Denali National Park

For decades, the question of what to call the highest peak in North America was settled in Ohio. Congressman Ralph Regula, whose district included McKinley’s hometown of Canton, blocked the renaming of Mount McKinley at every turn, in 1977 gathering signatures from every member of the Ohio congressional delegation to stop the U.S. Board on Geographic Names from acting. The name had been a compromise from the start: Charles Sheldon, the hunter-naturalist who campaigned the park into existence on February 26, 1917, preferred the native name Denali and accepted “Mount McKinley National Park” only to help the bill pass. The mountain, all 20,310 feet of it, was not officially renamed until 2015.

This map traces the crest of the Alaska Range as it arcs across the park, with the massive contour stack of Denali dominating the center. The tightly packed lines mark the great glaciers that pour off the massif, including the Kahiltna, Ruth, and Muldrow, while the wide, nearly empty spaces to the north record the braided river plains of the tundra lowlands. The contrast between the two is the story of the park, one of the steepest gradients between lowland and summit anywhere on Earth.