Denali National Park

The mountain had been called Denali — "the tall one" — by Koyukon Athabaskan people for longer than anyone could say, but in 1917 Congress created a national park around it under a different name: Mount McKinley, honoring a president who had never set foot in Alaska and whose only connection to the peak was a gold prospector's decision in 1896 to name it after his preferred presidential candidate. Naturalist and big-game hunter Charles Sheldon spent years lobbying for the park specifically to stop market hunters from wiping out the Dall sheep and caribou herds he had come to study, and Congress agreed, establishing Mount McKinley National Park in 1917.

Alaska Native groups and the state of Alaska pushed for decades to restore the mountain's original name, and in 1980 Congress renamed the park itself Denali, though the mountain legally remained Mount McKinley for another 35 years because of objections from Ohio lawmakers protective of their state's native son. The Department of the Interior finally restored the name Denali to the mountain in 2015. At 20,310 feet, it is the tallest peak in North America and, measured from base to summit rather than sea level, one of the tallest mountains on any continent.

Denali's six million acres include almost no roads: a single 92-mile gravel road serves the entire park, and most of it closes to private vehicles after mile 15, keeping the wilderness accessible largely on foot, by bus, or by small plane. Grizzly bears, wolves, and the Dall sheep Sheldon fought to protect still range across terrain that looks much as it did when the park was created in 1917.