Katmai Building in an Ashen Land: Historic Resource Study

TRAVELING IN AND AROUND the Katmai region has long been a formidable task. Weather in the Shelikof Strait, notoriously stormy, has made transportation along the park's eastern coastline difficult both to past and present travelers. Just inland from the coast lies the rugged Aleutian Range, which is broken only occasionally with traversable passes. To the west, the various large lakes ease transportation somewhat; between the lakes and the Bristol Bay coastline, however, most of the major waterways have rapids and other impediments.

Despite all of those obstacles, Katmai's Native peoples used natural geographic corridors to travel across and along the Alaska Peninsula coast. The best known of these routes was the trail that surmounted Katmai Pass; it ran from Katmai Village, on Shelikof Strait, northwest to Iliuk Arm on Naknek Lake. Using kayaks and baidarkas, Native people traveled great distances along the Katmai coast or across the 26-mile Shelikof Strait to travel to Kodiak or Afognak islands.

In later years, Euroamericans patterned their travel with methods similar to those of the Native Americans. Russian fur traders, priests, and explorers sometimes traveled in Native watercraft, while other Euroamericans arrived in ships associated with exploration, fur hunting, and trading activities. Schooners, steamers, fishery tenders, and mailboats all plied the coastal waters. The violent winds and high seas of Shelikof Strait made crossing dangerous and caused numerous shipwrecks and accidents.

More recently, the advent of airplanes has resulted in an increased access to the area and has provided a significant boost to tourism development. Air transportation continues to be critically important today. This dependence on air access is in large part due to the lack of road mileage; the only significant road in the present park, in fact, is a sightseeing road that connects Brooks Camp with the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. Properties associated with transportation within Katmai National Park and Preserve include overland trails, a road, one or more shipwrecks, and an airfield.

Sketch by Norman Dawn showing the Katmai Pass route into the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. Part of a 1925 motion picture expedition, following in the footsteps of National Geographic Society's Katmai expeditions. Seward Gateway, December 5, 1925.

Trails

Katmai's Native inhabitants used natural overland corridors to traverse the Alaska Peninsula. Groups along the Shelikof Strait traveled inland for seasonal subsistence purposes as well as to trade with the Bristol Bay Natives from whom they obtained walrus tusks for creating fishing hooks and spearheads. The two best known routes were the Hallo Bay and Katmai Pass trails. [1]

The Hallo Bay trail, also referred to as the Douglas Pass trail, led from Naknek Lake eastward up the Savonoski River through the Aleutian Range, then down the Ninagiak River to Hallo Bay. The trail was used throughout the Russian and early American periods. [2] According to Wilbur Davis, who interviewed former Savonoski residents in the early 1950s, the Savonoski people used the Hallo Bay trail to get to the coast:

The people who lived in the lakes area used to go across to the Shelikof Strait coast to hunt sea otter and gather shellfish. They went across the Hallo Bay pass or Douglas pass, but not the Katmai pass, keeping their kayaks and gear on the coast side. One of their camps was on the north shore of Hallo Bay. They used both the umiak and kayak and one and two-bladed paddles. [3]

There is one other reference to the Douglas Pass. In 1880, Ivan Petroff, the U.S. census taker, reported that "Douglas [listed as Kaguyak on modern maps], being the primary sea otter hunting center on the coast at this time, was located at the terminus of a portage to Bristol Bay." [4] It is not clear, however, what route constituted the Douglas Pass trail, although it may have used portions of the Hallo Bay trail.

The Katmai Pass trail, beginning just south of the Hallo Bay trail, followed the Naknek Lake system to the mouth of the Ukak River. It then ascended the drainage to its headwaters at Katmai Pass before descending through the cliffs and canyons of the Katmai River to Katmai village.

During the Russian and early American time periods, the Sugpiat/Alutiiq and Savonoski people continued using these established routes for fur trading and hunting as well as for their own subsistence activities. By the late 1790s, the Russians had learned about the pass as well; in response, the Russian-American Company capitalized on the trading ties between the interior and coastal Native peoples by establishing a trading store at Katmai. Two decades later, in 1818, the Russians established the Nushagak trading post. Russian traders at Katmai reacted to the action by employing some of the local villagers to portage goods westward to Nushagak and furs from there back to Katmai. [5]

By 1845, traders and hunting parties routinely headed into the interior of the peninsula and used the Katmai trading post as a base camp. To a lesser extent, they also used the old Hallo Bay portage. But neither trail was a heavily used trade route. To supply their depots along the shores of Bristol Bay, Kodiak-based Russian traders avoided the area. Some sailed around the Alaska Peninsula, while others traversed the peninsula on trails that crossed either Iliamna or Becharof lakes. The trails, both of which were easier than the Hallo Bay or Katmai Pass trails, were located outside of today's park boundaries. [6]

Well into the early American period, the Katmai Pass trail continued to be used for subsistence and trading activities. Following in the footsteps of the Russian American Company, the Alaska Commercial Company maintained similar fur trading activities with its store at Katmai. In 1871, Alphonse Louis Pinart visited Katmai and noted "quite a large business" in furs was being carried on with villages in the interior and on Bristol Bay by way of a portage up the Katmai River, past "Lake Naknik," and down Naknek River to the sea. [7] Former Katmai resident Harry Kaiakokonok remembered his dad, who was born in Savonoski, telling him that the Savonoski people used to travel to Katmai by dog teams. [8]

The mountainous Katmai Pass route was strenuous and dangerous. The fact that the Savonoski people preferred to take the arduous mountain route to trade at Katmai as opposed to taking the easier water route to the Bristol Bay stores is a testament to how strongly they preferred trading with people at Katmai.

By the 1870s, the number of trade goods traversing Katmai Pass was declining. But the route gained new popularity when census taker Ivan Petroff published an account of his crossing in 1881. He characterized his voyage, taken from west to east during a four-day period in October 1880, as "tedious and difficult." His progress, for example, was slowed by the "crossing of eight turbulent streams, each from knee to waist deep and of considerable width," and the day he crossed Katmai Pass "was employed entirely in crossing glaciers and passing through rocky defiles at the summit of the range." He even bemoaned the "exceedingly rapid and precipitous" descent to the wooded lower valley of the Katmai River, in which he was forced to cross "innumerable" branches of the stream and carve a path through seemingly interminable thickets. [9]

A decade later, an expedition sponsored by Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper scrambled over the pass. In a remarkable wintertime trip, a party headed by E. H. Wells headed southeast from Nushagak in early 1891. That February, the party reached what was most certainly the mouth of the Ukak River. From there, Wells noted their progress as follows:

The way at first led up through a dreary, rock-bound cañon, narrow and half-filled with snow and ice. Over the treacherous surface we passed in safety, and curving upward among the peaks, snow-robed and desolate, reached at length a small frozen lake which marked the summit of the "divide." All about us was a wild array of peaks bare of any semblance of vegetation and wearing a wild, Arctic aspect. The roar of water could be heard in several cañons, and in one place the torrent had washed away its heavy coverlet of snow leaving a thirty-foot cliff of that material on either bank. In the strata we noticed several red streaks, indicating that at some time or other the red snow of the Arctic regions had fallen upon these mountains. [10]

A month later, the remainder of the Frank Leslie party followed a similar route, and as expedition leader A. B. Schanz described it, the party started "on a veritable stampede over the dangerous Katmai pass" on March 7. Prior to leaving Savonoski village, the party had spent two days waiting out a blizzard. The weather that day turned out to be no better than before; despite that obstacle, Schanz wrote, the men and dogs

maintained so great a speed that it was all Stepan and I could do to keep out of their way. When we got over the hot sulphur pools on the top of the "divide," and the descent began with a gradual slope over a snow-covered glacier, the dash assumed a semblance of recklessness which shook one's nerves. The descent might eventually have ended disastrously, had not several bald spots of ground, where the Pacific sun had already driven away the snow, intervened and acted as brakes. Then Stepan and I started the grandest coasting experience in the history of sled-traveling . We got down without an accident, and camped at sea-level, about eight miles from Katmai, at half-past four in the afternoon. We had made a trip, which has taken days, in five and a half hours." [ 11] [12]

Above: Charlie Carter, shown here in 1917, formerly carried the mail through the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes and crossed Katmai Pass on a dog sled. UAA, Consortium Library, Archives and Manuscripts Department, National Geographic Society Katmai expeditions collection, Box 2, 1019.

Use of the Katmai Pass increased with goldseekers headed for Nome on the Seward Peninsula. It is not clear how many prospectors crossed through Katmai Pass, although a bunkhouse was built at Katmai to accommodate the travelers. [13] The trail was used especially in the wintertime when the Bering Sea route to Nome was inaccessible.

Rex Beach's book The Silver Horde detailed crossing the pass when strong winds tossed rocks about. In his February 1901 visit to Katmai, Beach noted the Alaska Commercial Company trader's comments about the pass:

Petellin admitted that the place was too windy for him. "It would never become popular," he said. Katmai Pass had a reputation as a "man-killer." About forty lives had been lost on the Katmai trail, the trader said, and at that moment the settlement was in mourning for two natives who about a week earlier had been caught in the open by a storm while crossing from the north. One had died, and the other "never would be much good to his family." Once when he had been over-taken by a storm in the pass, Petellin related, the wind had picked up a heavy cast-iron kettle and whisked it away "with the speed of a cannon ball." [14]

In 1900 the Postmaster General sent an expedition to investigate the possibility of using the Katmai route for its overland service to western Alaska. As a result, the U.S. Post Office Department began using the route during the winter of 1900-1901. It is not clear how long the Katmai Pass route was used. [15] Charlie Carter carried the mail from Nome to Katmai one winter. Dr. Griggs interviewed Carter about the country prior to the volcanic eruption and was told that

on the upper part of Naknek Lake the ice was very treacherous, sometimes thawing out when the air temperature had not risen above 15 degrees F., which clearly indicated to him the presence of hot springs somewhere in the vicinity. [16]

The geologist J. E. Spurr's United States Geological Survey exploration and subsequent report of 1898 provided the best source of information on the condition of the Katmai Pass trail prior to the 1912 volcanic eruption. Spurr's expedition provided the only known detailed map of the route and photograph of the pass prior to 1912. [17] Spurr's account is as follows:

The trip from the lake to the seacoast occupied three and one-half days, an average of nearly 20 miles a day, all of which we made on foot, largely through swamps and deep moss. On the 16th of October [1898] we crossed the mountain pass and descended to the other side.

This pass lies between two extinct volcanoes and is high, snowy, and rocky, and has no definite trail. The wind is often so cold and violent here, even in summer, that the natives do not dare to cross except in calm weather, for the gusts are so powerful that stones of considerable size are carried along by them.

On the sea side of the pass we came to a considerable stream of hot water which emerged from the side of one of the volcanoes and flowed down, steaming, to reach the cooler water of the other mountain drainage. On the 17th of October we arrived at the Aleut village of Katmai, where we found a Russian trader. [18]

The June 1912 eruption had a major impact on the trail; it buried most or all of the route between Iliuk Arm and Katmai village in volcanic ash, in places several feet deep. But because the pre-1912 trail had never been a specific, identifiable pathway, the overall route remained as before.

Reuse of portions of the trail began with the National Geographic Society expeditions. In 1916, after his third expedition effort, Robert F. Griggs, explorer and botanist for the Society, finally reached the summit of Katmai Pass. From the summit, Griggs saw the fumaroles in the valley below for the first time.

The sight that flashed into view as we surmounted the hillock was one of the most amazing visions ever beheld by mortal eye. The whole valley as far as the eye could reach was full of hundreds, no thousands—literally, tens of thousands—of smokes curling up from its fissured floor. [19]

This discovery led to the establishment, two years later, of Katmai National Monument.

A few tourist trips followed in the footsteps of NGS expeditions. Most tourists sailed from Kodiak to Katmai Bay and followed on foot the route leading up to Katmai Pass, although other adventurers, such as Naknek schoolteacher Alyce Anderson, approached the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes via Savonoski and the Ukak River valley.

After the 1920s, the trail was ignored for the next several decades, but in the 1960s, recreational hikers rediscovered the route. For those beginning their journey at the Three Forks Overlook, the summit of Katmai Pass has been, in the words of one guidebook, a "destination for most hikers in the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes." Few, however, seek out the east or west ends of the Katmai Pass trail. The Hallo Bay trail has seen little twentieth century use, save for Savonoski-area Natives who, as late as the 1930s, returned to the Savonoski River valley on annual bear hunts. [20]

Roads

Prior to the June 1912 eruption, virtually no roads existed on the Alaska Peninsula. This state of affairs was unsurprising, considering the small population levels, the rugged topography, the relatively easy travel afforded along the seacoast or across lakes, and the difficulty of securing funds in Alaska for road construction.

The establishment of the monument, in 1918, publicized the area to some extent, and Robert F. Griggs, the National Geographic Society's expedition leader, saw roads as a key aspect of monument development. He noted that "only 50 or 60 miles of automobile road is needed to open up all the wonders of the area to the public. When that is constructed, the traveler may tour the Katmai National Monument as easily as he now visits the Yellowstone." [21] The Alaska Road Commission, in response, visited the area in 1921 and made an informal survey for a thirty-mile road heading west from Geographic Harbor. The report from that survey, however, was pessimistic that any road could be built in the monument, for both technical and economic reasons. The report stated that

It appears that a road from any Pacific entrance would be prohibitive in cost, if not impossible. The deep ashes mentioned drift around like snow with every wind. It lies on the steep slopes like so much ground coffee and is always ready to slide when disturbed. Until vegetation has again penetrated it, and formed a sod or soil as a binding, it will not pack and can not be held in place. [22]

Later recommendations for roads came from NPS officials. Roads, for example, were urged as part of the park's first master plan, completed in 1942, and shortly after the establishment of the Alaska Recreation Survey, in 1950, planner George Collins advocated the construction of "a short section of road" that would connect the south end of Iliuk Arm with the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. [23] But because Katmai, with its remote location and light visitation, was low on the agency's priorities, road construction projects were never funded. The only road that was constructed during this period was a short, rough road between Brooks and Naknek lakes, built during the early 1940s.

In 1956, the NPS began work on its Mission 66 program, a servicewide program to upgrade the parks' infrastructure by funding the construction of roads, visitor centers, campgrounds, trails, and other improvements. An April 1956 prospectus revealed that the agency, at Katmai, planned to spend "about $680,000 for new buildings and about $80,000 for improved roads and trails." In the latter category, the agency envisioned limited road projects ("these will be principally jeep routes," the prospectus said) from the mouth of the Ukak River to "Valley Junction" and from King Salmon to Lake Camp. By April 1957, the final Mission 66 program somewhat revised the above priorities; it called for the construction of two jeep roads, one a twelve-mile route from Iliuk Arm up the Ukak River valley to the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, the other from Brooks Camp to the site of a proposed airstrip. Compared with other Mission 66 projects, however, the Valley road was not a top priority; an employee headquarters, a visitor center, and an airstrip were all deemed more important.

The idea of a road to the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, like previous plans, seemed destined to remain in the proposal stage. But in February 1961, a meeting in Washington, D.C. radically changed that scenario. Northern Consolidated Airlines head Ray Petersen met with NPS and legislative officials and was told that, because of opposition from the "Sierra Club or other preservationists," there was little likelihood that a road would be constructed in Katmai in the near future. Petersen was taken aback by the statement because a year earlier, Director Conrad Wirth and other top bureaucrats had promised verbal support for a road connecting Brooks Camp with the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes if Petersen undertook a large development program. So in response, Sen. Ernest Gruening (D-AK) agreed to arrange a meeting with both Petersen and Wirth. At that meeting, Gruening got so angry at Wirth that the NPS director reluctantly agreed to fund road construction. The 22-mile "Valley Road," which cost slightly over $150,000, was built during the summer of 1962, and tours up the rough dirt road began in 1963. Trips from Brooks Camp to Three Forks Overlook (at the southeastern road terminus) have been a staple of the Katmai tourist experience ever since.

Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes Road Corridor, October 1993. NPS-Akso LCS Katmai file.

No sooner had the NPS agreed to build the Valley Road than the State of Alaska, which was in the planning process for its ferry system, began to press for further road development in the monument. On March 6, 1961, less than a month after the Gruening-Wirth meeting, the Alaska House of Representatives passed a resolution asking "that a road be planned and constructed by the state and the federal government from the Bristol Bay area through the Mount Katmai National Monument to the southern coast of the Alaska Peninsula" and "that the Kodiak-Homer ferry system be extended by the state to include a terminal at the east end of this road." On March 30, the state senate passed the same resolution. This action was followed a year later by a plea for even more construction. In February 1962, the Alaska House passed two more resolutions: one for a road from the outlet of Naknek Lake (where the existing road ended) to the Lake Brooks terminus of the Valley Road, the other from Three Forks Overlook to Kukak Bay, where a state-sponsored ferry terminal was to be built.

NPS Director Conrad Wirth, upon hearing of the resolutions, threw cold water on any road construction ideas. Recognizing the Service's limited budget for Alaska construction items, and because had just funded a major road project in the lightly visited park, he told Senator Gruening that Katmai roads ranked lower than long-delayed capital projects in the Mount McKinley and Glacier Bay park units. Gruening himself reflected a similar set of priorities.

These objections did not dissuade Alaska legislators from advocating road construction in the monument, and resolutions to that effect were passed during both the 1963 and 1964 legislative sessions. The Good Friday Earthquake forced legislators to pursue more immediate interests for the next several years, but in 1967 and 1968, road-construction advocates were back with a vengeance, urging roads to either Kukak Bay or Geographic Harbor. These pleas eventually reached the desk of NPS Director George Hartzog who, in January 1968, told state officials in unequivocal terms that any new roads "would be particularly destructive to park values." Road advocates made one last try in the mid-1970s, during the planning process that preceded the passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. The result of that process, however, was ultimately discouraging to its advocates, and the creation of huge wilderness areas when ANILCA became law doomed any future attempts for a long-distance road in the present park. [24]

Water Transportation

People have been traveling by water along the Katmai coast for hundreds if not thousands of years. The coastal Sugpiat/Alutiiq, Russian fur traders and priests, and Euroamerican explorers crossed the treacherous Shelikof Strait using kayak and baidarkas. Katmai coastal inhabitants traveled great distances along the Alaska Peninsula for trade and for sea otter hunting. Later craft appearing along the Katmai coast included schooners and other wind-driven vessels; they, in turn, were replaced by steamships and mailboats. Many of these craft, particularly the smaller early boats, attempted to increase the safety of trips between the Katmai coast and Kodiak Island by waiting long periods before calm weather permitted a crossing. Even the most careful, however, sometimes succumbed to unexpected storms. Numerous shipwrecks, as a result, have taken place.

Ships operated by the Russian-American Company traveled between Kodiak and the company's Alaska Peninsula posts. Katmai was one of the primary depots, ships anchoring there provided supplies and picked up furs. One of the Russian ships, the Tri Sviatitelia, wrecked in Kamishak Bay in 1796. Unable to repair the ship, the men scavenged the iron parts and bolts and burned the rest. [25] During the early American period, the Alaska Commercial Company and rival trading firms operated schooners to make the station rounds. The Douglas Station apparently had more marine traffic than did the Cook Inlet posts. The ships would deliver merchandise, pick up furs, and transport sea otter hunters. [26] Shirpser, Haritonoff and Company used the Clara L. West as a tender for its Douglas Station, making stops several times a year. During the 1870s, this ship was replaced by the Petaluma and then by the Urania schooner, which was wrecked in 1875. [27] After the firm became the Western Fur and Trading Company, the Douglas Station manager used a smaller schooner, the Diomedes Herman, to make the rounds of the smaller villages and scattered sea otter hunting camps. In 1883, the Alaska Commercial Company purchased the Western Fur and Trading Company's property, although two schooners were not included in the purchase. [28]

The area's second known shipwreck occurred in November of 1886, when John W. Smith, the Alaska Commercial Company's Douglas Station manager, put his wife and five children on board the schooner Flying Scud bound for Kodiak. The Flying Scud never reached Kodiak. It was not until five months later that another schooner, the Kodiak, arrived at Douglas with the news. [29] No evidence of a shipwreck was ever located, so it can only be assumed that all hands were lost during the Shelikof Strait crossing.

Above: Locals hired to help with repairing the Pilgrim at Katmai Bay in 1898. Another ship, the Western Star wrecked during this storm. The wood from this ship was salvaged and used towards the building of coastal chapels. Photograph courtesy of Moran Bros. Collection, Whatcom Museum of History & Art, Bellingham, WA.

During the 1898 gold rush, the so-called "Moran Fleet," consisting of twelve river steamers, sailed from Seattle to St. Michael. To increase the safety factor, the vessels stayed close to the shoreline. On June 29, 1898, some of the steamers traveling west from Kodiak through Shelikof Strait were forced to anchor at Katmai Bay because of hurricane winds. Several of the steamers were beached at Katmai Bay including the Pilgrim, the D.R. Campbell, the F.K. Gustin, the Robert E. Kerr, the Tacoma, the St. Michael, the Mary F. Graff, the Western Star, and the Seattle. Seven of the nine steamers were immediately refloated. The Pilgrim, however, required repair work, and with the help of local villagers it was repaired at Katmai Bay. The Western Star was not so fortunate. It became a total wreck; some parts were scavenged, while others were auctioned off. [30] It is highly doubtful if any parts remain in situ from this vessel, though the site has not been surveyed for this purpose.

By the early 1900s, the sea otter population was declining, and shipping activity dropped off as a result. With the rise of commercial fishing, however, maritime traffic began to rise again. The canneries at Karluk, on the west side of Kodiak Island, sent cannery tenders to Kaflia Bay to pick up salmon from the bay's fishery. Some of the Alaska Steamship Company vessels, traveling from Kodiak and Karluk to Unalaska, would occasionally put in at Katmai Bay to deliver mail. [31]

Following the 1912 volcanic eruption, only seasonal fishermen and perhaps some prospectors still traveled to the coast by boat. Some shipping activity occurred during 1915 and 1919 as the National Geographic Society's Katmai expeditions shuttled between Kodiak and Katmai Bay. The NGS's expeditions to Bristol Bay, undertaken in 1918 and 1919, used cannery boats to take participants up the Naknek River, perhaps as far as the rapids.

On June 29, 1898, the Pilgrim and several other steamers in the Moran Fleet were beached at Katmia Bay. The Pilgrim after repairs, sailed away, but a sister ship, the Western Star, was wrecked beyond repair. Photograph courtesy of Moran Brothers Collection, Museum of History and Industry, Seattle, WA.

One known shipwreck occurred along the Katmai coast in 1929. On September 5 of that year, the steamship Golden Forest ran aground at Cape Ilktugitak, located between Amalik and Dakavak bays. The Golden Forest, an Oceanic and Oriental Steamship Co. freighter, was carrying general merchandise en route from San Francisco to Yokohama when it ran aground at Avatanak Island, just east of Unalaska. It was refloated at Akutan Island, and was being towed back to Seattle when it got hung up on two sharp rocks at Cape Ilktugitak. The event generated great interest among the locals, who hoped that the ship would break up so its goods could be salvaged. The ship, in fact, was never moved; the merchandise, however, ending up being purchased by the H. T. Erskine Co., which owned several general stores on Kodiak Island. A 1984 coastal survey noted that a large assemblage of rusted parts remained both above and below the high tide line. [32]

During each of the next two years, additional shipwrecks occurred. On August 13, 1930, a gas screw named the GoGet was destroyed by fire at the Seashore Packing Company dock (which was owned at the time by the Hemrich Packing Company) in Kukak Bay. Just a year later, another gas screw named the Mary C. Fisher was wrecked on the rocks about three miles east of Cape Kubugakli; it foundered and sank in strong, storm-tossed seas. [33] So far as is known, no additional shipwrecks have befallen the Katmai coast since the early 1930s.

During the 1940s, shipping in the area continued with private shipping companies, particularly the major fish packers, sailing between the Lower 48 and the various Bristol Bay canneries. The Alaska Steamship Company served the villages located on both sides of the Alaska Peninsula. [34]

With the establishment of salmon and clam canneries at Kukak and Swikshak bays, shipping resumed along the Katmai coast from the 1920s into the 1950s. Docks and wharfs were built at Swikshak and Kukak bays to accommodate the tenders that arrived to pick up the fisheries' products.

The result of one shipping mishap at Amalik Bay led to the legend of Katmai's wild horse. In September 1956, a barge carrying sixteen horses from Kodiak to Puale Bay starting taking on water. The skipper pulled into Amalik Bay, off-loaded the horses and hurried on to Kodiak. The horses, abruptly left on their own, were ill-prepared to fend for themselves in such a wild, hostile environment, and fifteen of the sixteen horses, not surprisingly, did not survive the first winter. The one surviving bay gelding became a living legend as passing fishermen and pilots would see the horse year after year. A fisherman found the horse's bones, surrounded by wolf tracks, in 1974. It is estimated that the horse had lived 25 years, 18 of those years having been spent around Amalik Bay. [35]

At the western end of the monument, the NPS and the concessioner established a presence at Brooks Camp in the spring of 1950. No sooner had the camp buildings been erected than the agency began to plan for the possibility of accessing the site by water. As part of the Alaska Recreation Survey, plans developed for a transportation system that included concessioner-operated boats on Lake Grosvenor as well as a possible route across Naknek Lake as well. Five years later, however, the NPS abandoned those plans and concluded that planes were better suited to Katmai than boats. [36] In the meantime, NPS Katmai rangers were using boats to patrol the monument with boat docks under construction at Brooks Camp in 1963. [37] In 1965, the agency became reinvigorated about boat transportation when its master plan declared that "a program must be devised to permit access to the Monument for greater numbers of people by means other than float plane," and it proclaimed the need for a large boat that would shuttle passengers across the lake. Those plans, however, were squelched because the water in the Lake Camp area (where a major boat dock was proposed) was too shallow. In response, officials moved their proposed dock to the northwestern end of the lake in its 1971 and 1973 master plans. [38] As late as 1976, NPS officials were convinced that boat transportation would eventually replace float planes, at least on Brooks Camp service. And that summer, Wien Air Alaska investigated the practicality of a Naknek Lake boat service. But the company quickly turned down the idea. As part of its 1983-86 master planning process, the NPS proposed that "boat service on Naknek Lake, provided by private enterprise, would be encouraged." That proposal, however, was doomed to remain on the drawing boards. [39] Neither the NPS nor the concessioner has ever established a commercial boat service on Naknek or any other lake within the present-day park.

Air Transportation

Because maritime shipping is so treacherous, and because roads—for both economic and technical reasons—have been so hard to construct, the advent of air transportation was a boon to the Katmai country and other areas inaccessible by Alaska's poorly developed road system. Aircraft began arriving in the monument well before the NPS began active management, and it has long been the chief method by which tourists and park managers have traveled to and within the park unit.

So far as is known, the first airborne travelers who considered the monument a visitor destination came in 1929, when Anchorage Air Transport debuted tourist flights to the area in the form of a one-day tour. For $265—a king's ransom in those days—the company offered to fly visitors into the still-active volcanic area and provide them eight hours for exploration and sightseeing. [40]

Of the few who visited Katmai during the 1930s and 1940s, most came by air. Lou Corbley, the first NPS staff person to visit the monument, arrived by chartered plane in 1937; three years later, Mount McKinley Superintendent Frank Been, along with biologist Victor Cahalane, flew over the monument before making a more extended boat-based survey. Military men stationed at Naknek Air Base flew into the monument to fish for rainbow trout, and airplanes also attracted cannery personnel, wealthy sportsmen, and Fish and Wildlife personnel to the area. [41]

Given that context, it perhaps should not be surprising that the individual most responsible for "opening up" Katmai to visitors was an airline official. Ray Petersen, head of Northern Consolidated Airlines, had been an Alaska pilot since 1934; he had first become acquainted with the Katmai country during World War II, and he been NCA's head since 1945. By agreeing to open up five area fishing camps, two of which were located in Katmai National Monument, Petersen provided both tourist accommodations and tourist access. [42] The company opened its fishing camps in the late spring of 1950, and ever since, virtually every Katmai visitor who has ventured east of Lake Camp has entered the park by airplane.

Petersen's initial plans called for each of the camps to be accessed by floatplane, but in the spring of 1954—a year before his concessions contract was due to expire—he began to lobby for an airstrip near Brooks Camp. Arguing that NCA wanted to access the camp directly from Anchorage as well as from King Salmon, Petersen also felt that having an airstrip would be safer for incoming pilots. He darkly hinted, moreover, that his acceptance of a new contract might be linked with getting an airstrip approved. Conrad Wirth, however, didn't accept Petersen's arguments and urged that further study be undertaken first. An informal study, conducted in 1955, located two sites near Brooks Camp that would be acceptable for an airstrip; both were in the Beaver Pond area. [43] The Mission 66 program, unveiled in April 1956, did not initially call for an airstrip, but the final plan, issued a year later, included provisions for such a facility. Another site survey, urged by Mount McKinley Superintendent Duane Jacobs, followed in the spring of 1958; regional NPS officials, however, fought the idea and instead urged that the airstrip idea needed further study. [44]

Petersen, naturally, was miffed that the NPS had refused to agree with his plans. Even before he received his first response from Wirth, however, he proceeded with airstrip development plans in another location. In the spring of 1954, at the same time that he laid out his Brooks Camp airstrip plans to NPS officials, he also decided to carve out an airstrip near the company's Kulik Camp facility. Here, on Bureau of Land Management land, he encountered no bureaucratic stumbling blocks—he applied for a public airport lease to secure legal use of the 80-acre parcel—and construction of a 1,500-foot airstrip began that summer. The following year the strip was extended out another 500 feet, and by August 1956, workers had completed a usable if rough road between the camp and landing strip. [45] By this time, Petersen was well aware that the NPS had little interest in a Brooks Camp airstrip; perhaps as a result, he brought a sawmill into Kulik Camp and commenced construction that year on the large, wooden Kulik Lodge. The lodge was completed in 1958 or 1959.

No sooner was the lodge complete than he began to develop more sophisticated plans for Kulik Camp. In the fall of 1958, NCA acquired the first of several Fairchild 40-passenger propjets, which were intended to move a larger number of passengers in greater comfort than the airline had been previously able to do. In conjunction with that purchase, the airline chose the Kulik airfield to fulfill the role of intermediate stop on the Anchorage-King Salmon run; in so doing, they hoped to stimulate visitation to the newly-enlarged camp. But the new airplanes required a longer runway, so in 1958 NCA added an extra 2,000 feet to the existing airstrip. Propjet service to Kulik Lake began in 1959. But by 1963, NCA officials had reluctantly concluded that propjet service to Kulik Lake was not a paying proposition, and traffic thereafter was limited to small bush planes, most or all of which came from either King Salmon or the other NCA camps. [46]

The need to establish a Brooks Camp airstrip flared up again in 1966, when NCA officials began contemplating the need to purchase its first jet airplanes. Shortly thereafter, plans were announced to merge NCA with Wien Air Alaska, another Alaska-based regional carrier. NCA officials, at the time, reasoned that if access restrictions at Brooks Camp could be eased, greater site development would ensue. And although they ideally wanted a runway 5,000 to 6,000 feet in length, they were willing to settle on a 3,000 to 3,500-foot runway, enough to land a Twin Otter or Skyvan SC7. NCA officials presented their proposal to the NPS in March 1967. Two months later, however, agency officials rejected the idea yet again, reasoning that an airstrip would change the "wilderness atmosphere and the feeling of isolation and remoteness that it now has." The airstrip idea, having been spurned three times in fourteen years, was by now effectively dead. The monument's wilderness plan, issued in 1974, reaffirmed the existing state of affairs, noting that "no aircraft landing strips are planned within the monument." Today, the proposal remains on the back burner, although the area designated for the proposed airstrip remains one of the few areas in the present-day park that has not been recommended for the National Wilderness Preservation System. [47]

In 1980, Kulik Camp and its nearby airstrip were included within the boundaries of an expanded Katmai National Park and Preserve. The inclusion of those two parcels within an NPS-managed area brought immediate controversy between the agency and the Wien Air Alaska, the camp's concessioner, because the concessioner had long claimed that the airstrip was private. That claim had caused the BLM to investigate the situation in 1978; the report emanating from that investigation had recommended that the airport's lease (which had been renegotiated in 1974) would be cancelled if Wien did not allow public use of the strip. When the NPS began managing the surrounding area, agency officials demanded in even stronger terms that the airstrip be made public. To that, Wien officials made an about-face and stated that the company "recognizes and understands the right of the public to use the runway." [48]

Affairs remained placid regarding access to the Kulik Lake airstrip until the fall of 1982 when a new company, KatmaiLand, Inc., became the concessioner for the various Katmai-area camps. Shortly after the properties changed hands, one of the new owners, Raymond F. ("Sonny") Petersen, made it known that he intended to make the airstrip private. NPS officials had no immediate reaction to Petersen's announcement. It did, however, learn that the airstrip, having been lengthened in 1958, was not entirely within the confines of the 80-acre public airport lease; the airstrip's eastern end was on public (NPS) land. The public, therefore, was entitled to land at the airstrip so long as it remained east of the 80-acre parcel.

NPS officials became more actively involved in the matter in 1986, when a U.S. Geological Survey employee was refused permission to land at the airstrip. (His work needs demanded a large plane that needed the entire airstrip.) Tensions further rose when Katmailand officials intimidated or threatened private pilots using the airstrip. Following those incidents, a three-year tug-of-war ensued between the NPS and the concessioner. The fight, which involved lawyers on both sides, resulted in an agreement that Katmailand pilots had the legal right to use the entire airstrip and that the public could legally use the airstrip's eastern half. But the NPS has not maintained its half of the airstrip and has left it in a state of benign neglect. [49]

Historic Property Summary and Recommendations

The two major historic trails in the present-day park and preserve are the Hallo Bay Trail and the Katmai Pass Trail. Both trails were used off and on for hundreds if not thousands of years. So far as is known, neither trail was used so often that an identifiable surface tread was ever imprinted, and obvious impacts were made by the June 1912 eruption. A survey is recommended that would document both of these trails, perhaps as part of a cultural landscape inventory.

Another surface route of some note is the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes Road. This route, constructed in 1962, is the only long-distance road in the park and the only road of any length that was built after the NPS began actively administering the area. For more than 35 years, it has been the only practical way in which tens of thousands of visitors have accessed the volcanic landscape created by the eruption of Novarupta, and it is a key element in the park's interpretive program. It is the park's most significant Mission 66 built feature. At some point in the future, park personnel may wish to nominate this feature to the National Register of Historic Places. The road should be considered as a contributing property of a Tourism theme Multiple Property Documentation Form.

Several shipwrecks are found along the park shoreline, the most significant of which is the Golden Forest shipwreck (XMK-125). Other shipwrecks that took place in areas currently under NPS control include the Western Star, wrecked in Katmai Bay in 1898; the GoGet, which was wrecked at the cannery dock in Kukak Bay in 1930; and the Mary C. Fisher, which was wrecked three miles east of Cape Kubugakli in 1931. There is no evidence, however, that any remains of these three ships still exist. Of note, the Abandoned Shipwreck Act of 1987 gives the state title to significant historic shipwrecks that are within state waters. Any preservation or management efforts would need to coordinate with the State of Alaska, Office of History and Archaeology. Recommendation for the Golden Forest shipwreck is benign neglect.

Also of note is the Kulik Lake Airstrip, located just southeast of Kulik Camp. This 4,000-foot airstrip was bladed out in 1954, 1955, and 1958. The only airstrip in the present-day park and preserve, it reflects the changing needs of the park's concessioners and development of tourism. It is also a case study of the difficult, often contentious relationship between a concessioner, whose primary aim is serving its clientele to the exclusion of all others, and a federal bureaucracy, whose sole aim is broad public access. Recommendation for the airstrip to be considered as a contributing property within a Tourism theme Multiple Property Documentation Form.

Endnotes

¹ Hussey, Embattled Katmai, 87.

² Ibid., 243.

³ Davis, Archeological Investigations of Inland and Coastal Sites of the Katmai National Monument, Alaska, 70-71.

⁴ Hussey, Embattled Katmai, 233.

⁵ Arndt, personal communication, 30 July 1999.

⁶ Hussey, Embattled Katmai, 123, 128-29.

⁷ Ibid., 261.

⁸ Tollefson to Superintendent, Katmai National Monument, April 13, 1977 memo with attached transcript from October 22, 1975 oral interview with Harry Kaiakokonok, page 8-9, in AKSO, Katmai files.

⁹ Hussey, Embattled Katmai, 268-70.

¹⁰ Ibid., 283-84.

¹¹ Ibid., 287-88.

¹² Krech, A Victorian Earl in the Arctic, 86-87.

¹³ Griggs, The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, 267, 301.

¹⁴ Hussey, Embattled Katmai, 305.

¹⁵ Ibid., 308-310.

¹⁶ Griggs, The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, 267.

¹⁷ Hussey, Embattled Katmai, 293.

¹⁸ Quoted in Griggs, The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, 268. The "considerable stream of hot water" noted in 1898 had been replaced, during the post-eruption period, with many streams of warm water.

¹⁹ Griggs, The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, 191.

²⁰ Bodeau, Katmai National Park and Preserve, 160-61; Norris, Isolated Paradise, 52-53.

²¹ Griggs, "Our Greatest National Monument," National Geographic Magazine 40 (September, 1921), 289.

²² Arno Cammerer to Scott Bone, January 5, 1923, in File 42, RG 101, Alaska State Archives.

²³ Norris, Isolated Paradise, 66, 87-88.

²⁴ Ibid., 111-15, 155-56, 165-66.

²⁵ Tikhmenev, A History of the Russian American Company, Vol. 2., 107.

²⁶ DeArmond, "Fur Trails to Cook Inlet," unpub. mss., n.d., at Alaska Historical Library, 30.

²⁷ Unrau, Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, 84.

²⁸ Ibid.

²⁹ ACC Douglas Station records, Box 5, folder 68, UAF.

³⁰ Knutson, The Moran Fleet: Twelve to the Yukon, 11 and 31.

³¹ Hussey, Embattled Katmai, 332.

³² See the following Anchorage Daily Times articles, all from 1929: July 25, p. 1; July 26, 1; August 6, 1; August 16, 1; September 13, 1; September 18, 1; September 26, 1.

³³ Evert E. Tornfelt and Michael Burwell, Shipwrecks of the Alaskan Shelf and Shore (Anchorage, Minerals Management Service, 1992), 55, 58.

³⁴ Norris, Tourism in Katmai Country, 6.

³⁵ "Katmai Country," Alaska Geographic, 50-51.

³⁶ Norris, Isolated Paradise, 88-89, 99, 116.

³⁷ Mount McKinley National Park, Superintendent's reports for August and September 1963.

³⁸ Norris, Isolated Paradise, 124, 150-53, 164.

³⁹ Ibid., 178-80, 207-08.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 52.

⁴¹ Ibid., 56-57, 61-62, 68, 73.

⁴² Norris, Tourism in Katmai Country, 5-7, 15-16.

⁴³ Norris, Isolated Paradise, 98-99.

⁴⁴ Ibid., 101-05.

⁴⁵ Ibid., 99; Norris, Tourism in Katmai Country, 37.

⁴⁶ Norris, Tourism in Katmai Country, 40-41.

⁴⁷ Norris, Isolated Paradise, 123-24.

⁴⁸ Norris, Tourism in Katmai Country, 81-82.

⁴⁹ Ibid., 106-10.