"Bulshaia Gora," proves that it
had long been observed and known.

[Sidenote: Harper, Densmore, Dickey]

In that year two of the early Alaskan traders, Alfred Mayo and Arthur
Harper, made an adventurous journey some three hundred miles up the
Tanana River, the first ascent of that river by white men, and upon
their return reported finding gold in the bars and mentioned an enormous
ice mountain visible in the south, which they said was one of the most
remarkable things they had seen on their trip.

In 1889 Frank Densmore, a prospector, with several companions, crossed
from the Tanana to the Kuskokwim by way of the Coschaket and Lake
Minchumina, and had the magnificent view of the Denali group which Lake
Minchumina affords, which the present writer was privileged to have in
1911. Densmore's description was so enthusiastic that the mountain was
known for years among the Yukon prospectors as "Densmore's mountain."

Though unquestionably many men traversed the region after the discovery
of gold in Cook's Inlet in 1894, no other public recorded mention of the
great mountain was made until W. A. Dickey, a Princeton graduate,
journeyed extensively in the Sushitna and Chulitna valleys in 1896 and
reached the foot of the glacier which drains one of the flanks of
Denali, called later by Doctor Cook the Ruth Glacier. Dickey described
the mountain in a letter to the New York _Sun_ in January, 1907, and
guessed its height with remarkable accuracy at twenty thousand feet.
Probably unaware that the mountain had any native name, Dickey gave it
the name of the Republican candidate for President of the United States
at that time--McKinley. Says Mr. Dickey: "We named our great peak Mount
McKinley, after William McKinley, of Ohio, the news of whose nomination
for the presidency was the first we received on our way out of that
wonderful wilderness."

In 1898 George Eldridge and Robert Muldrow, of the United States
Geological Survey, traversed the region, and Muldrow estimated the
height of the mountain by triangulation at twenty thousand three hundred
feet.

[Sidenote: Herron, Brooks, Wickersham]

In 1899 Lieutenant Herron crossed the range from Cook's Inlet and
reached the Kuskokwim. It was he who named the lesser mountain of the
Denali group, always known by the natives as Denali's Wife, "Mount
Foraker," after the senator from Ohio.

In 1902 Alfred Brooks and D. L. Raeburn made a remarkable reconnoissance
survey from the Pacific