Gates of the Arctic Gaunt Beauty ... Tenuous Life Historic Resource Study for Gates of the Arctic National Park & Preserve

¹John Mcphee, Coming Into the Country (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1977), 83.

²Interviews with Al Withrow, elder and younger, summer and fall 1985.

³Foote, The Upper Kobuk Project, 53.

⁴Charles Keim, comp., Alaska Game Trails with a Master Guide (Alaska Northwest Publishing Co., Anchorage, 1977), 28.

⁵Anchorage Daily News, 3/5/69, 9.

⁶Theodore R. Swem, personal communication, 1/28/87.

⁷Olaus J. Murie, "Dr. Murie Reports on Wilderness Study of Impressive Brooks Range," undated, unsourced newsclipping (presumed to be from New York Times, late 1956), in Murie Collection, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Archive.

⁸Weeden's Alaska, Promises to Keep, esp. Chaps. 4-6, gives an excellent overview of the conservationists' developing doctrine in response to the oil boom. A special "Alyeska project" edition of Oil & Gas Journal published in 1974, traces the environmental safeguards built into pipeline construction. In later years, industry spokesmen commented that the conservation injunction spurred improvements in pipeline construction technology that proved of great benefit in the operational stage. Seminal sources on development trends and impacts include: David M. Hickock, "Developmental Trends in Arctic Alaska," July 1, 1970, typescript presentation paper available at Arctic Information and Data Center, Anchorage; anon., "Petroleum Development in Alaska," Alaska Review of Business and Economic Conditions, University of Alaska, Institute of Social and Economic Research,14(1), Mar. 1977, 1-15; B. Steven Strong, The Social and Economic Impact of the Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline upon the Alaska Native People, McGill University, Montreal, June 1977.

⁹T.R. Swem, personal communication, 1/28/87.

¹⁰Roger W. Allin, "Alaska, A Plan for Action," typescript report, National Park Service, Washington, 1966, 7, 13-14.

¹¹NPS Briefing Book presented to Governor Hickel in Juneau, October 10, 1967; Ltr from Hartzog to Hickel, 12/7/67; Merrill Mattes, et al., "Kobuk-Koyukuk, a Reconnaissance Report" (typescript report, NPS, San Francisco, June 1969), 2.

¹²Mattes, "Kobuk-Koyukuk," 2; personal communication from Jack Hession, Alaska representative of the Sierra Club, 3/31/86.

¹³BLM Recreation Specialist Wayne Boden memorandum of 10/21/64, "Inventory of the South Slope of the Brooks Range"; ltr from BLM Fairbanks District Office Manager Robert C. Krumm to Nancy Hundt, Juneau Group, Alaska Chapter of the Sierra Club, 3/28/69. Many other conservationist groups and individuals were involved during this formative period of urgency when the imminence and the subsequent fact of major oil discoveries loomed as a threat to Alaska's arctic wilderness. See Robert Cahn, The Fight to Save Wild Alaska (National Audubon Society, Washington, 1982) for a full account of groups, people, and actions. For a general review of these developments from the NPS perspective, see G. Frank Williss, The National Park Service and the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980 (NPS, Denver, 1985), 29-93. A select file of Richard J. Gordon'spapers has been deposited in the history collection of Gates of the Arctic NP&P.

¹⁴Mattes, "Kobuk-Koyukuk," 4.

¹⁵Ibid., 13 and following map.

¹⁶Ltr from Bailey Breedlove to Chief, Office of Resource planning, SSC, 4/8/69; Sierra Club, Alaska Chapter-Alaska Conservation Society broadside, Gates of the Arctic NP proposal, printed in Juneau, 1969; McCord quoted in ltr from Sen. Ernest Gruening to Secretary of the Interior, 2/19/64. All ltrs in Gates of the Arctic NP&P history file.

¹⁷T.R. Swem, personal communication, 1/28/87.

¹⁸Williss, National Park Service and Alaska National Interest Lands, 56-59. See John P. Crevelli, "The Final Act of theGreatest Conservation President," Prologue: The Journal of the National Archives, 12(4), Winter 1980, 173-91, foradministrative history of the proclamations episode. By personal communication of 1/28/87, T.R. Swem clarified the sequence of events that resulted in the Udall-inspired National Monument proposal, which anticipated both the study-team's published proposal and the conservationists' proposal of March 1969.

¹⁹T.R. Swem notes that the original proposals to Congress in 1973 by then Secretary of the Interior Rogers C.B. Morton would have designated the Gates of the Arctic an "instant" wilderness. That designation was blocked by the President's budget office, but Morton, in a press conference, vowed that he would push the idea with Congress. Swem, personal communication, 1/28/87.

²⁰See for example the above-cited works of Williss, Cahn, Weeden, and Arnold. Awaiting the serious student are libraries of congressional reports, reports of the Joint Federal-State Land Use Planning Commission (a monitoring and coordinating agency established by ANCSA to oversee the d-2 process), reports and position papers of the Committee for Management of Alaska Lands (a pro-development group opposed to large conservation-unit withdrawals), and an avalanche of magazine, journal, house organ, and newspaper articles and editorials covering all segments of opinion in the preservation/development controversy unleashed by ANCSA and its progeny.

²¹John Kauffmann file, Gates of the Arctic NP&P.

²²Public Law 96-487, Dec. 2, 1980 (94 Stat. 1378, Sec. 20l(4)(a).

²³John Kauffmann, "Gates of the Arctic National Park briefing statement, June 1976, Kauffmann file.

²⁴John Kauffmann, draft management concept, summer 1978, Kauffmann file.

²⁵Ray Bane, "Winter Field Trip into the Upper Noatak Valley, March 16-26, 1981," typescript report, Bane file, GAAR NP&P.

²⁶Ray Bane, "Tasks and Objectives of Subsistence Coordinator in Northwest Alaska," undated (ca. 1980) report, Bane file.

²⁷Audubon Society briefing paper, "Carter Administration, Alaska Lands," undated (ca. Jan. 1979): Williss, National Park Service and Alaska Lands Act, 209-24.

²⁸Personal communications from Ray and Barbara Bane, various dates.

²⁹Ibid., 276-82; personal communications and involvement with Task Force and later permanent rangers.

³⁰The writer has participated in the Gates planning process and has associated extensively with field staff and park neighbors during the field work incident to this history project.

³¹Quotations from correspondence between Jacob Ahgook, Acting President, Nunamiut Corporation and Boyd Evison, Regional Director, NPS. Ltr from Ahgook of 11/7/85: ltr from Evison of 12/6/85.