Chapter Five:
The National Park Service in Alaska, 1973-1980

The National Park Service had worked since the 1950s to overcome past deficiencies in administration of the national parks and monuments in Alaska. Particularly during the last half of the 1960s, it made considerable progress toward that end. Between 1971 and 1973 that goal had been overshadowed by the massive effort required to meet the congressionally mandated deadlines in section 17(d)(2) of ANCSA. In February 1974, following submission of Secretary Morton's proposal, Keith Trexler, assistant project leader of the Service's Alaska Task Force, proposed establishment of an NPS office in Alaska with major responsibility for carrying out programs relating to ANCSA. The objectives of such an office, he said, would be to work to assure passage of legislation establishing the eleven proposed areas, and to provide guidelines and expertise for management of those areas. [1] The Service did not establish such an office. But as it continued to work for passage of an Alaska Lands Bill it developed the information base that would be necessary for managing the areas when established. The continuing effort in Alaska resulted in changes in the NPS Alaska organization, and brought about a re-evaluation of its approach to management of the Alaska parklands.

The Park Service, despite personnel and budget restrictions, had been able to respond to near-impossible deadlines by using the task force organization Director Hartzog had devised in the spring of 1972. The work accomplished in 1972 and 1973, however, proved to be only preliminary to what was to come. After the last of the thirty-three people who had been detailed during those years returned home, only a skeleton staff remained to accomplish a program that included, among other things, continual updating and revision of the legislative support data; revision of the 1973 master plans in response to greater knowledge of the various areas; managing a burgeoning Native assistance program; monitoring a substantial number of research contracts; addressing a variety of complicated issues such as subsistence, minerals, and access; and coordinating an ambitious program to educate the public both in Alaska and in the "Lower 48" on the Park Service's program for Alaska. [2]

Frustrated with his inability to convince the Washington office to provide additional help to meet the new demands, Al Henson questioned whether the NPS directorate fully grasped the enormity of Alaska, or the opportunity offered the Park Service there. It is true the Service had experienced something of a let-down once the Morton proposals went forward in 1973. But it had already begun work in developing short and long-range goals for Alaska. By fall 1974 NPS Director Ron Walker indicated that in response to a July 9 memo from Assistant Secretary Reed, the Service had begun to re-examine the organizational structure established to achieve those goals. [3]

In response to these concerns, the newly appointed NPS Director Gary Everhardt announced on May 6, 1975, that he had decided to substantially increase the size of the Alaska Task Force by the addition of ten full-time professional positions in FY '75 and '76. Most of these professionals would be recruited from the Service's central planning office in Denver. Each of these "keymen," as they were called, would be responsible for one or more of the proposed areas, and would have, additionally, a broader responsibility. Bill Brown, for example, who had left his position as regional historian in the Southwest Region, would serve as leader of a planning team at the proposed Yukon-Charley National Rivers. He also served as task force historian with responsibility for developing historical themes for all new proposals, initiating critical thematic and historical site studies, and assisting the Alaska area director in the historical program at existing areas. Don Follows who came to Alaska from the Denver Service Center, was keyman for Harding Icefield-Kenai Fjords, with additional responsibility for developing a conceptual interpretive plan that addressed all eleven proposals. Stell Newman, who was also recruited from the Denver Service Center as keyman for Chukchi-Imuruk and Kobuk Valley, also served as task force anthropologist with state-wide responsibilities. In this capacity Newman took the lead in developing a cultural resource management program that would, in concert with the State Historical Preservation Officer and Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, insure both protection of unique cultural resources and a smooth flow of compliance for planning and management of the new areas. Along with Bob Belous, who took over as keyman for Cape Krusenstern and Kobuk Valley, Newman would be primarily responsible for developing the Service's draft subsistence policy. These keymen would "ground truth" the data and planning concepts advanced in 1972 and 1973. They would not only provide a continuity in the planning process, but would also perform a vital public information function by their very presence. It was generally assumed that selected keymen would eventually form the nucleus of a professional services office in an Alaska Regional Office with others serving as first managers when the new parklands were authorized. [4]

By late summer 1975, a revived Alaska Task Force consisted of fifteen professionals, additional support staff and seasonal appointees, some of whom assisted the keymen in the field, and others who fulfilled various functions in the Task Force office. Al Henson continued as task force leader. Keith Trexler, one of the original members of the Task Force, had assumed the duties of management assistant. Bailey Breedlove, who had been with the Service's Alaska office since 1966, was special assistant to Henson. Along with the nine keymen was an engineer (Ed Stondall) with responsibility for engineering, transportation, and preparing cost estimates. Bob Belous, a former journalist who had joined the task force as a photographer in 1972, served as public programs and liaison officer, and Roy Sanborn functioned primarily as liaison with the Bureau of Land Management, the agency responsible for interim management of the d-2 lands. In addition, the Task Force maintained a close relationship with the Service's Cooperative Park Studies Unit at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. [5]

Increasing the size of the Alaska Task Force allowed the Service to carry out an ambitious program associated with the planning for the proposed national park units in Alaska. It did not, however, address questions that had been raised regarding the organization of the Service's Alaska efforts, or the growing friction between the NPS offices involved in Alaska. The task force approach devised by George Hartzog in spring 1972 was not new, and it seemed especially well-suited to meet the Service's needs in implementing section 17(d)(2) of ANCSA. It allowed both flexibility of approach and the rapid decision-making required to meet mandated deadlines. [6]

But it was not without problems. A number of people in the Service had serious concerns regarding an organization that operated largely outside the traditional lines of authority, fearing that the reporting relationship between the Alaska Task Force and Alaska Planning Group would serve to weaken the Service's control over decision-making, transferring it upward into the Department of the Interior. Pacific Northwest Regional Director John Rutter expressed concern that his office had not been effectively or adequately utilized. Despite an effort to separate functions of the Alaska Task Force, the Pacific Northwest Regional Office, and the Alaska State Office, the functions often overlapped. Because the task force would be working closely with Natives, for example, the Service's Washington office ordered the Pacific Northwest Regional office to suspend the on-going Alaska cultural complex study, over the strong protest of Regional Director Rutter. In 1974 Al Henson warned that a recent memorandum outlining Regional Director Rutter's thinking on a possible compromise position on prospecting and mining within the proposed Alaska parks could be used to weaken the position outlined in Secretary Morton's 1973 legislative proposals. By October 1974 Regional Director Rutter had become concerned regarding rumors that a separate Alaska Regional Office would be established. Writing that he was "very proud of progress in Alaska in the last four years," Rutter advised against establishment of a separate regional office and pointed out that "I doubt that the Pacific Northwest Region could be justified without the Alaska areas." [7]

Differences were not, however, merely territorial and organizational. Basic philosophical differences regarding the very nature of the National Park System as well as the Service's approach to ANCSA mandates existed. Regional Director Rutter questioned the wisdom of attempting to acquire so many and such large new areas in Alaska or spending large sums of money to study them when personnel restrictions and budget cutbacks hampered the Service's ability to protect established areas elsewhere. He expressed concern, too, that acquisition of those areas would create public relations problems in Alaska that could render effective future management well nigh impossible. Rutter, an NPS veteran with more than thirty years' service, was, moreover, among those in the Service who believed that national parks should be developed for the enjoyment and comfort of the people who visited them, and was uncomfortable with the concept of preservation of wilderness for its own sake. The proposed Alaska areas were, in most cases, not easily accessible, nor would they lend themselves easily to development designed to attract large numbers of people. [8]

In addition, several of the proposed areas simply did not conform to what many believed a national park should be. From Franklin K. Lane's charge to Stephen Mather in 1922 that in studying new park projects one should seek to find "scenery of supreme and distinctive quality as some natural feature so extraordinary or unique as to be of national importance," many NPS employees had viewed national parks primarily as areas possessing outstanding scenic values. [9] They were especially disturbed over the proposals to include in the National Park System such areas as Noatak and Chukchi-Imuruk, where the scenery might not be as awe-inspiring as it is elsewhere. Those involved in ANCSA implementation, generally, and they enjoyed considerable support throughout the Service, advocated a more recently evolved position expressed in the 1971 NPS publication, "Criteria for Parklands," and 1972 National Park System Plan, that the National Park system is rightly the conservator of a wide variety of landforms and that physiological and ecological representativeness is the primary criterion for evaluating the addition of natural areas to the system. To them, the areas possessed other values—their very remoteness, their vast untouched spaces, and their virtual timelessness, for example—that were worthy of protection and that met the very highest standards of the National Park System. To John Kauffmann, the Noatak had "a scope, a sweep as awesome and as unforgettable as the desert or Great Plains." To John Rutter, and he was certainly not alone, the Noatak possessed no special values deserving national park status. If protection were warranted, said Rutter, it should be accomplished by other Federal bureaus, such as the Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife. [10]

By 1975 the Alaska Task Force and Pacific Northwest Regional office were at loggerheads. Relations between the two were certainly strained, and communication at an all-time low. [11] To at least one group, conditions by June 1975 were in such a state as to threaten the Service's Alaska effort. Between June 8 and 21, 1975, the Secretary's Advisory Board on National Parks, Historic Sites, Buildings, and Monuments traveled to Alaska to view the existing and proposed park areas. [12] The year before, the Advisory Board had commended the Service, and in particular Theodor Swem, for carrying out "what many would regard as an impossible task," and for "the excellent products that resulted from its surveys, research, and recommendations." [13] On June 28, 1975, after its tour of Alaska, however, the Advisory Board sent a strongly-worded telegram to Secretary of the Interior Stanley K. Hathaway asserting that

the administrative structure set up to pursue the important Presidential and Congressional decrees concerning major expansion of National Parks in Alaska is hopelessly inadequate. The Alaska Task Force on National Parks has not done its job, and has become an ineffective bureaucratic duplication that by-passes the oversight and control of the Director of the National Park Service. The present organization of the Task Force under the Assistant Secretary is so diffuse and unminitored (sp) that without drastic change the desired Congressional objectives cannot be effectively accomplished.

The board recommended that "planning, implementation and management of the Alaska Parks be accomplished by the Director with delegation to the presently structured Northwest Regional Office and the Alaska state office," and that the Secretary order an audit of Alaska Task Force budgeting, expenditures, and operations. [15]

The Advisory Board's action was really quite extraordinary, and provoked an angry response from Assistant Secretary Nathaniel P. Reed, who lectured the board on its role and function. In retrospect, the charges leveled by the advisory board seem at best to have been emotional and overdrawn. A comprehensive examination of all financial transactions of the Task Force by J.L. Norwood, associate director for administration, found nothing to suggest any wrongdoing on the part of Task Force members. [16]

The Service had considered reorganization in Alaska for some time. As early as 1974, in fact, Alaska Task Force Project Leader Al Henson had discussed reorganization with Ted Swem, suggesting that one way to accomplish the necessarily ambitious program would be to make the Alaska Task Force part of a Professional Support Division in the State Office. [17] The Service had not chosen to change the existing reporting relationships in 1974 but did indicate that it would monitor the program closely and do so when warranted. By May 1975 the Alaska Task Force planners had been asked to comment on a new organizational arrangement that would blend the operations and planning functions together in a new Alaska Area Office. In October, Director Gary Everhardt announced, following "long and careful" consideration, that all NPS functions in Alaska would be brought together in a new Alaska Area Office. The Alaska Task Force would be abolished, but its function would continue in a professional support division in the area office. The next June, as a follow-up to Director Everhardt's announcement, new Pacific Northwest Regional Director Russell Dickenson appointed Don Campbell as the regional office liaison with the Alaska office. Campbell's appointment would, Dickinson wrote, insure that the Seattle office had a clear source of information regarding Alaska affairs. [18]

Everhardt did not go as far as he might have, however, and, whatever his personal inclinations, the new organization indicated an acceptance that the Alaska proposals could not be handled in the normal way. The new area office director, Bryan Harry, a career park manager just completing a stint as superintendent of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, would report to the Pacific Northwest Regional Director on all matters concerning the existing park areas and all programs not related to ANCSA. In regard to activities and programs relating to the Service's involvement with implementation of ANCSA, he would report to the Director, through the office of special assistant to the director for Alaska. In practice, because of the direct involvement of the Department of the Interior, Harry often reported directly to the departmental official responsible for the Alaska proposals. [19]

In 1975 and into 1976, moreover, the Park Service re-examined both the organization and role of the Washington office in ANCSA implementation. By May 1976, as indicated in Chapter Four, Director Everhardt had decided to increase the involvement of the Office of Legislation, and had begun to transfer a portion of the activities to that office. The Special Assistant to the Director for Alaska, now had responsibility for all program areas relating to Alaska. [20]

Many, but certainly not all, expected that the Alaska Area office would be upgraded to a regional office when and if an Alaska national interest lands bill were passed. [21] Planning for the establishment of a Regional office in Alaska had begun as early as 1972. By May 1978, as part of implementation planning in anticipation of an Alaska lands act, the Service had begun to investigate more seriously manpower, funding needs, and organizational arrangements for an Alaska Regional Office. [22] Formal establishment of such an office would not come for another two years, but in September 1978 NPS Director Whalen effectively gave the Alaska regional office status. [23] Whalen's action actually depended largely on the personality and influence of John Cook, whom he had tapped to succeed Bryan Harry, who had recently transferred to a similar job as director, Pacific Area Office. Cook, whom Whalen first approached in September 1978, was a third-generation NPS official, had served as NPS Associate Director from 1973-77, and was currently Southwest Regional Director. As a condition of Cook's accepting the position as Alaska Area Director, Whalen agreed that Cook would report directly to the director on all matters, would be able to choose his own deputy (Douglas Warnock), pick his own superintendents, and have "five unencumbered, undesignated, and ungraded positions," which, in Cook's words, could be five "go-go dancers" if that was what he wanted. [24] The Alaska Area Office formally became a regional office by Secretarial Order on December 2, 1980. [25] Between March 1979, when he reported for duty, and 1980, however, John Cook operated as de facto Alaska Regional Director. [26]

Al Henson originally hoped that the keymen would be in Alaska in time for a full summer's work in the field in 1975. Although some did arrive earlier, most did not report for duty until the end of the field season, and spent the remainder of the summer and early fall becoming familiar with the Service's proposals, the resources and problems of the areas, and beginning to develop relationships with the local residents and officials. [27]

The new keymen were a diverse group, both in training and approach to new area planning. Gerald Wright, for example, was an ecologist with a strong background in systems analysis. Wright preferred to apply what he termed a strictly scientific approach to information-gathering in the Wrangell-Saint Elias proposal, using models to create "visitor use," and other zones for the area, and leaving the community relations aspect largely to two particularly capable seasonals, Richard Gordon and Ben Shaine. By tallying game statistics for virtually every drainage in the Wrangell-Saint Elias proposal, Wright was able to compile a body of data that could be used when Congress tried to identify appropriate hunting and non-hunting areas. [28]

Others, Bill Brown and John Kauffmann, for example, took a more intuitive approach, and sought to physically immerse themselves in their respective field areas to experience more fully the areas and appreciate the nature of the place, something they believed necessary for proper planning. Brown, along with Rich Caulfield and former Glacier Bay National Monument Superintendent Robert Howe, spent as much time as possible in the Yukon-Charley proposal and nearby communities running rivers, inspecting proposed trails and campsites, taking dog-sled trips, and becoming acquainted with local residents and absorbing their experiences to "ground-truth" the earlier master plan for Yukon Charley. As Brown explained his approach:

We rented a cabin, we cut our own wood, and we spent time up there when it's cold and dark. We knew that we could not gain understanding or respect if we were simply fair-weather bureaucrats. We suspected, too, that we had to have time, in this cultural milieu, to get past public-meetings posing and sit down with individuals around an oil-drum wood stove and talk and argue and lay our shared values on the line with these people . . . then coming back for more and being accountable this time for what we said last time. [29]

Kauffmann, who had been responsible for the Gates of the Arctic proposal since 1972, took every opportunity to visit the area, hoping, in the end, to have been on the ground in virtually every part of the proposal. In setting goals for 1976, for example, Kauffman hoped to complete a two-week dogsled trip to Anaktuvuk Pass and Gates of the Arctic (April); confer with local people in Bettles, Alatna Valley, Kobuk, and Shungnak (April); complete field reconnaissance of Cockedhat Mountain and Oolah Pass areas (July), Shungnak and Kogoluktuk drainages and other western portions of the proposal (August), Kurupa Lake region (August 20); inspect all development sites and privately-owned structures in the proposal (July); and study of the Middle fork of the Koyukuk River in conjunction with the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation. [30]

Stell Newman, keyman at Bering Land Bridge (formerly Chukchi-Imuruk), certainly had a unique job. Not only did he have the responsibility of learning as much as possible about a remote area on the Bering Strait, but had to become the NPS expert on reindeer herding—an important subsistence activity in the area. For several years Newman attended meetings of the Reindeer Herders Association, spent time with the herders as they patrolled their herds, took part in summer round-ups when antlers are cut to sell as medicinal products in the Orient, and lived with herders in an isolated camp to participate in a mid-winter butchering operation. [31]

Whatever differences they might have had regarding new area planning, the keyman all recognized the need for additional hard data on the individual areas. An important part of the Park Service's Alaska program, as indicated earlier, was the accumulation of basic data for planning, legislative support, and use by future managers. The magnitude and variety of research carried out, or sponsored by the Park Service, in Alaska during the d-2 period was unprecedented in the Service's history. In its fifty-odd years in Alaska prior to ANCSA, the Park Service had produced some forty-four reports on Alaska. [32] Between 1972 and 1978, 176 research reports on the proposed areas had been completed and another 61 were underway:

The research resulted in a considerable number of ground-breaking studies, including such wide-ranging subjects as Melody Webb Grauman's study of the Kennecott mines in Wrangell Saint Elias and Yukon Fronter: Historic Resource Study of the Proposed Yukon-Charley National Rivers, Robert B. Forbes' study of the geology of the Maar craters at Chukchi-Imuruk [Bering Land Bridge], to the multi-disciplinary resource study of the Noatak by the Center for Northern Studies at Wolcott, Vermont. The latter was carried out in FY '73 and FY '74 at the cost of $131,000. The study team was in the field for months studying botany, mammalogy, orthinology, entomology, limnology, and archeology in an area that had been visited by no more than a handful of scientists in the previous century. [34]

The Service's Alaska Task Force planners tried to be alert to almost every opportunity to increase their knowledge about Alaska, and sought, in the words of John Kauffmann, "to use other trained eyes and ears and willing legs as well as our own." When Ray and Barbara Bane, school-teachers and long-time residents of the Alaska bush, made a 1,400-mile dogsled trip from their home in Hughes to Kotzebue and on to Barrow, Zorro Bradley and Bob Belous arranged for photographs and a description of their trip. They met the couple several places along the way to record their impressions of the land through which they had traveled, and of the lives of the people who lived there. [35]

Other agencies and organizations also conducted research, although not, apparently, on the scale of the Park Service's efforts. The Park Service did participate in a number of cooperative ventures. It joined, for example, the United States Geological Survey in mapping the geology of Glacier Bay National Monument and the Alaska Fish and Game Department in studying resource problems at Wrangell-Saint Elias, Kobuk Valley, Mount McKinley and Katmai. A jointly-sponsored NPS-FWS study examined reindeer herding on the Seward Peninsula, and in 1974, Will Troyer, a Fish and Wildlife Service biologist who later joined the Park Service, completed NPS-financed studies of bald eagle nesting and brown bear denning in the Katmai area. In 1976 the Park Service and the National Geographic Society agreed to co-sponsor a three-year $300,000 project designed to "locate archeological sites which will provide specific knowledge about movement of peoples from Siberia across Bering 'Land Bridge.' " [36]

From the very beginning, both as a result of congressional direction as well as by the personal inclination of those involved in the Park Service's Alaska effort, it was clear that the question of subsistence on the d-2 areas would be one that must be addressed. But, no hard data on subsistence existed and without it no coherent policy could be formulated. Because of this deficiency, an important aspect of the Park Service's research program in Alaska during the d-2 period would be a detailed examination of subsistence within or near each of the proposed areas. The subsistence studies would make significant contribution not only to the knowledge of Native and non-Native subsistence practices, land values, and lifestyles, but also to a more general understanding of Alaskan archeology, history, and anthropology. [37]

Detailed research on subsistence commenced in 1974 with a cooperative (NPS and NANA) study of subsistence patterns in the Kobuk Valley. Published as Kuuvanmuit Subsistence, Traditional Eskimo Life in the Latter Twentieth Century, this landmark study of Eskimo life would serve as a model for subsistence studies in other areas. In the following year (1976) Merry Allyn Tuten began work on a NPS-financed study of subsistence at Aniakchak; Richard Caulfield, who had worked with Bill Brown at Yukon-Charley, was assigned a similar study in that area and spent six months in the field during the next two years; and Ray Bane moved from the Kobuk study to begin, with Richard K. Nelson and Kathleen Mautner, an analysis of subsistence on the Koyukuk River. In 1976 the Service contracted with the University of Alaska to conduct subsistence research on the remaining proposed parklands. The university's work began in the fall 1976 under the direction of Richard K. Nelson. By the spring of 1977, considerable information on subsistence in all areas was available for use when Interior Department officials testified at hearings before the House Subcommittee on General Oversight and Alaska Lands. [38]

The subsistence studies, as well as a significant portion of all NPS-contracted research in Alaska, were conducted through the Cooperative Park Studies Unit at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Established in 1972, the Cooperative Park Studies Unit (CPSU) consisted of a Biology and Resource Management Program directed by Dr. Frederick C. Dean, professor of wildlife management at the university; and an Anthropology and Historical Preservation Program headed by Zorro Bradley, an NPS anthropologist who held an adjunct professorship in the university.

The CPSU had evolved from an earlier discussion between Vida Bartlett, widow of the late Alaskan Senator and NPS Director Hartzog. As was the case with similar units at various universities around the country, the CPSU was designed to stimulate park related research that would benefit Park Service and university students and faculty. Although established independently of the Service's d-2 effort, the organization of the CPSU lent itself naturally to the flexibility required in that effort. [39]

The original contract establishing the CPSU provided for an ecological evaluation of impacts on recent changes in the use of the Mount McKinley park road, a bio-ecological survey of the proposed north extension of Mount McKinley National Park, investigation of the role of scavenging in the ecology of various mammals and birds, as well as consultation and field assistance to current and future NPS study teams. The Service was quick to grasp the opportunities offered by the biology and resources management program. During 1973 the Park Studies unit handled contracts for Dr. David Murray's visitation study at Gates of the Arctic, a biological survey at the Chukchi-Imuruk proposal, and a biological survey at Dixon Harbor. In following years, the Cooperative Park Studies Unit would produce a number of studies in a wide variety of fields that included geomorphology, climate, limnology, biology, wildlife management and zoology. [40]

On the other hand, the Service seems to have failed, immediately, to grasp the opportunities offered by Zorro Bradley's Anthropology and Historic Preservation program. His office experienced difficulty in filtering funding requests through the Pacific Northwest Regional office. During the first several years of its existence, as a result, the Service actually did little to support the program. [41]

This situation changed through the Park Service's participation in the Interior Department's efforts to implement mandates in section 14(h)(1) of ANCSA. This section allowed the Native regional corporations to select cemeteries and historic sites (not to exceed 2,000,000 acres outside village and regional withdrawals, including sites on wildlife refuges, and national forests). [42]

Implementation of Section 14(h)(1), which included the documentation of historic and cemetery sites significant to Alaska Natives and conveyance of eligible sites, would prove, conceptually and procedurally, a complicated and formidable undertaking. It essentially required outsiders to research and describe the significance of sites for peoples of entirely different cultures, and different sets of values. [43] Procedurally, implementation would involve the cooperation of three federal agencies and the twelve land-holding Native regional corporations created by ANCSA. The Bureau of Land Management would be responsible for adjudication and issuance of patents. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, which the Secretary of the Interior had designated as the lead agency in the process, would certify the existence and significance of all sites selected. As the Department of the Interior's authority and advisor on historical matters the National Park Service would serve as technical consultant to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. [44]

Following considerable discussion with BIA and BLM in Washington, D.C. and Alaska, the role of the NPS in the 14(h)(1) process had been resolved by early January 1975. [45] On June 23 of that year the Service contracted with the University of Alaska "to provide prehistoric and historic site surveys under provision 14(h) of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act". [46]

From 1975 until July 1976, the 14(h)(1) team—ten anthropologists, archeologists, and historians directed by Zorro Bradley with Melody Webb Grauman as project coordinator—worked closely with ten of the Native Regional Corporations that had requested Park Service assistance. Serving as cultural resource consultants, the researchers helped to compile cultural resource inventories from which site selections could be made, reviewed existing literature, and conducted archival research to prepare bibliographies of site reference in historical and anthropological literature, conducted interviews, and assisted in writing the statements of significance required for each site application. The researchers had advised the Native Corporations on a variety of cultural resource matters, such as planning, protection, use, and interpretation of the resources; writing of native histories; and the establishment of village or regional museums and other forms of cultural centers. In this early phase, the researchers and the corporations resolved problems of establishing criteria for evaluating Native sites. They developed appropriate new criteria which were incorporated in the formal rules and regulations for implementation of 14(h)(1). [47]

During two intensive field seasons 14(h) researchers inventoried more than 7,000 sites at a cost of $700,000. Based upon this list, twelve regional corporations applied for 4,035 14(h)(1) sites spread across the face of Alaska. In the future, each of these sites would have to be investigated on the ground to determine its extent and whether or not it met statutory requirements. Researchers would delineate boundaries, photograph and sketch sites, and write reports. The BIA estimated the entire process would take five years and cost $5,000,000. [48]

Onsite investigation of the 4,035 applications commenced during the 1978 field season. Using a research design devised by Field Director Elizabeth Andrews that was based upon subsistence pattern theory, research crews visited forty-two sites in three areas. While Jim Ketz, Tim Sczawinski, Leslie Conton, and Elliot Gehr surveyed sites on Hinchinbrook Island in Prince William Sound, Russ Sacket and Kathryn Koutsky investigated six sites near Haines and Juneau in Southeast Alaska and twelve more around the village of Shaktoolik on Norton Sound. [49]

Park Service participation in implementation of 14(h)(1) was more involved than that originally conceived, partially, because of internal problems in the Bureau of Indian Affairs. By 1982, during discussions regarding transfer of the Park Service's 14(h)(1) function back to the BIA, Dean John Bligh of the University of Alaska indicated NPS participation was crucial to the success of the program. Nevertheless, on January 13, 1983, the Park Service terminated agreements and contracts with the University of Alaska, including that with the CPSU. This action necessarily brought to an end the Service's participation in the implementation of Section 14(h)(1). [50]

For the National Park Service, participation in the 14(h)(1) program had benefits far beyond the immediate results. From the very beginning the 14(h)(1) studies brought expertise in cultural history to the Park Service's planning program, which had been long recognized as a necessity in the Alaska parklands. It certainly contributed to knowledge and understanding of subsistence in Alaska. The work of the 14(h)(1) staff with the Native Corporations earned considerable goodwill toward the Park Service and its Alaska programs that would contribute to the success of its Alaska proposals. [51]

The program proved to be important in a larger sense. As early as 1977, the 14(h)(1) program had resulted in publication of Elizabeth Andrews' two-volume report that detailed her work with Doyon, Ltd. at 37 villages in an area larger than California; Gary Stein's two-volume study of 422 historic sites in the Aleutian area; 9 published articles; 16 conference papers; and 13 reports and theses. Additionally, the staff had conducted 4 classes, workshops, and training sessions on cultural resource management aimed at Natives and representatives of other federal and state agencies. [52] The 14(h)(1) staff conducted basic research in the history and culture of Alaska Natives. Their work pushed back the frontiers of Alaska history, beyond the battles of World War II, the 1898 Gold Rush, and Russian exploration and settlement, to include in that panorama, the story of the Native peoples in that panorama.

The NPS Alaska Task Force planners of 1972 and 1973, who had prepared the first planning and environmental documents submitted to Congress, had to work under severe time and political limitations. The people detailed to Alaska during the period were influenced, as well, by their own experience and had applied the park planning concepts they had learned in the "Lower 48." However valid these concepts might have been elsewhere, later planners, who had the benefit of extended field work and more detailed research, concluded that the early master plans were often deficient. While agreeing with basic purposes and objectives of those plans, Bill Brown wrote, the development proposals and visitor use specifics were often inappropriate to natural and cultural realities. As Brown and his assistants learned more about the Yukon-Charley area, for example, they concluded that recreational float trips on the Kandik and Nation rivers, which had been described earlier as "outstanding", were actually quite problematical because of wildly fluctuating water levels, access problems, upstream land ownership, and oil and gas development activity. Similarly, conditions in the country—dense stands of spruce, swampy muskeg and sloughs in the lowlands, as well as vicious swarms of insects—made unnecessary proposed campsites and trail systems where patterns of summer use of beach campsites and water travel had long been established. [53]

The recommendations the keymen made actually went beyond a revision of the 1973 master plans. Based upon several years of intensive work, they recommended a new approach for Park Service planning and management of the proposed parklands. In Alaska, they argued, extreme climatic conditions, terrain, isolation, distance, pre-existing cultural patterns, even the vast swarms of insects, would continue to determine modern use patterns. Under these conditions, imposition of the process that worked elsewhere seemed destined for failure, however well-intentioned the motives. Based upon their experience, the keymen recommended a more flexible, experimental, and evolutionary approach to Park Service planning and management in Alaska, one that would not have an irrevocable effect on the new parklands. [54]

Based upon this analysis the Alaska Task Force planners envisioned a system of parks in Alaska that Bill Brown has described as a "wealth of landscape mosaics":

1. Those that meet visitor expectations for traditional national park access, staffing, and facilities.

2. Intermediate spaces where access and visitor aids are rudimentary - equivalent to undeveloped or wilderness parklands in other states.

3. Outback spaces where visitors will be entirely on their own—wilderness in an absolute sense, compounded by size, weather, and terrain factors only rarely approximated elsewhere.

Only the developed areas and access zones of the older, established Alaskan parks were envisioned as meeting the first, or "traditional" criterion, and, even in those areas expected development would only approximate that traditionally identified with parks in the "Lower 48." The intermediate group would include some portions of the proposed parklands in close proximity to Anchorage (Lake Clark) or connecting to Alaska's limited road system (Yukon-Charley, Kenai Fjords, and portions of Wrangell-St. Elias). The rest—some 95% of all Alaska's parklands—fit the last category. Here, in the words of John Kauffmann, "people can find remoteness amid the open landscapes, avoid disturbance, and enjoy solitude . . . visitors will take the country on its own terms." [55]

In this "mosaic of landscapes," the Park Service's Alaska planners proposed abandoning the recreational/developmental approach that had long dominated Park Service management. Preservation of large ecosystems would be the dominant theme in the new Alaska parklands. Resource preservation would, however, exist side by side with a concern for the protection of traditional uses of the land, however contradictory that might seem to be. [56]

With the introduction of H.R. 39 in January 1977, the focus of the struggle over the Alaska National Interest lands shifted and brought on a new cast of characters. Secretary Andrus's order for an analysis of H.R. 39 and a re-examination of Secretary Morton's proposals elicited, of course, a flurry of activity in Alaska, and the administration's proposals required updating of the legislative support data. As passage of an Alaska lands bill seemed to loom closer in the latter part of 1977 and into 1978, both the Department of the Interior and the individual agencies that would be involved in management of the proposed areas began to prepare for implementation of the legislation. [57] As the emphasis in the Alaska Area Office gradually shifted to preparing for operations and as the keymen completed collecting the basic information required for legislative support data, the keymen functions wound down. Several of the keymen stayed on, taking on added duties. Bob Belous became public liaison officer, while continuing to develop an NPS subsistence policy and work at Cape Krusenstern and Kobuk Valley. Marc Malik continued to compile material for various areas while providing design functions for existing areas, and John Kauffmann participated in the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation's Recreation/Wild River Studies in the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska. Others left. Ralph Root returned to the Denver Service Center in spring 1977, and Bill Brown temporarily left the Service to assist North Slope Natives in a variety of cultural resource activities. The end of one phase in the Park Service's efforts to secure new parklands in Alaska came when Al Henson, who had done so much to shape the Service's program in Alaska, left in September 1977 to join the staff of the Denver Service Center. [58]

Primary responsibility for interim management of the d-2 lands rested with the Bureau of Land Management. Because any activities allowed could significantly alter resources and limit options available to future managers, and because that agency possessed limited capability to adequately monitor those activities, the National Park Service and other four-systems agencies had been closely involved from the very beginning. The Service cooperated with the BLM and other agencies in developing procedures and stipulations for seismic and surface geology programs and a policy regarding use of all-terrain vehicles on d-2 lands. They reviewed applications and assisted in developing stipulations for permits that ranged from a proposal for construction of an ice road on Cape Espenberg, a request to conduct military maneuvers at Gates of the Arctic, requests for oil and gas exploration permits such as Standard Oil's proposal for a geological-geophysical study in the central arctic, to a request for a permit to cut firewood near Walker Lake in Gates of the Arctic. All the while the Alaska Area Office maintained an ongoing program of monitoring activities in the proposed parklands. [59]

The relationship between the Park Service and BLM regarding interim management of the d-2 lands was often contentious. Nevertheless, the Service did gain an understanding of the complexity of management in the new Alaska areas and experience in dealing with many of the issues that exist to the present.

The Park Service and the other federal agencies had looked forward to management of the proposed Alaskan areas since 1972. Despite involvement in interim management, and the planning and preparation for management that had gone on, few could have predicted that management responsibility would come the way in which it did—thrust upon the Service as a result of President Carter's December 1, 1978, National Monument proclamations.

When he recommended national monument protection for the proposed parklands, NPS Director Whalen wrote, "our business is managing people and resources, and we will apply the law reasonably and firmly in the Alaska monuments." [60] Whalen did not make clear how that would be accomplished, and implementing his pledge would prove to be no simple task. The negative reaction of Alaska residents provided a signal that the Service should take a cautious approach. Personnel ceilings and budget constraints prevented the Service from assigning new people to the monuments. The Department of the Interior did not request a FY '79 supplemental appropriation for the $3,469,000 to $5,200,000 estimated to be necessary for management of the NPS monuments, but instead submitted a request to reprogram existing funds. When this request, which was supported by OMB, was denied, the Service simply had no adequate funds to staff the areas. Furthermore, the general feeling that the monument proclamations were a temporary measure pending legislative action, made aggressive management seem inappropriate. [61]

The wisdom of the decision not to staff the new monuments could not be tested during the winter months, when little activity, save local trapping and hunting, traditionally takes place. John Cook and members of his staff did visit various "hot spots"—communities like Eagle and Glenallen—where opposition to the monuments and the Park Service was particularly high. When the Real Alaska Coalition, a statewide coalition of sportsmen's and recreation groups, sponsored an attempt at organized law-breaking at the "Great Denali Trespass" in early February, existing personnel, along with ten rangers reassigned from parks in the Pacific Northwest, met the situation discreetly and with few difficulties. [62]

The initial approach to management of the new NPS monuments rested, in part, on the assumption that Congress would act on the proposed legislation prior to the next Alaska sport hunting season which would begin in early August 1979. [63] As it became clear that the legislative process would not be completed before that critical date, NPS and Interior Department officials agreed that some method of establishing an NPS presence in the monuments must be found, despite the personnel and funding constraints. In early June Alaska area Director Cook requested Bill Tanner, then chief ranger at Chamizal National Monument, to draw up a plan for the short-term staffing of the new Alaska monuments. [64] Although patterned roughly on the concept of the special events teams, the staffing and operational plan which Tanner prepared and the Park Service and Interior Department approved was a protection rather than enforcement plan designed to:

provide accurate information regarding the National Park Service, its objectives and policies; to provide the traditional services of search and rescue, emergency medical care and other public services to the visitors and residents of the monuments; [and] to provide the best possible protection to the resources of the monuments. [65]

The eventual cost of the program was $551,000. Travel pay and expenses came from the reprogramming authority of the Service's emergency law and order account. The twenty-one rangers and one clerk-typist detailed to Alaska, however, were paid by their home parks. [66]

During the first week of July 1979 Richard Smith, whom Director Whalen had chosen to coordinate the program, Tanner, Walt Dabney, Park Ranger at Grand Teton National Park, and Mike Finley, then assigned to the Service's WASO office, selected the rest of what became known as the Ranger Task Force. The twenty-one rangers on the task force were all people with considerable experience, holding, generally, senior level ranger positions (district rangers and chief rangers) in seventeen parks, the Washington office, and Albright Training Center at Grand Canyon. Among the other criteria used in selection were a proven ability to deal with people under stressful circumstances, demonstrated skill in ranger activities, and an ability to operate independently for long periods of time. Finally, all were commissioned law enforcement officers. [67]

The first members of the Task Force flew into Anchorage on July 15, with the rest arriving on August 1 . Seven people were assigned to specific areas (Wrangell-St. Elias, Gates of the Arctic, Kenai Fjords, and, toward the latter part of the summer, Kotzebue). [68] The remaining fourteen people remained in the Anchorage office, with one group responsible for task force affairs and liaison with the Alaska Area Office. Another group acted as liaison with other federal agencies and with search and rescue operations, and a third group was assigned to field areas as required. The latter was in the field most of the time. Four people, for example, spent ten days at Lake Minchumina adjacent to Denali National Monument, and four more spent ten days at Katmai. [69]

Regardless of the reasons for not more actively managing the new monuments before August 1979, the Park Service had given a false impression of its intentions in Alaska, and had contributed to a growing belief that President Carter's national monument proclamations actually intended to have little effect on the lives and lifestyles of Alaskans. Arrival of the Ranger Task Force, indicating as it did, that the Park Service was indeed serious about protecting resources in those areas, shattered the prevailing 'business as usual' calm that had followed the initial outburst of opposition to the Carter administration's actions, and sparked a new round of protests against the monuments and the Park Service. Rangers assigned to Kenai Fjords, Lake Clark, and Kotzebue encountered little overt resentment and went about their jobs with little apparent difficulty. Elsewhere, however, task force rangers found themselves to be the brunt of considerable hostility. [70] Business establishments at Bettles Field (Gates of the Arctic N.M.) and in the Wrangell-Saint Elias area refused services to the Task Force rangers, and those assigned to the latter were forced to leave their rented quarters when their landlady received a bomb threat. Even those in Anchorage encountered similar situations. When Stu Coleman, who had been assigned to Lake Clark, came to Anchorage for treatment of an impacted tooth, the first dentist visited indicated that he would prefer not to treat a National Park Service employee. [71]

Such incidents quite naturally proved irritating. Of greater concern, however, was an underlying threat of actual violence directed toward the Ranger Task Force. Many Task Force Rangers at one time or another received anonymous death threats. Several incidents throughout the summer gave these threats a credibility they might not have had ordinarily. Someone, for example, fired five shots through John Cook's office window one night, and another assaulted an individual known to be friendly to rangers assigned at Wrangell-Saint Elias. On September 11, an arsonist destroyed a plane chartered for the use of the three rangers manning that area. [72]

Task Force Rangers recognized that such incidents described above were the work of individuals, and did not reflect on the vast majority of Alaskans. [73] In the face of considerable opposition, and without the traditional organizational support structure that existed elsewhere, task force rangers went about the jobs they had been sent to do—patrolling huge areas, answering hundreds of questions about the monuments, carrying out searches for downed aircraft and issuing citations, when necessary, for illegal hunting in the monuments. [74]

In the public's perception, ranger activities had mixed results, some members of the Ranger Task Force were charged with using excessive force ("Gestapo" tactics) and others with deliberately refusing to enforce the law. [75] Some within the Service itself criticized the task force approach, arguing that it allowed the Service to avoid responsibility for managing the national monuments as Director Whalen had said it would do. There may be some a certain truth to that charge, but probably the real criticism should have been leveled at decisions that failed to provide requested funding for a more permanent commitment of staff and operations. Nevertheless the 1979 Ranger Task Force, and the one that followed in 1980, had, under the most trying conditions, established a NPS presence in the proposed Alaska Parklands, and made a clear statement that the resource values there would be protected. [76] It introduced and personalized the operational side of the NPS to many local people. In return it had introduced the Alaska context to a number of people in the Park Service, many of whom would assume responsible positions in the areas following passage of ANILCA. The Ranger Task force had absorbed—and dissipated—considerable hostility. Though that hostility had by no means disappeared when the Service began to permanently staff the areas following passage of ANILCA, the new superintendents and staffs found their work to be much easier because of the pioneering effort of the task force.

Thus, the Park Service could look back on nine years of intensive study, planning, and management of the Alaska parklands when President Carter signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980. But the job was just beginning. For the Park Service, it would mean a formal commitment to properly managing a total area that more than doubled the existing National Park system. The experience the Service had gained during the preceding nine years, would prove to be vital in the coming years.