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

Since World War II, Alaska's Far North has undergone amazing changes. From being a region barely known and noted by the world at large, it has become a focal point of international interests: geopolitical, industrial, and conservationist. The instruments of modern society have come to the far places. They have shrunk the distances that made these places remote from the outer world and from each other.

Individual episodes spurring the recent progression--military installations, Statehood, acts of Congress, oil and mineral discoveries, the oil pipeline, and emplacement of a bewildering array of lines on the map--have aggregated into a more profound and revolutionary change: For at least 10,000 years people dwelt in these landscapes subject to the natural forces around them. The fate of travelers depended on the sufferance and succor of local people. Now all this is reversed, with the greater part of the shift occurring in the last 40 years. Natural forces have been largely tamed, at least temporarily, by modern transport and imported technologies. And the fate of local landscapes and people depends to an extraordinary degree on decisions made elsewhere.

In many discussions with local people, this writer has heard one sentiment more than any other: the heartfelt wish that things had not changed. The people who call the upper country home remember a vast and mainly vacant public-domain commons whose few inhabitants were governed almost without exception by customary rules. They all knew each other, and they had enough time and room, usually, to dissipate their occasional conflicts. They didn't ask for much, nor were they given a lot of things that they hadn't asked for--like new laws and regulations or suddenly appearing roads through their settlements and villages. But these things have come unasked in recent years.

When they came, a dichotomy developed. Local people divided over the two generic prospects for their future offered them by outsiders. As writer John McPhee has observed, this division

... produced a tension that underlay much of what was happening in the state. It was tension over the way in which Alaska might proceed. ... [I]t was the tension of preservation versus development, of stasis versus economic productivity, of wilderness versus the drill and the bulldozer, and in part it had caused the portentous reassignment of land that now...was altering, or threatening to alter, the lives of everyone in the state.¹

Signs and portents of changing times began with the war and accelerated thereafter. A big landing field was built 5 miles upstream from Bettles in 1945 to support petroleum explorations in the Naval Petroleum Reserve north and northwest of the central Brooks Range. A new town of Bettles Field grew up there, sheltered partly in buildings moved from what had become Old Bettles. Large-scale air freighting could now commence. Ex-Spring Creek miner Al Withrow, the elder, ran the radio beacon there. A companion Indian village, Evansville, grew up at the north end of the runway in response to job opportunities.²

In the Fifties the Kennecott Corporation renewed its interest in the Bornite copper deposits on Ruby Creek near Shungnak. Another big airstrip, development roads, and increased barge traffic resulted. Should commodity markets improve, a mine employing up to 600 people and a community of thousands was forecast.³

Increased air access to the Brooks Range periphery encouraged a minor boom in guided hunting into areas heretofore known only to Natives, prospectors, and geologists. Old-style guides like Hal Waugh, Bud Helmericks, and Bernd Gaedeke established camps and lodges on the forested south flank of the Brooks Range at such fly-in sites as Iniakuk Lake, Walker Lake, and Takahula Lake. Hal Waugh, honored as the first Master Guide in Alaska, believed with passion in the principles of fair chase. He fought the growing trend of fast-in, fast-out hunting guides, for whom numbers of hunting parties and big bucks were the objectives of guiding. He warned his clients that the old ways--getting on the ground, taking time, and sweating for an animal in its own terrain with no guarantees of kill success--would govern any hunt he guided. He took only a few parties each year, screened by these standards, to participate in what he believed was a profound human experience when conducted ethically. He and his peers deplored the cheaters and lamented "the end of old Alaska," which, since the war, had fallen under the sway of "Industrial Religion."⁴

While groups of old timers huddled around campfires and cabin stoves remembering better days, the big world kept corning. Conveyance from the federal government to the state of Prudhoe Bay's potentially rich oil lands opened the way for major oil discoveries. Soon followed the push for roads and pipeline. Jet airliners began service to Barrow, Deadhorse (Prudhoe), and Kotzebue.⁵

Meanwhile, the conservation movement had been busy. Beginning in 1950 and for several years thereafter, the National Park Service fielded an Alaska Recreation Survey team headed by George Collins. Among the published recommendations was a preliminary concept for an Arctic Wilderness Park. Collins encouraged Olaus and Mardy Murie's expedition to the eastern Brooks Range in 1956, which was supported by a consortium of scientific and conservation groups in Alaska and across the country.⁶ Partly as a result of the Muries's expedition, the Arctic National Wildlife Range was established by Public Land Order in December 1960. While stumping around the country for Brooks Range preservation, Olaus, then president of The Wilderness Society, urged that some vestiges of Alaska's backcountry be saved for all the people before "progress" claimed them. He carried this message in full recognition that land withdrawals of any kind were controversial in Alaska. As an honorary member of the Pioneers of Alaska, he urged that designated wilderness areas would provide the last refuge for Alaska's traditional Native and pioneer life-styles. Far from locking up the land, such areas, properly adapted to the needs of their neighbors and inhabitants, would perpetuate frontier Alaska's beauty, scientific values, social and cultural integrity, and access for the people at large.⁷

This argument succinctly framed the conservationists' position for the years ahead. Places and details would vary. But the lines then drawn would continue to define the intellectual, esthetic, and emotional ramparts of a struggle dedicated to thwarting open season on arctic Alaska by any version of Progress that would be destructively exploitative. In addition to the basic wilderness preservation idea were two complementary elements of the largely homegrown Alaska conservation movement: Concern for preservation of traditional Alaskan life ways, both Native and frontier American; and protection of fragile, frozen landscapes from industrial projects conceived in ignorance or for narrow economic reasons. These concerns resulted, on the one hand, in alliance of conservationists and traditionalists: on the other, in a strong environmental emphasis that, for example, blocked early pipeline construction plans whose design and engineering principles were ill-adapted to the problems of permafrost.⁸

The national interest in a balanced program of development and conservation for Alaska was formally recognized in the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971. The act directed federal agencies to study outstanding areas for possible designation as national conservation units--parks, refuges, forests, and wild and scenic rivers. In part because of Robert Marshall's well publicized adventures in the Brooks Range, as well as the writings of his cohorts and followers, the Gates of the Arctic region had long been viewed as a potential National Park. During the 1960s the National Park Service had conducted its studies of Alaska's natural and cultural landscapes. During this period the central Brooks Range came to the fore as a premier parkland candidate. For example, in January 1965, George Collins, Chairman of the Service's newly formed Alaska Task Force, recommended study of a Brooks Range and Arctic Slope Zone as a potential park; it included the eastern part of the later Gates of the Arctic National Park and preserve.⁹

In 1966 the fruits of these early studies were brought together in an informal study report that recommended for preservation, among other proposals, certain areas in the central Brooks Range: the Anaktuvuk Pass environs as a significant cultural, geological, and wildlife corridor between the Koyukuk and Colville rivers, and the western part of the Endicott Mountains inscribed by the upper Alatna and Kobuk rivers. These headwater areas contained, according to writer Roger Allin,

the most rugged, spectacular, fearsome and awe-inspiring mountains in all of Alaska--and the most remote. While they rise only to elevations of 8,000 to 9,000 feet, the vertical drop between peak and valley floor and the exposure of jagged, bare granite peaks, the isolation of the small lakes, which are ice-free only a few weeks out of the year, formed within the glacial cirques add to the appearance of desolation and the feeling of aloneness one experiences in this last region of true wilderness within the United States....While in this part of Alaska nature is a tough and unforgiving adversary, here also she is beautiful beyond all description--remote, pristine, undiscovered and unspoiled.¹⁰

In an October 1967 meeting in Juneau between Alaska's Governor Walter J. Hickel and National Park Service Director George Hartzog, Hartzog endorsed a proposal by Federal Field committee Chairman Joseph Fitzgerald for a joint NPS-State of Alaska study of the Alatna-Kobuk region "... from the standpoint of its qualifying as a possible addition to the National Park System." The Brooks Range study would be part of a larger NPS-State cooperative effort across Alaska to set aside park and recreation areas in anticipation of major acceleration of the state's economic development.¹¹

Meanwhile, the national organizations of the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society, joined by Alaskan members and supporting groups, had added their endorsements to the idea of Brooks Range preservation. In 1963, a Wilderness Society conclave at Mount McKinley passed the following resolution:

It was the consensus of the [Wilderness Society] Council that the staff explore informally with the Secretary of the Interior a suitable form of wilderness type classification for an appropriate area in the Upper Koyukuk-Endicott Mountains region of the Brooks Range.¹²

By 1964 the Bureau of Land Management, then the federal agency in charge of almost all of Alaska's public domain, was inventorying the south slope of the Brooks Range for recreation sites that should be reserved from destructive forms of commercial or industrial development. Within a few years, under pressure from the Alaska Chapter of the Sierra Club and the Alaska Conservation Society, BLM was preparing a land classification plan that would treat major scenic and recreation sites in the central Brooks Range as wildlands "...to prevent the loss of irreplaceable public values." A workhorse in the conservationists' efforts to protect the central Brooks Range was Richard J. Gordon of Juneau. His letters of advocacy and his analyses of the region's resources and values, beginning in the late Sixties, contributed strongly to the development and defense of expansive conservation proposals that foreshadowed the scope of the eventual parkland.¹³

In June 1968, the NPS unilaterally began the field study of the central Brooks Range endorsed earlier by Director George Hartzog. It occurred in a context of gathering urgency, for the State of Alaska's proposed Arctic Transportation Corridor through the Brooks Range, the recent oil discoveries, and the new tourist invasion of the Arctic via commercial airlines had taken the wraps off the remote mountains.

The field reconnaissance was directed by Team Captain Merrill Mattes, a historian, with the invaluable flight assistance of Chief Pilot Theron Smith of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The three-man team included Bailey Breedlove and Richard Prasil, providing a balance of cultural, landscape architectural, and natural history disciplines. The team's impressions of the country--its flora, fauna, geology, scenery, and scattered humans--recall those of Marshall, except for the decline of population in the upper country (the Wiseman-Nolan camp comprised only 18 souls). At Wild Lake, a bearded man--doubtless a disciple of homesteader Fred Meador, self-appointed protector of the lake and its creatures--chased the party's taxiing amphibious plane in a rowboat to protest this noisy disturbance of Eden. At Anaktuvuk Pass the visitors were welcomed by patriarchs Elijah and Simon, and the Eskimos' sod houses and meat-laden drying racks were noted. Kobuk village seemed "... a quiet peaceful place" compared to the Outside's civil rights and anti-Vietnam War strife.¹⁴

The team's recommendations took account of the State's plan for an Arctic Transportation Corridor--presumably via John River and through Anaktuvuk Pass--proposing a two-part parkland. The small east section centered around Mount Doonerak and included upper North Fork and the Gates themselves: the larger west section comprised the Alatna-Kobuk headwaters, including Arrigetch Peaks, Mount Igigpak, Walker Lake, and the Kobuk canyons. The park was conceived as undeveloped, roadless, and wild, supporting Marshall's idea of the ultimate wilderness. Subsistence hunting by Natives would continue under this proposal.¹⁵

These modest recommendations struck a middle ground between a larger Alaska Wilderness Council proposal and a restricted lake-recreation site concept pushed by Alaska miners. The preservationists would extend the west section of the parkland north of the Arctic Divide to protect important caribou range and preserve a transect of North Slope tundra. Mining spokesman Jack McCord envisioned a state-federal cooperative program that would develop recreation sites and floatplane landings along selected lake shores, plus pack trails radiating from the landings into the hinterlands where government-built cabins would support mineral exploration by mining engineers.¹⁶

Shortly after the NPS Kobuk-Koyukuk field-study team returned from Alaska, nearly a year before the June 1969 publication of its report, chief planner Theodore R. Swem of the Service's Washington Office had supervised preparation of an extended 4-million acre Gates of the Arctic proposal. It was part of a larger package conceived by Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall.¹⁷ In the closing months of 1968 Udall presented the package to President Lyndon B. Johnson. The Secretary urged that the Gates of the Arctic and other key Alaskan and Lower 48 areas totaling 7 million acres be proclaimed National Monuments as Johnson's parting conservation gift to the Nation in the last days of his administration. Anticipating Congressional distress at such a broad use of the Antiquities Act (which gave the President authority to proclaim National Monuments), and angry at Udall's manuevering to achieve this last-minute coup, Johnson balked and refused to sign the Gates of the Arctic and other large-acreage proclamations. Not until after passage of the Settlement Act in 1971 would the Gates proposal be revived.¹⁸

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The nine years between passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 (ANCSA) and passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980 (ANILCA) telescoped historic decisions and events whose counterparts had taken a century in the trans-Mississippi West. The overriding result of this fast-motion Alaskan replay was the disposition by Congress of Alaska's 375,000,000 acres, almost all of which had been owned by the federal government. Through ANCSA, Congress lifted the land freeze that had safeguarded Native land-claim options. Alaska Natives were authorized to select 44 million acres. The State of Alaska could now resume selection of the balance of 104 million acres authorized by the Statehood Act of 1958. And, after a titanic struggle that tested the Nation's political processes, 106 million acres of new conservation units were established by ANILCA.

One of these new conservation units is the 8 million-acre Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve. As finally defined by the statute, the parkland stretches nearly 200 miles from the Koyukuk's North Fork country westward to include the upper reaches of the Kobuk and the Noatak. North of the divide it captures the north-flowing streams and arctic valleys tributary to the Colville--from Itkillik on the east to Killik on the west. Excepting blocs of Native-selected lands in the Anaktuvuk Pass vicinity and scattered private tracts, the parkland comprises an integrated geographic region that extends from the ridgeline of the central Brooks Range to its eaves. Abutting it on the west is the Noatak National Preserve. And on the east, beyond the pipeline-haul road corridor through Middle Fork and Atigun Pass, stretches the expanded Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the Canadian border. The Gates acts as keystone for this vast reservation of virtually the entire Brooks Range.

Seven million acres of the Gates parkland were designated National Park; 1 million acres in two sections were designated National Preserve. The southwest or boot section of the preserve on the upper Kobuk contains a congressionally reserved right-of-way that would, if needed, allow surface transportation between the Alaska Pipeline Haul Road (now Dalton Highway) and the Ambler Mining District north of the Kobuk River (Bornite and other mineral prospects). The northeast section of the preserve on the upper Itkillik contains acreage whose subsurface mineral rights are held by the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation. Sport hunting is allowed in the preserve; otherwise it is managed as though it were part of the National Park. Excepting private tracts and Native corporation lands within the park boundary, the entire National Park was designated wilderness by ANILCA.¹⁹ Under that law's provisions, also, the National Preserve lands are being studied for wilderness suitability.

The administrative history of the 9-year-long "d-2" period (so-called from the section of ANCSA that required federal agencies to make conservation-unit proposals to Congress) is, as previously noted, a complex one covered admirably by other writers.²⁰ Moreover, the Gates of the Arctic proposal was only one small part of larger issues played out on the national stage: philosophical and political contests over preservation and development; mobilization of both prodevelopment and proconservation coalitions to press their causes; and incredibly intricate bureaucratic and legislative histories, whose main fields of action--involving thousands of people--were Washington, New York, Denver, Juneau, Fairbanks, Anchorage, and other distant places. Even slight insinuation of these quagmire topics into this history of a remote mountain fastness would constitute a book-length interlude. It is the landscape of the Gates region and the actions thereon that have moved this narrative thus far. And there we now return.

During the 1970s two latter-day pilgrims, John Kauffmann and Ray Bane, traversed the Gates region summer and winter--learning its secrets, mingling with its people. Kauffmann, a writer and park planner, had been appointed by the Park Service to steer the Gates proposal through the years leading to its establishment-- first by Presidential Proclamation as a monument in 1978, then by Act of Congress as park and preserve in 1980. A seasoned wilderness trekker, Kaufmann was also a poet and romantic. He was attuned, as Marshall had been, to the lure of the central Brooks Range. Bane, his assistant, was an ex-teacher in Arctic Coast villages and an anthropologist. His years of arctic experience, during which he and his wife Barbara had several times circuited the country by dog team, had prepared him for local residence and extended surveys through the region.

In gathering the data that described the park proposal and informed congressional decisions, these men reinforced their already strong attachments to the country. Kauffman's concept of the park would respond to Robert Marshall's plea to "keep northern Alaska largely a wilderness." In a 1976 speech Kauffmann described the subtle variations on the basic theme of the Gates' arctic mountain scenery, from valley to valley, east to west, south to north: "The gothic grandeur of Mount Doonerak ... The stately valley of the Reed ... the stark sweep and big skies of the arctic foothills." He closed with the thought that

the greatest resource which this proposed park offers is space--space for wandering, space for solitude. It is more than a collection of scenic features: it is an integrity of landscape, its size commensurate with the requirements of its ecosystems and the breadth needed to realize its recreational and inspirational opportunities. For 300 years, Americans have benefited from such space, beckoning to frontier experiences. Arctic Alaska is the last such frontier and even it is being circumscribed by developments. Big wild, beautiful landscapes, conducive to primitive travel and sojourn, stretch no further under the United States flag.²¹

Kauffmann believed that the central goal of the National Park Service at Gates of the Arctic should be to "retain the park features and ecosystems in the present untrammeled condition." Later, this purpose was given statutory sanction in ANILCA when Congress declared that "The park and preserve shall be managed ... To maintain the wild and undeveloped character of the area ..."²² Given the special nature of the Gates landscape, Kauffmann urged a protective but unobtrusive management regime, with no in-park developments that would alter wilderness qualities. "While other proposed parks in Alaska and existing parks in the Lower 48 states offer a wider range of modern recreational opportunities, Gates of the Arctic would be available for the experiences that only wild, untouched country can provide."²³

The romantic quest, made earnest by hardship, was never far from Kauffmann's thoughts. His prescription for a personal, hands-on approach to working in such a place--a stewardship that would transcend the mere job to scale peaks of aspiration--is a call to greatness:

No facilities, few visitors do not add up to easy management for the proposed Gates of the Arctic National Park. The area is immense and rugged and inadequately explored, the climate severe, ecological relationships delicate and imperfectly known, local cultural patterns deserving sensitive understanding. A ranger's vehicle will be his airplane, canoe, dogsled--or his boots. He may heat his cabin with wood he has cut, while his wife draws water with a bucket. He must accept arctic dark and cold, few amenities, and the sometimes delicate relationships of small-village living. It is to be hoped that local hire provisions in the legislation will allow the Park Service to alloy experienced NPS supervisors with skilled local residents strong to the life of the arctic and loving of the area that is to be preserved in their care. Such a management team, thriving on the hardscrabble life, can grant Bob Marshall's plea, keeping true the faith that somewhere in America there will always be ...wild country of adventure, a park for discoveries--beyond the ridges and within ourselves.²⁴

Ray Bane became the first resident representative of the Park Service at the Gates. He and his wife Barbara had the experience and the tools to start the tradition envisioned by Kauffmann. Excerpts from one of Ray's field-trip reports, recording his and Barbara's exploration of the upper Noatak Valley, resonate with both the severities and the inspirations of that country:

Up at 5:00 a.m. Departed with the loaded sled at 9:50 a.m. cutting across a narrow strip of tundra to the river ice. For the first two miles a thin layer of snow over the ice made for excellent traveling conditions, but we carne upon an expanse of wind-polished glare ice near the mouth of Portage Creek. The dogs could not gain traction and were literally blown off their feet by winds out of Portage Creek Pass. The sled ice rudder helped to maintain some control. Three miles of slipping and sliding brought us to the beginning of the deep soft snow. For the next six miles I walked ahead on snowshoes while Barbara drove the team. We averaged 2.3 mph and had to make several rest stops. With the exception of one short portage across a particularly large bend, our trail followed the winding path of the river eastward.

Snow cover at this time of year is often referred to as "sugar snow." Beneath a thin top layer the snow has become granulated and lacks body. Anything crossing such cover breaks through and sinks to the bottom. After the snow has been disturbed it quickly sets up and becomes a firm surface. The trail behind us will easily support a loaded sled and team tomorrow. I once spent five arduous days breaking trail to travel 43 miles and later covered the same distance in eight hours. Snowmachines have a more difficult time than dogs attempting to cross such snow, because they spin out and bog down. The best way to travel across such snow cover is to simply strap on snowshoes or skis and slog through it.

Five miles east of portage Creek we crossed an expanse of snow covered overflow. Fortunately the mild temperatures prevented the mush-like mixture from adhering to the sled. This type of overflow is a major hazard to winter travelers during subzero temperatures. Dogs or machines cannot get traction, drag on runners increases drastically, the slush immediately freezes to any cold surface, and it will soak men and dogs. One must portage around such conditions, wait for them to freeze over, or wade across and then build a fire to dry out.

One mile east of Portage Creek we passed a band of 29 caribou grazing along the north side of the valley. Feeding craters and trails throughout the valley indicate a fairly large number of caribou have been wintering in the area. Fresh wolf tracks and the remains of two caribou were found on the river. Three moose moving together up the valley were sighted as were several flocks of ptarmigan and one red fox. Tracks of wolverine, lynx, and hare were noted on the river or in willow groves.

The Noatak Valley becomes progressively more scenic as one travels into its upper reaches. The mountain walls become higher and more precipitous. Mt. Igikpak's dark granite face and needle-like peak stands above its lesser snow blanketed mates like a beacon luring the traveler toward even greater natural grandeur.

Several willow stands along the river offer potential camp sites particularly where the course of the river runs at a right angle to the alignment of the valley. One may camp on the west side of such stands gaining the maximum protection from the east wind. Sites conducive to long term camping are found in small willow lined draws along the sides of the valley. The Twelve Mile Creek draw on the northeast side of the valley appears to be an attractive campsite with excellent protection from the wind and an ample supply of large willows. These well protected draws in strategic locations undoubtedly drew human users since their earliest occupation of this area.

We stopped and set up camp at 2:30 p.m. in a small willow grove near the mouth of Twelve Mile Creek. Both we and the dogs are a bit tired from today's travel. Setting up camp, gathering dry willows, chopping and melting ice for water, preparing dogfood and feeding the dogs, cooking for ourselves, etc., takes three to four hours. Then harnesses have to be dried, repairs made to equipment, the day's notes written up, clothes dried, etc. By the time all this is done it's time to crawl into the sleeping bag and turn out the lamp.

The wind is increasing and the overcast lowering this evening...                                                          

Above Lucky Six Creek our route became more southerly. There was a noticeable incline as we progressed. Overflow ice with a few patches of light water provided firm footing. Only a trace of snow covered the ice. These conditions appear to prevail to the very head of the valley.

The terrain is very impressive. The clouds lifted somewhat revealing mountain peaks and ridges resembling giant pieces of broken glass set on edge. Deep cirques and narrow canyons form large cavities into the barren rock. However, there is no denying the bleak productive potential of this headwaters' area. It would not be an attractive place for a hunter looking for game in the winter. Past subsistence use of the upper Noatak Valley was likely minimal above the mouth of Lucky Six Creek.

Unfortunately the wind increased as we moved up the valley with clouds of ground drift and passing snow showers occasionally creating complete whiteout conditions. Igikpak's peak was completely hidden. We were forced to turn around and head back five miles above the mouth of Lucky Six Creek.

Towards evening the wind subsided and the clouds began breaking. The sun appeared briefly between mountains flanking Iyahuna Creek and painted the ridges and bases of the clouds a deep orange and gold. Dark clouds continue to fill the upper and lower valley.²⁵

As an on-site anthropologist Ray became the intermediary between a known past and an unknown future, between the Park Service and the people of the scattered camps and communities who wondered how the new parkland would change their lives. He later explained his role in these words:

The work of numerous researchers, of which I am but one, has revealed a complex interrelationship between what many have called a wilderness and the people who have and continue to draw upon these environments for their basic subsistence needs. Recognizing its responsiblity to avoid placing undue hardship on established rural Alaskans, the Park Service has pioneered research efforts into subsistence and attempted to develop new management regulations and policies to permit the continuation of this ancient lifestyle.

My personal role in the N.P.S. subsistence effort has been varied ranging from actually living among active subsistence based Native peoples to helping these same people to understand and reply to proposed subsistence regulations. Along the way I often find myself assisting in environmental studies, identifying cultural sites, acting as a liaison between N.P.S. and village councils, explaining N.P.S. policies and regulations to miners, trappers, big game guides, and others, assisting visitors to the new parklands, etc. Utilizing a small aircraft, dog team, and boats, I visit numerous remote villages and scattered homesites. My office is my home, a small log cabin in the village of Bettles Field near the Gates of the Arctic National Monument.²⁶

In late 1978, the Alaska Lands bill jammed in Congress. The ANCSA-imposed deadline for Congressional action on this issue was rapidly approaching. Fearing that the proposed conservation units would be lost through Congress's inaction, President Jimmy Carter and Secretary of the Interior Cecil Andrus joined in a massive withdrawal of these proposed areas: the President proclaiming 17 National Monuments, including Gates of the Arctic; Secretary Andrus withdrawing 13 potential refuges by public land orders. This action held the conservation units in trust, giving Congress more time to resolve its differences. And it reinforced the need for Congressional action, for the National Monuments would have to be managed much more restrictively than the parklands proposed in the Alaska Lands bill. The bill had been crafted to blend the national interest with the needs of local people for access, cabin privileges, subsistence use, and sport hunting. The proclamations brought into play general federal regulations only marginally adaptive to Alaskan conditions.²⁷

Predictably, all hell broke loose in the hinterlands. Ray and Barbara Bane, still the only resident field representatives near the proposed northern parklands, received the full brunt of resentment in their community. Years of patient work--explaining the proposals, relaying local viewpoints, countering rumors, establishing trust--went down the drain, except for the understanding of a few staunch friends.²⁸

This response was felt across Alaska by Park Service people, as large segments of the public and press waxed furious at what they perceived to be an unconstitutional application of the Antiquities Act and public land laws.

Recognizing that the proclamations and withdrawals represented a holding action pending congressional action, the Park Service in Alaska--now headed by John Cook--approached management of the 41 million-acre National Monument accession with caution. Lacking funds, manpower, and public acceptance, Cook determined that the principles of protection, presence, and persuasion, rather than aggressive management and enforcement, should prevail. By hook and by crook he and his cohorts throughout the Service assembled a temporary-duty Ranger Task Force that provided a thin line of custodial care for the new parklands during the 2-year National Monument period. It was a kind of interregnum, bridging the gap between congressional acts. For both the managers and the carefully chosen rangers in the field, it was a balancing act between opposite public perceptions that criticized Park Service aggressiveness on the one hand and its lassitude on the other.

Despite these criticisms, and instances of threat and vandalism, the handful of Task Force rangers carried out their sensitive assignments at Gates and other areas. They established a presence, greatly restricted illegal hunting, and absorbed much hostility. In time, particularly after some ugly episodes of plane tampering and arson by disgruntled individuals, the great majority of Alaskans who came in contact with them accepted the rangers as people, despite unwavering opposition to the monuments and other withdrawals. A number of the rangers would come to Alaska on permanent assignment after ANILCA was passed.²⁹

Passage of ANILCA in December 1980 gave the congressional stamp of approval to the new parklands. The Park Service inaugurated permanent staffing, began legally mandated park planning, and started to develop steady operational relationships with neighboring individuals and communities. The pioneering phase of Park Service activities during the proposal and National Monument periods had largely vindicated the management principles of gradualism, persuasion when at all possible, and day-by-day integration with park landscapes and neighbors that had long been advocated by the Service's Alaska employees. At Gates of the Arctic and in the other new areas, small field staffs--most of them remotely situated in communities that only grudgingly acquiesced to the new system of land tenure and authority--went about the business of setting up their parks. At Gates, the ultimate wilderness park, the main task would be to allow Nature to rule these landscapes in its own way, with managers intervening in authorized human activities only as necessary to conform them to the natural regime.

As John Kauffmann predicted, this task has not been easy. The initial planning process, now mercifully ended, had forced both the park staff and its neighbors to contemplate the full range of problems that might possibly occur. On the one hand were the fears of park neighbors over potentially arbitrary and capricious administration. On the other was the fear of administrators over potential worst-case violations of law covering a wide range of complex issues--subsistence, access, cabins, sport hunting--that distinguish wilderness parklands in Alaska from traditional parklands in the Lower 48. Acculturation under ANILCA's provisions has become a two-way street: local people facing another large dose of change that threatens their traditional patterns; Park Service people required to adapt their own venerable traditions of stewardship to new modes of management flexibility under a law that deals almost as much with neighbors as with natural landscapes.

In contrast to the fearsome systemic levels of concern forced by the planning process, day-to-day operations deal with specific cases. To the credit of park neighbors, there have been remarkably few premeditated violations of law and regulation. And, on the whole, in the gray areas created by the law's complexity, moderation and going half-way have marked the efforts of both park staff and park neighbors to respond rationally to the new realities.³⁰

A working example of such efforts is underway at the time of this writing. The park's Subsistence Resource Commission, made up mainly of local people, is working with the park staff to develop a Subsistence Hunting Plan for the park that will satisfy both park managers and subsistence hunters on matters of eligibility, traditional-use zones, and access--all touched upon by ANILCA, but requiring detailed resolution in the specific park context. A phase of this work relates to the problem sketched in Chapter 6--access of Anaktuvuk Pass villagers to summer hunting and fishing sites by ATVs. Existing access easements across park lands are unsatisfactory to the villagers because of bad terrain, yet summer ATV traverse across park lands not within easements is prohibited by law because of potential damage to vegetation. The Park Service and the villagers are exploring the possibility of a land exchange or, in the last resort, a legislative adjustment to accommodate both park protection and the villagers' subsistence requirements. This is a tough problem; both park protection and subsistence needs are weighty concerns, as reflected by provisions in ANILCA. "Winning" the negotiation is not the point. The people of Anaktuvuk Pass are limiting their access requirements "to an area of demonstrated heavy subsistence use." The Park Service has averred that it will "go to every legitimate length to respond in as helpful a way as possible."³¹

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In historical perspective, the problems and controversies of these first years of park establishment can be viewed as a shakedown cruise. Throughout history the laying on of new land-tenure systems has been painful. Parklands, no matter that they are dedicated to holding intact the diminishing spaces of yesteryear landscapes, are parts of Alaska's new land-tenure system--and are therefore resented. The bugs and contradictions in a law as lengthy and broad of scope as ANILCA--product of 9 years of heated debate and political compromise, pioneering the principle that parks and traditional people dependent on park landscapes can survive together--were to be expected. The fact that all of this is occurring in a larger context of change besetting Alaska could only contribute to stress and turbulence. In this light, for most of the immediately affected people, the transition from an unfenced local commons to a partially fenced national commons shared by local people is progressing remarkably well. In the long run, for those older denizens and their younger followers who wish that things had not changed, creation of the Gates of the Arctic Park and Preserve will be seen as a conservative act. In this place, whatever changes occur around it, the landscapes and life ways of a more innocent age can be perpetuated