers.
Efforts to secure a similar change at the federal level
failed, though, due to efforts of members of Congress
from President McKinley’s home state of Ohio. In 1980,
an informal truce was engineered with the incorporation
of Mount McKinley National Park into a new park called
Denali National Park and Preserve, but efforts continue
to rename the mountain.