Park History & Administration

Whole Book:
http://www.nps.gov/katm/adhi/adhit.htm

Chapter 2:
Creation of Katmai National Monument, 1912-1918

The Eruption of Mount Katmai

On June 6, 1912, one of the largest volcanic explosions ever recorded took place in the area surrounding Mount Katmai. The mountain was scarcely known to the outside world before that time, but the explosion was of such intensity that it thrust itself into prominence. An eruption of such a magnitude would have decimated entire populations had it occurred in a more populated area. [1] As it was, however, the area was so bereft of human activity that only one person, a tubercular, died from the effects of the eruption. [2]

Mount Katmai is one of a long string of volcanoes which comprise the Aleutian Range. The range is geologically quite active, even in comparison to other volcanic regions; that activity stems from the instability created at the intersection of the Pacific and North American plates. To give an idea of the Aleutians' activity level, 46 of the 79 known volcanoes in the Aleutians are known to have emitted ash, smoke, steam or lava at some time between 1741 and 1957. Of the historically active volcanoes, 26 have emitted ash, 25 smoke, 16 steam, and 13 lava. One has undergone a series of explosions. (Several peaks have emitted more than one type of material.) [3]

Therefore, those in the surrounding area found it of little consequence when the area north of Katmai Pass began to show signs of increased volcanic activity. Mount Katmai had never erupted during historic time, and there were no known Native legends which told of such an eruption. But Augustine Volcano, less than 100 miles to the northeast, had erupted at least twice during the previous century, and Mount Peulik, less than 70 miles in the opposite direction, had also erupted twice during the same period. As early as 1898, a passing observer had noticed that earthquakes and other evidences of volcanic action in the area surrounding Katmai Pass were "very frequent." Local Natives told him that one of the volcanoes near the pass--they did not say which one--emitted smoke occasionally. [4]

As noted in the previous chapter, economic conditions in 1912 were such that most of the residents of the Native communities within the present park were away for the summer. Many of the residents of Katmai, Douglas, and Kukak were working on Kodiak Island in conjunction with the canneries. On the Bristol Bay side of the Aleutians, at least some of the residents who normally lived in Savonoski, Brooks River and the other villages headed to the Naknek area for the summer. Although scattered residents remained at most of the Native villages, the only real center of activity in the area was the Kaflia Bay fishing station. Another fishing center was located at Puale Bay, 20 miles south of the present park boundaries. [5]

The first signs of an impending eruption were felt on June 1, perhaps a day or two earlier, when ominous trembles were felt. The quakes continued to gain in intensity during the next few days. By June 4 or June 5, the shocks were so severe that they were felt as far away as Kanatak, 65 miles to the southwest, and Nushagak, 130 miles to the northwest. The area around Mount Katmai probably emitted its first ejecta on the evening of June 5. [6]

Locals found the rumblings so ominous that they prepared to leave the area. Natives from Douglas to Katmai did not flee to Kodiak Island; instead, they congregated at the Kaflia Bay fishing station, evidently hoping to find a vessel that would afford safe passage out of the area. [7] Other Natives headed toward Puale Bay, but made it no farther than Cape Kubugakli when the eruption took place on June 6, and did not arrive at their destination until June 8. At Savonoski, "American Pete" reacted to the increased shaking by heading to the seasonal camp at Ukak to rescue some equipment. He witnessed the beginning of the June 6 eruption while there. Soon afterward, however, he retreated to Savonoski, gathered the remaining villagers and scurried across Naknek Lake. They covered the 60 miles to Naknek in a single day. According to Palakia Melgenak, there were also some people at a "fishing lodge" on Brooks Lake as late as June 6. Because the site was adjacent to the Iliuk Arm-Naknek Lake route traveled by the Savonoski residents, it is presumed that the fleeing villagers would have contacted their Brooks Lake compatriots if the latter had not already left on their own. [8]

The first big eruption took place at about 1 p.m. on June 6. Outbursts were almost continuous for the next two days; particularly heavy explosions were noted at 3 p.m. and 11 p.m. on June 6, and 10:40 p.m. on June 7. After June 8, strong eruptions continued for several weeks; after that point, activity was further reduced, although earthquakes and explosions were noted during the entire summer. [9]

Residents in many Alaska communities were well aware of the eruption. The first blast was so loud that it was heard in Fairbanks, 500 miles to the northeast, and it even carried as far as Juneau, 750 miles off to the east. Dawson City, in Yukon Territory, also heard the explosion. At Katalla, 410 miles east-northeast of the point of origin, residents reported that for three days the Katmai outbursts sounded "like blastings in quick succession." The earthquakes generated by the eruption were so strong that they were recorded in Washington, D.C. [10]

The ash, dust and grit spewed forth by the volcano spread far and wide. The ash was three to four feet deep at Katmai village, while at Kaflia Bay, the ash was piled three feet high. [11] The cataclysm dropped 6 to 12 inches of ash on Kodiak, and plunged the town into a gray gloom which lasted for most of the next 60 hours. [12] An estimated 3,000 square miles was covered by at least a foot of ash, and ten times that area was covered by an inch or more. "Appreciable" quantities of dust were recorded in Fairbanks, Juneau, and the Puget Sound cities.

To a lesser degree, the explosion's effects were felt even beyond Puget Sound. In Wisconsin and Virginia, the volcano was considered responsible for a "curious haze" noted in the days following the eruption. On a more general level, the dust veil produced a decrease in solar radiation, and for the last six months of 1912 mean temperatures were lowered throughout the northern hemisphere. [13]

Alaskans React to the Eruption

The press, both in Alaska and elsewhere, reacted immediately to the event. Within two days of the eruption, newspapers in San Francisco and New York were reporting on it. But few were certain as to the exact origin of the eruption. Reporters, at first, had no reliable information to use, and some speculated that Iliamna or Redoubt volcanoes had exploded. [14] But on June 8, C. B. McMullen, who was captain of the Dora, a supply ship to villages in the area, was able to get a wireless message out to Seward and other Alaskan cities. The Dora had been out in Shelikof Strait when the explosion occurred, just 55 miles east of it. He "pronounced" the smoke to have come from Katmai Volcano. Jack Lee, who was residing at Puale Bay, declared that "Katma Mountain" was the culprit, although he could not see the peak from where he lived. And "American Pete," who was probably closer to the explosion than anyone else, told cannery workers in Naknek that Katmai Volcano had been blown "sky high." [15] As a result, the press dutifully reported Mount Katmai as the site of the eruption. Scientists who investigated the area in the decade after the explosion corroborated the conclusions that these eyewitnesses had made. [16]

Not all, however, concluded that Mount Katmai was responsible for the eruption. Jack Lee, the Puale Bay resident who had opined in June that "Katma Mountain" had erupted, told the Seward Weekly Gateway on July 13 that he had just "visited Katmai in order to make a careful study of the cause and effect of the eruption." He returned convinced that the source of the eruption was "Mount Sevenosky." Notwithstanding the fact that "Mount Sevenosky" was not a known name at the time (and it has not been identified or located since), his story is also doubtful because volcanic activity was too intense at that time for anyone to have penetrated sufficiently close to be able to view the eruption site. His partner at Puale Bay, C. L. Boudry, was able to view the volcanic area from afar, and by July 21 he was quite aware of a "new crater" that had developed on Katmai Volcano. He did not publicize his newfound knowledge, however, and when he attempted to hike into the area, the smoke and acid forced him to turn back. And in 1913, Alaskans William A. Hesse and Mel A. Horner climbed partway up the slopes of Mount Katmai. Like Lee and Boudry, Hesse and Horner could see that some other peak was more active than Mount Katmai. The 1913 explorers, however, thought that the so-called "King of the Volcanoes" was an unnamed peak, southwest of Mount Mageik, which was later named Mount Martin for the 1912 explorer. [17] It was not until 1954 that a scientific team determined, based on the relative thickness of the ash layer and other factors, that the primary explosion site was Novarupta, a smaller mountain located seven miles west of Mount Katmai (see Chapter 12.) [18]

A key problem that had to be reckoned with was the welfare of the local residents. The U.S. Revenue Cutter Service ship Manning was in port at the time of the eruption, and its captain, Kirtland W. Perry, took personal responsibility for evacuating Kodiak residents to a safer locale. Five days later, Captain W. E. Reynolds, who was commander of the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service's Bering Sea Fleet (and Perry's supervisor), arrived in the Kodiak area from Unalaska and took command. [19] By June 19, he had visited the Afognak refugee camp, and after conferring with Perry and with various "leading men" of Kodiak, he decided to not reestablish the villages of the Katmai coast. Instead, he thought it better to centralize the former inhabitants at a new location. [20]

To implement his proposed strategy, Reynolds travelled to Seward, where he sent word of his plan to the Treasury Department in Washington, D.C. His suggestions were promptly approved, and on June 27 he headed south to implement them. By July 7, Reynolds was scouting a site on Ivanof Bay, 300 miles southwest of Kodiak, that had been recommended by an official at a nearby packing plant. [21] The Natives who accompanied Reynolds said that they were pleased with the site, which was to be called Perry in honor of the captain of the Manning, and by July 8, 78 former Katmai and Cape Douglas Natives had been brought to that spot. But by August 1, the new residents had grown weary of the new site, and they asked Captain Perry to be relocated. He obliged them by showing them a new coastal site 13 miles to the east, just north of Chiachi Island. By August 15, the Treasury Department had approved of the change in venue, and by August 25 the residents (which by now had grown to 92) had all been moved to the new site. They liked the site and decided to remain there, and it soon became known as Perryville. It is still a viable community; its 1990 population was 108. [22]

As noted above, some of the Natives who had formerly lived along the Katmai coastal villages fled to the Kaflia fishing station. Others headed south to Cape Kubugakli and Puale Bay. From there, they probably continued south to Perryville. [23] The Natives who had lived in (Old) Savonoski and the other communities in the upper Naknek drainage set up a village known as New Savonoski, which was on the south bank of the Naknek River five miles upriver from South Naknek. The village, now called Savonoski, remains an active community.

Some did not like the new environment, and tried to go back. Two families, in fact, moved from New Savonoski back to Old Savonoski and remained there for a year before the dust and heat drove them back to the new townsite. As "American Pete" noted in a 1918 interview, "Never can go back to Savonoski to libe [sic] again. Everything ash." [24] But if they could not live there again, they could use the area as a hunting ground. As later chapters note in greater detail, the vegetation and wildlife recovered rapidly in much of the region surrounding the east end of the Naknek Lake system, and as early as 1918 former residents of Old Savonoski were making annual bear hunts in the area surrounding the abandoned village. These hunts continued as late as 1939, and Brooks River persisted as a Native salmon harvesting area until the 1950s or 1960s. [25]

The National Geographic Society Shows an Interest

While the eruption depopulated a large area, and made it generally unattractive to those living in other areas of the Alaska Peninsula, it incited a great degree of curiosity and enthusiasm in the exploration and scientific communities. Within a fortnight of the initial eruption, the Research Committee of the National Geographic Society (NGS) had sprung into action. By providing him a research grant, the Society was able to persuade George C. Martin, a U.S. Geological Survey geologist, to travel to the area. His report was to be a first step in a systematic investigation of Alaskan volcanoes. He left Washington at once and arrived in Kodiak in early July. [26]

Martin was unsuccessful in his attempt to travel to the scene of the Katmai eruption. Instead, he spent a month on board the Manning, traveling on its various errands of mercy. His only visit to the Katmai coast during that period was a short visit to Douglas village. Later, aboard the Lina K., he visited Amalik Bay, and from there cruised down the coast to Takli Island, Katmai village, and on down to Puale Bay. Due to heavy cloud cover, he never even saw Katmai Volcano, and he did not venture inland from the coastal villages. [27]

After that trip, the National Geographic Society forgot about Katmai exploration for awhile. Other endeavors were assigned a higher priority. But Frederick Coville, a botanist who served on the NGS board of directors, refused to let the matter drop. Coville had undertaken previous research which had explored the biological potential of volcanic ash. He read an article by an old friend, Ohio State University botany professor Robert F. Griggs, which pertained to revegetation rates on Kodiak Island after the eruption. Coville, sensing an impending opportunity, wrote Griggs and asked if he would be interested in doing similar research in the area. [28]

Griggs accepted, and what ensued was the first of five Katmai expeditions, each of them sponsored by the National Geographic Society. In 1915, Griggs and two others spent from June through August in the Katmai country. His original focus was Kodiak Island, but as he noted, "I had come to study the revegetation, but I found my problem vanished in an accomplished fact." Therefore, he moved west to the more deeply buried country near the volcano. His party was dropped off at old Katmai village; from there, they wound up the Katmai River valley. The going was slow and treacherous, and they were unable to cross any of the major watercourses. They had to be content with a fine view of mounts Martin, Mageik, Trident, and Katmai. Even that degree of success was gained only after enduring weeks of low cloud cover. [29]

Griggs Discovers the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes

The 1915 expedition provided an enticing glimpse into the country to the west, and it convinced Griggs that a study of the eruption, including a "thorough exploration of the immediate environs of the volcano," was a valid subject for future research. Fortunately, the NGS agreed with Griggs's assertions, and the following spring sent him back to the area. Taking three other men with him, he returned to the mouth of Katmai River and headed up the valley with the intention of climbing Mount Katmai. They reached the summit on the afternoon of July 19, 1916. After an 11-day spell of bad weather, the party climbed the mountain a second time. Having observed steam clouds on the west side of Katmai Pass, they spent the following day climbing Mageik Creek to get a closer look. They got almost up to the pass, and saw little out of the ordinary. Griggs and Lucius G. Folsom, his hiking companion, were getting ready to turn back when he "caught sight of a tiny puff of vapor in the floor of the pass." [30] The fumarole intrigued them, and by the time they reached the pass they found hundreds of steam jets scattered through the area. A large puff of steam off to the west encouraged him to climb a nearby hillock for a better look, and

there, stretching as far as the eye could reach, till the valley turned behind a blue mountain in the distance, were hundreds--no, thousands--of little volcanoes like those we had just examined. They were not so little, either. ... Many of them were sending up columns of steam which rose a thousand feet before dissolving. After a careful estimate, we judged there must be a thousand whose columns would exceed 500 feet. [31]

Griggs and Folsom, enraptured by what lay before them, wandered down the valley for several miles. Griggs got as far as a view of Novarupta, and described it as "a plug of lava ... which was formerly rather violently explosive," before the party had to return to its camp on the coastal side of Katmai Pass. Griggs hardly slept that night, and was readying a return visit the next day when the weather abruptly changed. Rising water in Katmai River caused him to be cautious; reluctantly, he ordered the party to retreat to Katmai Bay. Ten days later they left the area. [32]

The National Geographic Society was enthusiastic about the new discoveries, and "in view of the extraordinary conditions of the Katmai region, unparalleled anywhere in the world," granted Griggs an additional $12,000 to make an extended examination of the so-called "Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes." [33] Griggs headed a party of ten men which returned to the area the following year; they included a topographer, a zoologist, a chemist, and two botanist, but curiously enough no geologist. The party arrived in late June, and began its investigations at a point several miles south of Katmai Bay; from there it followed the west bank of Katmai River and ascended Martin Creek. On July 4, Griggs and Walter Metrokin, a "famous one-handed bear hunter" who had also accompanied him the previous year, trekked up to the pass together. Four days later, most of the rest of the party did the same, and established a camp near the saddle. All were initially agog at what they saw. They eventually split up into work details. They spent about a month on the west side of Katmai Pass; during that time, the party descended the Ukak River valley at least as far as the end of the ash flow, and beyond it almost to Old Savonoski. Members also climbed Mount Katmai (some for the second time) and explored the upper Katmai Canyon as far as the so-called Katmai Lakes. After some additional exploration, the party headed back down to the coast and left the area. [34]

Toward the Protection of the Volcanic Area

By the time the 1917 expedition had been completed and the result of its investigation published, the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes had become well-known to many members of the scientific community. But because the National Geographic Magazine was such a popular publication--the Society had some 650,000 members at the time--the area had also become familiar to a broad sector of the general public as a natural wonder and a scenic masterpiece. [35] Those who directed the Society were convinced that the area should be set aside as park land in order to preserve the unique qualities which had so recently been investigated.

The National Geographic Society was not the first organization which recognized Katmai's park potential. The beauty of the country, in fact, had been admired even before the cataclysm which tore it asunder. In 1880 Ivan Petroff, the first Alaska census taker, had led a party from Savonoski to Katmai Bay via Katmai Pass. Speaking about his trip in an 1881 article, he prophetically noted that

When we made this portage last October, we were struck by the fact that the tourist might land at Katmai, and in one day's foot travel stand with us at the summit of a mountain pass, the divide proper of the peninsula, where he would be compassed on every hand by the grandest visions of Alpine scenery, snows, and glaciers. [36]

Others praised the qualities of the Shelikof Strait coastline. An English adventurer, H. W. Seton-Karr, noted after an 1886 visit that a cruise in a bidarka from Katmai south to Unga would be unequalled, both for scenery and sport hunting. Thirteen years later, several members of the Harriman Alaska Expedition spent a few days camped on Kukak Bay. While there, they walked up the slope behind their camp and found themselves suddenly at the edge of a 2,000-foot precipice, across from which was a glacier that "fairly took their breaths away." The visitors to Kukak Bay told the remaining expedition members that they were "well pleased with their expedition," and were henceforth boosters of the Katmai country. [37]

With the 1912 eruption, much of the topography which had been admired in earlier years was irreparably altered, and for the next two or three years the countryside surrounding Mount Katmai lay inaccessible to the outside world. Neither Martin in 1912 nor Griggs in 1915 spoke in very endearing tones about the beauty of the region, primarily because neither party was able to penetrate beyond the coastal valleys and canyons. When Hesse and Horner made a reconnaissance of the area in 1913, they saw enough of the area to report dramatically of "thousands of small fumaroles issuing columns of steam and smoke, and the ground was a maze of wide jagged cracks like paths of lightning." [38] But they did not make their observations known until after Griggs asked Horner about them.

The movement to create Katmai National Monument began on July 31, 1916, when Robert F. Griggs and Lucius G. Folsom encountered the thousands of fumaroles beyond Katmai Pass. As soon as they viewed them, they were certain that they had discovered one of the great wonders of the world. As Griggs later put it,

The sight that flashed into view as we surmounted the hillock was one of the most amazing visions ever beheld by mortal eye.... The first glance was enough to demonstrate that we had found a miracle of nature which, when known, would be ranked with the Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, and other marvels, each standing without rival in its own class. [39]

By the time he had returned to camp that night, the elated Griggs was already taking his thoughts of the scenery beyond admiration. Perhaps with the convenience of hindsight, his memories that night were as follows:

I recognized at once that the Katmai district must be made a great national park accessible to all the people, like the Yellowstone. To make it known, to have it set aside as a National Park, and to secure the means necessary for its development would, I foresaw, require a tremendous amount of effort. [40]

His thoughts the next morning were every bit as occupied as those of the night before. How, he wondered, was the public going to get to this remote region? He had practically proven, after several attempts, that large numbers of people could not be landed through the surf at Katmai Bay. Was a suitable harbor available nearby? From what he knew at the time, the possibilities were not too encouraging. [41]

Griggs' observations on his 1917 trip were colored by the potential value that Katmai might have as a tourist destination. For instance, when he and Walter Metrokin climbed up to Katmai Pass on July 4, he was relieved to find that the fumarole activity was just as active as it had been the previous year. From that, he concluded (incorrectly, as it turned out) that geologic activity in the valley had reached a stable plateau and would continue without much change for years into the future. Generations of tourists, therefore, would be able to enjoy the wondrous display. The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, he opined, was "one of the greatest wonders of the world, if not indeed the very greatest of all the wonders on the face of the earth." [42]

Griggs made further remarks which appear, in retrospect, to have stressed the area's eligibility as a candidate for a national park unit, a tourist area, or both. His 1917 ascent of Mount Katmai, for example, was his third, but he chose to be more hyperbolic in his writeup of this climb than of his previous two trips. He judged Katmai to be "the greatest active crater in the world; furthermore, he called it "a far grander spectacle to look upon" than the inactive and larger craters of Haleakala and Crater Lake, both of which were already within national parks. He noted that Katmai Canyon was "almost as deep as the Grand Canyon;" on a more general level, he felt that the canyon's colored rock walls, the waterfalls, and distant lakes reminded him of the Grand Canyon and the Canadian Rockies "all put together." In describing all he had seen, he declared that "for sublimity of scenery this place has no equal in the whole world." [43]

From the time of his trip until Katmai National Monument became a reality two years later, Griggs became a leading publicist and lobbyist for Katmai; he also became the area's pre-eminent geological authority, even though his training was in biology. When he returned to Washington, for example, he was relieved to find that the National Geographic Society's officers were as interested in publicizing the area as he. Griggs entitled the article on his trip "The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes" even though he included only two photographs and five pages of text on the area beyond Katmai Pass. The Society's directors were old hands in the cause of national park promotion, and when the article was published in the January 1917 National Geographic Magazine, it signaled the opening volley in the Society's crusade to establish a new park area. [44]

The National Park Service Gets Involved

During the same period, the Society made an initial foray into the legislative arena. As Horace Albright noted in an interview more than half a century later, the idea of a government reservation in the Katmai district was first broached in the midst of the negotiations which led to the declaration of Mount McKinley National Park. The McKinley bill passed Congress on February 19, 1917, and was signed by President Woodrow Wilson a week later. But no more governmental action for a park at Katmai took place for another year. [45]

By the time the NGS directorate received the data from the 1917 expedition, the Society was confident that it had gathered enough data to support its claims that the region constituted one of the greatest scientific and scenic wonders of the earth.

The following February the Society laid out its case to the public. It published the results of its 1917 work in an article whose title, "The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes: An Account of the Discovery and Exploration of the Most Wonderful Volcanic Region in the World," announced that the Society had more than just a scientific interest in the area. Neither this article nor that from the previous year specifically mentioned that the volcanic district should be preserved in a national park. But the idea was nevertheless implicit. As Griggs himself later noted, "As a result of this report, the Katmai National Monument ... was created." [46]

As the following paragraphs suggest, Griggs's quote probably overstates the report's role in the creation of the monument; in addition, the statement is an oversimplification because it suggests that little effort was required and no opposition existed to the proposed land reservation. In fact, both local interests and Interior Department officials questioned the necessity for withdrawing such a large, unknown tract. Beyond that, the backers of a monument had to convince many whose priorities lay elsewhere. The United States, at the time, was in the midst of World War I in 1918; matters pertaining to the national parks, as a consequence, were of secondary importance. To most Americans, moreover, the creation of a park in a remote section of Alaska Territory was an issue of little or no concern.

Most of the efforts that led to Katmai's establishment, therefore, were low-key actions partaken far from the legislative arena. The campaign was organized and conducted by several officers from the National Geographic Society, along with Dr. Griggs. Together, they mentioned the idea to various Department of the Interior officials, then to other governmental representatives.

Little documentation exists regarding the methods that were used to obtain Interior Department approval, but evidently little trouble was encountered in obtaining it. An important part of the approval process may have been the fact that Franklin K. Lane, who had been Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of the Interior since 1913, was also on the Society's Board of Managers. Lane, therefore, was doubtless aware of, and probably interested in, the Society's Katmai expeditions. Another point in the monument's favor was a worry, among some geologists, that Yellowstone's geysers were declining; Katmai, therefore, was suggested as a possible replacement. [47]

Soon after the publication of Griggs's article in the February 1918 National Geographic Magazine, its editor, Dr. Gilbert H. Grosvenor, brought up the idea of a park to Secretary Lane. He, in turn, suggested that he mention the idea to the officials at the newly-created National Park Service. Grosvenor therefore requested a meeting with Stephen Mather, NPS director and Horace Albright, the agency's assistant director, in Washington's Cosmos Club. Professor Griggs also attended. The meeting was quite informal; Mather, Albright and Grosvenor were old friends and leaders in the conservation movement. Albright, at the time, was the agency's acting director; Mather had suffered a nervous collapse in the fall of 1916, and was still recovering. [48]

The real work of shaping the idea of a park from an idea into a legislative package took place during the spring of 1918 during a series of discussions at the Cosmos Club which were largely conducted by Grosvenor and Albright. Secretary Lane was kept informed of all developments. [49]

The National Geographic Society, based on Griggs' original suggestions, hoped that the Katmai district would become a national park. Charles Sulzer, Alaska's delegate to Congress at the time, was in enthusiastic agreement on the subject, noting that "we could gain some useful publicity to this great natural phenomenon of the North by creating a national park there." [50] But the National Park Service had just weathered a strong wall of opposition in the struggle to create Mount McKinley National Park. The Service recognized that trying to press for another Alaska national park would sap whatever good will the agency had established with Congress; besides, other areas were of more interest than Katmai as potential national parks. As Albright recalls it, "I simply had to tell the National Geographic people--Dr. Grosvenor, Associate Editor and Vice President John Oliver LaGorce, and Dr. Griggs--that a national park was out of question, and that a national monument was the only kind of reservation that would make possible the protection of Katmai." [51]

The Society weighed the pros and cons of national monument status for the Katmai district. A national monument, in theory at least, conferred just as much protection as a national park. It could be accomplished via a proclamation under the authority of the Antiquities Act of 1906, which permitted the president to create national monuments in order to protect "objects of historic or scientific interest" on public lands. [52] By issuing a presidential proclamation, the agency could avoid a bruising legislative battle like that which had been waged over Mount McKinley.

Grosvenor and his fellow officers initially objected to the idea because they did not feel that the Antiquities Act could be used to reserve large-scale land areas. Albright, however, noted that both Grand Canyon and Mount Olympus national monuments had been established under the act's provisions. Eventually, the Society agreed to push for a monument. [53]

Albright himself began the next step, the preparation of a presidential proclamation. It was a team effort. The text appears to have been influenced by Dr. Grosvenor and Dr. Griggs. George C. Schweckert, the NPS attorney, "probably" prepared the first draft. [54]

Griggs, who had the field experience, proposed the boundary lines (see Map 3). His original boundary proposal called for a large triangular area which began just west of Puale (Cold) Bay. From there the boundary line went due north to a point along American Creek midway between the western end of Lake Coville and Nonvianuk Lake. The boundary then went east-southeast until it reached Shelikof Strait just north of Kaflia Bay. [55]

Map 3. Evolution of original monument boundaries, 1918. Robert F. Griggs's first proposal (dotted line) was rejected by the USGS, but a more modest second proposal (heavy solid line) was accepted and became the monument bondary. Griggs was also asked to consider--but refused to promote--an alternative proposal (dashed line) with a smaller acreage than that accepted by the Secretary of the Interior. Source: Kauffmann, Katmai National Monument, Alaska, 5a. The map accompanied Wilson's proclamation. (click image for larger size)

The proposed proclamation was then given to the General Land Office (GLO) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) so that the proposed boundaries might be checked. [56] These agencies were given the responsibility of providing data on land ownership or mining activities within the proposed reservation. General Land Office personnel found little of interest. [57] The National Geographic Society, in its role as advocate, also hoped that Geological Society investigators would likewise find little of interest. Explorers who had passed through the area before the eruption, after all, had found few areas of interest, and descriptions of the post-eruption landscape clearly indicated that most of the previous resources in the volcanic area had been buried by lava and ash.

But USGS surveys had pointed out several promising mineral discoveries. Puale Bay, for instance, had been the scene of an oil boom from 1902 to 1905, and operations had been intermittently active since that time. [58] In 1912, George Martin had seen commercial possibilities for the ash deposits he had seen along the coast. At about the same time, Charlie McNeil and Norman B. Cook found copper-bearing veins about 17 miles inland on a stream running into a "southwest bight" of Kamishak Bay. (The stream was probably McNeil River.) In 1915, Fred and Jack Mason discovered placer gold along a small stream just south of Cape Kubugakli. Two years later, Robert Griggs discovered that "There are some places where one can gather crystals of sulphur, almost free from impurities, by the bushel." In 1918, Alex Grant found placer gold on American Creek; the same year, the Geological Survey reported that work was continuing at the Shelikof Mining Company's prospect near Kukak Bay.

Many of these discoveries, to be sure, were outside of the boundaries of the proposed monument, and most turned out to be of short-term duration and were economically insignificant. [59] But enough was known about the mining activities surrounding Puale Bay and Cape Kubugakli, both of which were within the proposed monument boundaries, that they were brought to the attention of Secretary Lane. [60]

In order to clarify their position on the matter, Albright talked to some of the geologists who had been asked to review the proposal. Some were opposed to the withdrawal, primarily because "regardless of whether or not the Katmai country was valuable commercially, it was so devastated and uninviting that it was absolutely safe in its existing state and there was absolutely no necessity for giving it any governmental protection." [61]

While the monument proposal was being investigated by the GLO and the USGS, an Interior Department official sent the details of the plan to Charles Sheldon, a longtime member of the Boone and Crockett Club. The Club, a prestigious organization of sportsmen and conservationists, had recently played an integral role in the setting aside of Mount McKinley National Park as a game refuge, and Sheldon hoped that the Katmai proposal would also include a large area of high quality wildlife habitat. Sheldon, therefore, "suggested that the limits of the area occupied this national monument should be so drawn as to create a refuge for bears." But Sheldon, who had lived in Alaska for several years, knew that the monument's wildlife resources had to be downplayed. In 1918, a wartime scarcity of beef was causing many Alaskans to lobby territorial officials for a repeal of all legal protection for bears. Boone and Crockett members, therefore, responded by quietly pushing for a proclamation, all the while cautioning that "the word bear should never be mentioned in connection with the establishing of this monument." The Club's president, George Bird Grinnell, told Club members that "The boundaries of this monument recommended by [Sheldon] ... are so drawn as to create a refuge for bears." But neither NPS nor NGS documents reveal that the Boone and Crockett Club had much influence in the matter. [62]

President Wilson Proclaims Katmai National Monument

After the GLO and the USGS had completed their investigation, NPS Director Mather (who by now had actively assumed his post) was ready to present the proclamation to Interior Secretary Lane. Griggs, who had been asked to consider two smaller monument areas, vigorously defended his original boundaries, going so far as to invoke the vision of Jefferson and Seward in their respective quests for the Louisiana Purchase and Alaska. He argued, in particular, for the inclusion of the Puale Bay area because he felt it might be devastated by some future eruption. But Secretary Lane, perhaps on advice provided by the Geological Survey, insisted that Griggs' proposed boundaries be reduced to "exclude all lands except those devastated by the great eruption." Lane thus chose the larger of the two alternative proposals which Griggs had crafted. Excised areas included the large triangle of land surrounding Puale Bay, and a long, narrow band located just north and northeast of the original monument boundaries. [63]

The language of the final proclamation, which Mather and Lane then passed on to President Wilson, warned "all unauthorized persons not to appropriate or injure any natural feature of this monument or to occupy, exploit, settle, or locate upon any of the lands reserved by this proclamation." The implicit prohibition against mining in the Katmai proclamation was thus distinctly different from language contained in the recently-passed Mount McKinley park bill. (In 1925, Glacier Bay National Monument was created by presidential proclamation, and in 1936 Congress passed a bill allowing mining activities at Glacier Bay; for more than 50 years, therefore, Katmai was the only large Alaskan NPS unit that prohibited such an activity.) [64]

The Society was convinced that the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes and the related volcanic features did indeed "stand preeminent among the wonders of the world," and that nowhere else on earth was there "anything at all similar to this supreme wonder." But one nagging question which had come up during the deliberations concerned the permanency of the volcanic wonders. Were the steaming vents really evidence of a vast underlying body of molten magma, or did they only indicate the vaporization of surface water as gradually cooling products of the eruption? In other words, were the cauldrons and "smokes" long lasting phenomena, or would they fade away in just a few years? Griggs, who had seen the valley in both 1916 and 1917, was convinced on his second trip that "everything was just as it had been the previous year." [65] But others, both in the Society and the NPS, wanted more evidence.

To answer their concerns, the Society organized another expedition to the Katmai district in the summer of 1918, even though a larger expedition had been deferred because of the war. Only two botanists, Jasper Sayre and Paul Hagelbarger, made the trip; both had also participated in the 1917 expedition. Unlike previous adventurers, the two botanists arrived by way of the Naknek River, then crossed Naknek Lake to the lower end of the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. During their excursion, the two men also encountered "three good-sized lakes not shown on any map," now known as lakes Brooks, Coville and Grosvenor. [66]

Regarding the primary purpose of their trip, the photographs they took and the temperatures they recorded caused them to conclude that the condition of the fumaroles was "exactly the same" as in 1917. Writing in a National Geographic Magazine article which appeared in the spring of 1919, its editors stated that

It is clear that the studies made thus far give no indication of any diminution in the Smokes, much less do they suggest a probable date for their extinction. It may be considered established, therefore, that the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes is a relatively permanent phenomenon. [67]

With all parties satisfied that the monument was both worthwhile and of lasting value, Secretary Lane took the completed proclamation over to the White House. There, on September 24, 1918, President Wilson issued Proclamation No. 1487, which reserved "approximately 1700 square miles" to create Katmai National Monument. The signing was witnessed by Secretary of State Robert Lansing. [68]

The new monument was at last a reality. The area included within its boundaries was relatively modest by today's standards; it included less than 30 percent of the present park and preserve. A "modest reservation" of approximately 1,088,000 acres, it embraced little more than the area of active volcanic peaks surrounding Mount Katmai, along with the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes and most of Iliuk Arm. That area, small as it was by Alaska standards, was still half the size of Yellowstone National Park and 50 percent larger than the state of Rhode Island. [69]

The purposes of the new monument were consistent with the amount of land reserved. Four reasons were given in the proclamation: 1) the recognition of the importance of Mount Katmai and the eruption which issued forth from there, 2) the opportunity to learn and appreciate the field of volcanism because the eruption had taken place so recently, 3) because it provided the opportunity to protect an active volcanic belt (as opposed to the "present dying geyser field of the Yellowstone"), and 4) because the "great magnitude" and "inspiring spectacles" contained within ensured "popular scenic, as well as scientific, interest for generations to come." In a phrase reflective of that wartime period, the proclamation even went so far as to imply that creation of the monument would be an "inspiration to patriotism." [70]

When compared with the political process required to create today's NPS units, it seems remarkable that a monument such as Katmai could have been created so simply. It also seems remarkable that a single organization--in this case the National Geographic Society--was able to play such a dominant role. There appears to have been an element of collusion involved in the monument creation process because of the social relationships shared by the Secretary of the Interior, the NPS hierarchy, and the National Geographic Society leadership. The easy sociability of those men doubtless made monument designation an easier process than it otherwise might have been.

It seems patriarchal to conclude that the National Geographic Society, so quickly and without fanfare, was able to convince Interior Department officials and the President to reserve such a large land mass. But that is precisely what took place. No other groups outside of government appear to have known that such a monument was being proposed. Among Alaskans, Governor Thomas Riggs (who had been working in the territory for years and had been appointed to his position just a few months earlier) may have been the only one who was even aware of the proposal, and he was given only an general outline of the proposed action. (Riggs protested the monument idea; he also requested that a geologist survey the area before designation took place. His pleas fell on deaf ears.) [71] During the early years of the NPS, the only standard process--in Alaska or elsewhere--by which proposed park areas were checked for their resource values were the GLO and USGS investigations. Outside groups, local residents, and other interested individuals were typically given no opportunities to either support or protest proposed parks. In the case of Katmai, the NGS does not appear to have covered up information which may have diminished park values, but their position as advocate made it difficult for them to objectively assess the monument's resources. [72]

As time would prove, a major resource value on which the monument idea had been based--the fumaroles--would decrease in importance. Other aspects of the geologic landscape, however, would continue to remain much as they had been for decades to come. Other priorities, moreover, would eventually shoulder their way to the forefront, and as a result, the public's perceptions of the monument would change. The establishment of Katmai as a national monument, in September of 1918, was the beginning of National Park Service management of the area. The agency still manages the district, but the actions it has taken to effect that management have reflected a continuing evolution in public attitudes toward park resources. That evolution is still in process today.

Chapter 3:
An Era of Neglect: Monument Administration Before 1950

As noted in Chapter 2, the only parties responsible for the impending creation of Katmai National Monument were the National Geographic Society and various agencies within the Department of the Interior. Few others were even aware that the idea was being considered. It was only after President Wilson signed Proclamation No. 1487, in September 1918, that outsiders learned that the area had been protected.

Reactions to the New National Monument

Thanks to the publicity generated by annual articles in National Geographic Magazine, many Americans were aware of the Katmai country at the time of its designation as a monument. Most, however, knew little more than they had read in the Society's articles. National Geographic subscribers probably approved of the proclamation, but the vast majority of citizens cared little if at all about the fate of such a remote, unpopulated area. Surprisingly, the creation of the million-acre reservation elicited few if any news reports or commentary, either in Alaska or the United States. With the World War in its waning stages, the glut of overseas war bulletins was far more important to the average reader than a national monument in a far-off corner of Alaska. [1]

The National Park Service, not surprisingly, was a strong supporter of the new monument. Its 1918 annual report stated that "The American public owes deep gratitude to the National Geographic Society for the discovery and exploration of this unique exhibit." Horace Albright, its acting director, spoke with candor when he told the Alaska governor that

We feel that the establishment of the Katmai National Monument cannot possibly be anything but a benefit to the people of Alaska. We are in the tourist business and are engaged in attracting the attention of the people of America to its scenic resources. Whether people visit the Katmai region or not, we want them to know that some day it will be an interesting place to go, and besides it gives us an opportunity to promote Alaska as a touring ground. [2]

Most Alaskans, however, did not approve of the new monument. Few, to be sure, knew what lands were contained within the reservation. Instead, they were opposed the idea of government reservations in general because they regarded withdrawals as a "locking up" of resources which should have been available for local residents. Territorial citizens were still seething over the closure of Alaska's coal and oil lands which had been imposed on Alaskans in 1906 and 1910, respectively. The new reservation merely reopened earlier wounds and stirred a new wave of anger and resentment. [3]

Thomas Riggs, who governed the territory from 1918 to 1921 and a longtime Alaskan, typified local attitudes when he said that "practically all of the reservations should be eliminated and the laws of the United States made to apply." He further noted that "Katmai National Monument serves no purpose and should be abolished." He chided Acting Director Albright for allowing its creation; he noted that volcanic ash made the soil "peculiarly fertile," stated that the monument contained oil, and decried that "there is no possibility of the Katmai National Monument ever becoming a favorite place for tourist travel." Riggs was fed up with a system in which "the Territory has been at the mercy of any faddist who could go to Washington and get the proper endorsements." [4] The governor, obviously frustrated at the tactics of outside conservationists, stated that

For the sake of the future of Alaska, let there at least be no more reservations without a thorough investigation on the ground by practical men and not simply on the recommendation of men whose interest in the Territory is merely academic or sentimental. [5]

Despite the broad denunciations of the action taken within the territory, the objections were primarily philosophical. No one knew of instances in which individuals were deprived of a living because of the proclamation. The land had no agricultural value, it contained less than ten acres of private (Russian Orthodox Church) land, it was well away from established transportation routes, and access to the monument's main features was almost prohibitively difficult. Instead--and the criticism is valid considering the existing state of regional development--many criticized the action because the creation of the reservation would prevent development interests from ever knowing what resources were contained within.

As noted in the previous chapter, the Katmai area was the scene of scattered mining activity at the time the monument was created. Those who were out prospecting, of course, had no idea that a monument was being contemplated. And as it turned out, their activities caused no friction with governmental authorities. In large part due to the elimination of potential parkland around Puale Bay, no active mining areas were placed within the boundaries of 1918 monument. George Martin had noted the commercial importance of ash deposits and Robert Griggs had mentioned the preponderance of sulphur crystals, but there is no indication that entrepreneurs during this period had ever attempted to extract these materials for commercial gain.

Early Monument Visitors

During the half decade after the creation of the monument, the monument continued to be publicized, though to a lesser extent than it had been during the 1912-1918 period. The most conspicuous group of visitors came from the National Geographic Society. In 1919, Robert Griggs led his fourth Katmai expedition. Griggs and the main party entered the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes by way of Katmai Pass, but four members brought the main supplies into the area by way of Naknek, Naknek River, and Naknek Lake (as the two-man 1918 expedition had done). A tent base camp was established at the east end of Iliuk Arm. The party of nineteen, which included five scientists, two topographers, two photographers, and ten assistants, undertook a diversity of tasks which led them to Brooks Lake, Lake Coville and Lake Grosvenor as well as the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. Perhaps because he had already given a thorough description of the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes in previous articles, Griggs's writeup of the 1919 trip concentrated on the countryside adjoining the monument. Griggs spared few adjectives in lauding the Naknek River system's salmon runs--in particular the Brooks River run--and in describing Katmai's value as a bear, moose and waterfowl refuge. [6]

In 1923, Walter R. Smith and R. K. Lynt led a U.S. Geological Survey expedition which included most of the area within the existing monument; the report also described the area as far west as Brooks Lake and southwest to Becharof Lake. That same summer, Kirtley F. Mather and R. H. Sargent led another USGS expedition which investigated the coastal valleys from Cape Douglas north to Paint River, and also covered Battle Lake and the Savonoski River, Moraine Creek and Funnel Creek drainages. The reports which followed those explorations indicated that few if any rich areas of mineralization were likely to be found in either the monument or the immediate vicinity. Before the reports were published, as noted above, Alaskan interests had been angry at the creation of the monument, in part because of the perception that valuable minerals would be made inaccessible. The reports, therefore, helped create a somewhat friendlier public attitude toward the monument. [7]

Local interests were also mollified when attempts were made to develop the area's tourist potential. During his 1919 expedition, Robert F. Griggs discovered an excellent harbor at the head of Amalik Bay, which he called Geographic Harbor in honor of his longtime sponsor. He noted that it would be easy to bring tourists there, and added 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. [8]

The Alaska Road Commission (ARC) responded to Griggs's suggestions in 1921 by visiting the area and making an informal survey for a thirty-mile road. The ARC's report that year gave development backers scant hope that a road into the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes would ever be built. The reconnaissance report noted 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. [9]

The glum report, however, did not dissuade those who hoped to open up Katmai to tourism. Governor Scott Bone, for one, recommended road construction in his annual reports for 1922 and 1923. [10] The governor's reports for 1924 through 1931 noted that "When [Geographic Harbor] can be developed and an auto road approximately 30 miles in length constructed into the area, it will be readily accessible and draw many visitors." The NPS, which also hoped that the area might be developed, was optimistic enough to declare in 1926 that such a road "may in the future afford a fine entrance to the region." No government agency, however, seriously considered constructing such a road, and no organizations outside of government advocated road construction either. The National Geographic Society, having won monument status for the volcanic area, made no efforts to develop the recently protected area. Alaska's governors were doubtless aware that the construction of such a road would require superhuman skill, result in high maintenance costs, and would, under the best of circumstances, attract few visitors. But that did not stop them from pushing for highway construction. [11]

The 1920s brought large numbers of tourists "to the westward" (as southcentral Alaska was described at that time) for the first time. Before World War I, few tourists who traveled up the Inside Passage ventured far from the various of southeastern Alaska ports. But with the construction of the government-sponsored Alaska Railroad from 1915 through 1922, destinations such as Seward, Anchorage, Mount McKinley National Park and Fairbanks became newly accessible. Katmai, as a result, was located much closer to the regular tourist routes than it had been previously. Unfortunately, however, Katmai was still over 200 miles from the nearest port commonly used by tourists. Besides, it had no transportation infrastructure. Tourists, therefore, had to make a considerable effort to see the newly created volcanic landscape. Few were willing to be so adventurous. [12]

Despite the difficulties in reaching the monument, a few tourists dribbled in during the 1920s. In 1923, a party of forty spent two weeks exploring the area. As part of their trip, they hiked Mount Katmai. Fifteen others also visited that year, and another seventeen in 1924. A four-person party headed by D. W. Handy of Vermont visited in 1925. [13] Perhaps the best known tourists were Captain Jack Robertson and Arthur Young, a pair of adventurous filmmakers who travelled throughout the territory in search of footage. In 1925 the two produced, directed, and starred in The True North, a seven reel travelogue of their trip to Siberia. Robertson and Young took an indirect route; going by way of Fairbanks, they shot rapids along the Yukon River, watched a spring break-up, and made a canoe from a moose hide. They also visited the Katmai country, and observed Mount Katmai, the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, and spawning salmon. Using much of the same footage, the pair released Alaskan Adventures in 1926. Four years later, Robertson included Katmai scenes along with those from other Alaskan venues to produce a five-reeler called The Break Up. [14]

Although the monument attracted few sightseers, the potential for visitation to the newly-created volcanic wonderland encouraged several to promote the area. Throughout the 1920s, Kodiak advertised itself as the outfitting headquarters for trips to the monument, perhaps because it had been the jumping-off point for some of the National Geographic Society trips to the Valley of the Ten Thousand Smokes. The Alaska Railroad offered to arrange trips to the monument. In the early 1930s a ship captain from Kanatak, Bob Hall, offered to take tourists into the Valley. He had already visited the valley with a pack horse team, and felt that pack horses taken in from Katmai Bay were the best way to access the heart of the monument. And in 1931 an Alaska resident told Horace Albright, the NPS director, that the monument would soon become "a regular port of call for the Alaskan steamers." No one, however, was willing to make a substantial investment in Katmai tourism development. [15]

Initial National Park Service Management

Although both scientists and tourist entrepreneurs expressed an early interest in the area, the National Park Service largely forgot about Katmai for the first twenty years after its establishment. The analogy which Ernest Gruening used to describe Alaska is relevant here; this period comprised Gruening's "era of total neglect." [316] The unit was ostensibly managed as an adjunct to Mount McKinley National Park. (Glacier Bay, which was established in 1925, was managed in a similar fashion.) But the National Park Service was unable to provide the wherewithal to actively manage either unit, and there is no evidence that Harry Karstens, the first superintendent for Mount McKinley, exerted any effort in managing either Katmai or Glacier Bay during his seven-year tenure (1921-1928). Given the meager resources available, Mount McKinley was hard enough to manage itself. Both Karstens and his successor, Harry Liek, were stretched to the limit trying to maintain a minimal presence over the countryside surrounding North America's highest peak. At no time during the 1920s and 1930s were there more than six employees, permanent or seasonal, on the Mount McKinley park staff. [17]

Compounding the lack of staff was a lack of money. Prior to the coming of the New Deal programs of the 1930s, national monuments were perceived to be areas designed to be protected from encroachment, whereas national parks were intended to be "resort[s] for the people to enjoy." Because monuments were designed for protection rather than public use, monuments were given a fraction of the budget provided to national parks. As late as 1921, for instance, the budget for all of America's national monuments was $8,000; in 1925, it was less than $21,000; and in 1930 it was just $46,000. Funds allotted to monuments, during this period, comprised less than 1% of the NPS budget. [18] What little money was available was divvied out to monuments which received high visitation, or for capital projects intended to preserve and protect prehistoric ruins. Katmai, which one report described as "the least visited of any" of the country's 25 national monuments, and where "no protection is needed," was low on the priority list. [19] Therefore, Katmai received almost no NPS funding during the first 30 years after its founding.

Considering Katmai's visitation and remoteness, it is not surprising that Katmai received no funds or staff. Many national monuments during this period also had to skimp along on little or no funding, and most of the monuments had no full-time staff. (A custodian, either an interested local citizen or a government agent whose duties were allied with those of the monument, was often employed on an ad hoc basis.) The lack of a staff or budget at Katmai, moreover, was probably an appropriate management decision, even if funds had been available, and Katmai's resources probably suffered little for want of a staff presence. NPS officials were, however, anxious to visit the area. Their only source materials on the monument were the reports of the various NGS and USGS expeditions. In order to plan for future management and to respond to occasional queries about the monument, agency officials hoped to add to that information base.

Given the lack of a staff presence, however, the Service chose to close Katmai National Monument to the public. The monument was ostensibly closed to entry on both its lands and waters, and airplane landings were also prohibited. As might be expected from an underfunded bureaucracy, the NPS did little to publicize the prohibition against entry, and had no power to stop those who entered in violation of that ban. In addition, the agency did not announce the need for permits or licenses for those who wished legal entry into the monument. The NPS, in fact, issued no monument regulations for over thirty years after its establishment. The staff at Mount McKinley National Park, who were located some 400 miles northeast of Katmai, appear to have ignored the monument completely; not one of the Mount McKinley Superintendent's Monthly Reports issued between 1921 and 1935 mentioned Katmai National Monument. Glacier Bay National Monument, which was also under the titular jurisdiction of the Mount McKinley superintendent, was similarly ignored during this period. [20]

Because the monument lacked a staff or budget, and because NPS officials knew virtually nothing about the park except for what had been explained in the National Geographic Magazine, the agency was vulnerable to anyone who had a claim, legitimate or otherwise, to Katmai resources. In 1923, for instance, John J. Folstad petitioned the government to obtain a General Land Office permit to mine coal on the western shore of Amalik Bay, opposite Takli Island. (A permit, at that time, was necessary to extract coal from public lands.) Folstad, evidently, had been occupying and developing the site for some time, using the coal for local fuel needs. There is no record regarding how the NPS responded to this intrusion on its lands; it probably felt that it better to eliminate a small portion of the monument than to sanction mineral extraction in the monument. President Calvin Coolidge, accordingly, issued Executive Order No. 3897 on September 5, which excluded 10 acres from the monument. Coolidge's action paved the way for Folstad to gain a coal mining permit. There is no evidence, however, to suggest that such a permit was ever obtained. [21]

Prominent groups of Outside visitors began to explore Katmai in the late 1920s. In 1928 the well-known "Glacier Priest," Father Bernard Hubbard, landed along the coast northeast of the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes accompanied by a group of Santa Clara University students. They tried to cross the Aleutian Range that year but were unsuccessful in their quest. The following year, Hubbard and a coterie of students came by way of Katmai Bay and, with a film crew, successfully entered the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes by way of Katmai Pass. [22] In 1932 he made the first wintertime ascent of Mount Katmai, and in 1934 made a final exploration of the Ten Thousand Smokes area. Hubbard, who visited Alaska every summer from 1927 through the 1940s, was a geology professor, explorer, filmmaker, and lecturer; his movies about the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes were shown to audiences around the world for years afterwards. [23]

The 1931 Boundary Expansion

In 1930, Robert Griggs made his fifth National Geographic-sponsored visit to Katmai. The primary purpose of his trip was to investigate plant succession in the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. As a result of his efforts he produced scientific articles which were published in the American Journal of Botany, Ecology, and the Ohio Journal of Science. [24] That fall, Ernest Walker Sawyer, an assistant to the Secretary of the Interior who specialized in Alaska matters, asked Griggs to write him a letter which elaborated on why and how the habitat of the Alaska brown bear should be protected. Griggs, who was trained as a biologist and had been particularly impressed with the bear population during his 1919 expedition, readily complied. Sawyer added a cover sheet, then mailed it to Ray Wilbur, Herbert Hoover's Secretary of the Interior. Central to both letters was a request that the National Park Service significantly enlarge Katmai National Monument. [25] Griggs, of course, had played a central role in the creation of the original monument, and Sawyer may have thought that the popular scientist would be an influential figure in the effort to create a large-scale brown bear preserve.

NPS officials, having read Griggs' accounts, were was not oblivious to the value of the Alaska Peninsula as brown bear habitat. As early as 1926, they had advertised that in addition to its geological values, "the surrounding region has some magnificent lake and mountain scenery. Water fowl and fish are abundant, as are the great Alaskan brown bears, the largest of carniverous [sic] animals." [26] And various wildlife conservation advocates, including popular author Steward Edward White, had begun pressing for an NPS bear preserve in southeastern Alaska. [27] But the Griggs-Sawyer letter was the first indication that outside parties wanted to expand Katmai's boundaries in order to protect brown bear habitat.

In his letter, Griggs admitted that the brown bear's habitat was presently not in danger. But in the future, he feared that the Kodiak bear had a bleak future. Therefore, "the Katmai National Monument is the only place in the world where the great Alaskan brown bear can be preserved for posterity." He felt that a broad spectrum of interests--Kodiak residents, Alaskan guides, and the Alaska Game Commission (AGC)--would support the monument expansion. He noted that there were no year-round residents in the proposed expansion area, that there were "no minerals of value" except for a worked-out gold placer at Cape Kubugakli, and that only one man--the trader at Kanatak, located 50 miles southwest of the existing monument--would be adversely affected by the action. He was well aware of the clam cannery at Kukak Bay, but dismissed its importance because its employees were "casual visitors." [28]

Taking care to avoid the oil-bearing tracts which surrounded Puale Bay, Griggs felt that the "low mountains and open valleys covered with tall grass and tundra" should be added to the west and southwest of the existing monument (see Map 4). A second important area was the lake region--Brooks, Naknek, Coville, and Grosvenor--which was an excellent breeding ground for waterfowl. Of particular note was the waterfall at the outlet of Brooks Lake, "where at the proper season is one of the finest exhibition of leaping salmon to be found anywhere in the world." A final area he wanted to preserve was the Aleutian Range from Kukak to Douglas. Griggs admitted that the primary value of the Aleutian Range was its scenic grandeur, not its bear habitat, and he was also quick to note the scenic advantages of all three areas. [29]

Map 4. Evolution of expanded monument boundaries, 1930-1931. Robert F. Griggs's proposal of 1930 (dotted line) was slightly expanded by the USGS (dashed line). The version that was forwarded to Secretary Wilbur and proclaimed by President Hoover (solid line) was a modification of the USGS's sugested boundary. Source: Kauffmann, Katmai National Monument, Alaska, 5a; the base map, drawn in April 1952, was included in Katmai's first interpretive brochure. (click image for larger size)

Wilderness values also were important in adding the Aleutian Range to the monument. Griggs noted that the range was

a vast mountain fastness whose very inaccessibility would almost guarantee the preservation of primeval conditions. If visitors should ever invade the other portions of the park, aboriginal conditions must inevitably be modified somewhat. But here is an area so rugged that its primitive condition can be preserved for centuries to come. All that is needed to that end is that the occasional hunters who would otherwise stray that way should be debarred and nature be allowed to take her course. [30]

The following January the NPS, in consultation with Griggs and the Interior Department, laid out the boundaries of the proposed monument expansion. The Geological Survey, when asked its opinion of the area's economic geology, offered a dim view of its suitability as parkland. The agency noted that potential oil fields existed both north and south of the present monument, and that in the vicinity of Cape Kubugakli, both gold and other economically valuable minerals had been unearthed. In the Kamishak Bay region, "a number of metallic mineral deposits" had been found; the underlying geology suggested that similar materials might exist in the area west and southwest of Cape Douglas. [31]

The Service, in response, offered to pare the size of its proposed expansion, but in mid-February, the Acting Director of the Geological Survey hardened its previous position and dissented against any boundary changes. The Survey again expressed its concern about the possibilities of oil and gold extraction, but on a broader level, the agency stated that it "is keenly interested in having as much of the region as possible kept open for free use, in order to stimulate its development." The USGS, continuing in its pessimistic vein, felt that the additional acreage was irrelevant to the original intent of the park. [32]

The NPS, not content with comments from the USGS, also solicited comments from Alaska officials, namely the Territorial Game Warden and the Regional Forester. Neither was enthusiastic about the proposal. Both felt that "the Alaska Game Commission has plenty of authority to handle the situation and that the only thing needed is adequate law enforcement." Neither thought that the NPS was in any position to provide extra staff. Both felt that the brown bear was not in any particular danger. They stated that Alaska's resources needed to be developed, not protected. [33]

The Service responded to the various comments by excluding the various oil claims surrounding Puale Bay; the new boundary lines, however, were far closer to those in Griggs's original proposal than those made in response to USGS's original criticisms. The revised boundaries, which were justified in an April 22 letter from Secretary Wilbur to President Herbert Hoover, thus ignored much of the Geological Survey's concerns about potential oil development, and similarly ignored the criticisms voiced by Alaskan officials.

Apparently emboldened by renewed pressure from bear preservation advocates, who were also pushing for a national monument on Chichagof Island in southeastern Alaska, the Secretary said that "it would appear advisable to extend the boundaries of the Katmai National Monument so that the brown bear within this monument can be protected rather than create a new monument of Chichagoff for the same purpose." Wilbur noted that the expansion, which would enlarge the monument by 1,609,600 acres, was also needed for the protection of moose; in addition, the new area "has many features valuable for educational and scientific purposes." He concluded that the proposed area "is of greater value from a educational and scientific viewpoint and for the protection of wild life than for economic development." [34] The proposed expansion also planned to reincorporate the 10-acre parcel that had been removed from the monument in 1923; John Folstad had long since lost interest in his coal claim.

Wilbur's letter was favorably received by President Hoover, who made no modifications to it. Then, on April 24, 1931, he issued Proclamation No. 1950. This document, just as the 1918 proclamation, was issued under the authority of the Antiquities Act. It gave little explanation for the expansion; it only noted that adjoining the existing monument were "additional lands on which there are located features of historical and scientific interest and for the protection of the brown bear, moose, and other wild animals." [35] (The scientific interest and wildlife values had no doubt been condensed from Secretary Wilbur's letter; the historical interest was probably derived from language in the Antiquities Act.) The affixing of Hoover's signature to the document more than doubled the size of the monument (see Appendix A). Katmai, with an acreage of 2,697,590, thus became the largest unit of the National Park Service system, almost half a million acres larger than Yellowstone National Park. For the next 47 years, Katmai would continue to hold that honor. [36]

The nation's newspapers generally ignored the president's proclamation, just as they had ignored Wilson's proclamation thirteen years earlier. News articles describing the expansion did not surface until almost a month later. What appeared in the press appears to have been a result of an orchestrated program instituted by conservationists, who were ecstatic about Hoover's proclamation. A syndicated article noted that "the creation of a sanctuary for the Alaskan brown bear, the largest and proudest race of carnivorous animals in the world is believed to have been saved from extinction." "President Hoover," it continued, "has given a reprieve to untold hundreds of wilderness aristocrats [brown bears], who had been condemned to death by the guns of sportsmen." Until now, "the bears have been easy prey to sportsmen every summer when they followed the streams down to the coast," but henceforth they "can spend their summers at the various bear seashore resorts without interference from the two-legged creatures who kill them at a great distance." Wildlife preservation advocates openly rued the extinction of grizzlies in California, and hoped to avoid a repetition of that fate. [37]

The New York Times' only response to Hoover's proclamation was a letter to the editor from Robert Sterling Yard, the well known park and wilderness advocate, who noted that:

The largest and one of our most distinguished geological monuments has become, also, by a flourish of the President's pen, one of the greatest wild life reserves in the world. Matching Belgium's national gorilla park in Africa, there is now the American brown bear park in Alaska. Thus have two of the world's most interesting and powerful wild animals each a national government protecting them from extinction.

The several scientific trips made by Dr. Robert F. Griggs of George Washington University had brought to his attention the large number of big bears in that part of the peninsula. They were not the Ursus Middendorffi of Kodiak Island, but Ursus Gyas, scarcely smaller in size, and larger than the eight or more other sub-species found elsewhere in Alaska.

In view of the warfare urged of late against the brown bear because of widespread stories of its ferocity, Dr. Griggs had been urging the National Park Service for more than a year to enlarge the Katmai National Monument as an extraordinary and sufficient refuge for this beast. ... South of it is additional wild area also abounding in bear which may be added if prospecting fails to discover expected oil wells. Besides the Alaskan brown bear the Katmai National Monument has many grizzlies. [38]

The comments emitted by Alaskans were not nearly so charitable. The Anchorage Daily Times noted that "agitation for the salvation of the brown bear, inspired by the writings of Stewart Edward White, led to the creation of the sanctuary in spite of the opposition to such action in various sections of Alaska." [39] The Seward Daily Gateway editorialized:

Secretary Wilbur of Alaska Railroad fame, and President Hoover, who said he did not believe in bureaus, both take the word of Stewart Edward White, Robert Frothingham, [Outdoor Life] Editor [John A.] McGuire and other big game hunters, that the great big brown bear of Alaska is doomed unless protected. So by official decree the Katmai National Monument is increased in area. The fumaroles will now have to move over, and make way for the brownies whom some one, or group, must be killing by the thousands.

We have said it before and say it once more that the standing army of the United States could not exterminate the bear. Hoover and Wilbur wouldn't believe that statement of course unless some committee so advised them. We're not kicking about the additional reserves because within a few years every acre will be a reserve for some darn thing. [40]

Territorial officials predictably decried the removal of such a large area from settlement and mining development, and declared that wildlife enforcement in the area was so ineffectual that the extension would do little to protect large animal populations. [41]

Naknek residents grumbled as well. The monument extension severely limited the hinterland in which legal trapping operations could take place. Trapping was a supplementary (and at times primary) source of income for many local residents; it was one of the few ways in which both white and Native residents could earn a living during the wintertime. Those who did not trap, moreover, were often in sympathy with those that did. Naknek residents, like others in Alaska, resented the taking of land because of the agitation of outside interests. Their protests were in vain; they did not, however, last long. Residents soon recognized that the NPS was unable or unwilling to police its newly-acquired territory, and activities in the area were carried on as before. Trappers did not become aware that they were in violation of monument regulations until 1936, perhaps later. [42]

Users of the Monument, 1931-1936

The expansion of the monument brought forth new plans to develop Katmai for its tourist potential. Some thought that wildlife clubs would develop the monument, because they had expressed themselves so strongly during the monument expansion process. Another potential monument developer surfaced in 1933, when the owner of a travel service wrote that he hoped to become active "promoting, showing, teaching, and selling" vacations to the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. NPS Director Albright, however, openly worried that nothing should be developed before the agency established a presence. Therefore, he discouraged both proposals. [43]

A minor flow of visitors came to the monument, however, because of the advent of the air age. In 1929, Anchorage Air Transport debuted tourist flights to the area in the form of a one-day tour. For $265, the company offered to fly visitors into the still-active Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes and provide them eight hours for exploration and sightseeing. In the early 1930s Frank Dorbrandt, a pilot who flew for Anchorage-based Pacific International Airways, took several parties into the volcanic country. Robert Ellis (of Alaska-Washington Airways) and other charter operators also visited the area during the early to mid-1930s. [44] By 1940 John Walatka, a pilot for Bristol Bay Air Service, had also become familiar with the monument; a game agent praised him as one who "knows that park as few do and knows where all the cabins are located." [45]

Local residents, after April 1931, continued to use the Katmai area just as they had before the monument expansion. Trappers accounted for some of that use. Most of these men were commercial fishermen during the summer and spent the remainder of the year in cabins and on trap lines within the monument. Their use of the monument was clearly illegal, but no one from either the territorial or federal government was charged with enforcing monument regulations.

Local Native residents took part in organized traditional use activities. Those who had fled Old Savonoski in June 1912, for instance, made annual hunting pilgrimages from New Savonoski to the Savonoski River valley until the late 1930s. Throughout this period these expeditions were scarcely noticed by the authorities, but when permission was asked to continue the practice, the NPS issued a denial and the hunts came to a halt. Another group grazed reindeer in the park. Shortly after 1930, about 10,000 reindeer were brought from Nome into the Naknek River area, and a portion of that herd had grazed for awhile in the area west of Lake Coville and north of Naknek Lake. [46] The industry, however, soon declined, and by 1940 no reindeer were known to live in or near the monument. [47]

Another management headache which the NPS acquired as a result of the expansion dealt with the clam and salmon canning operations. The agency was aware of these activities; Robert Griggs, in fact, had noted in his correspondence of November 1930 that "no people live within the proposed reservation except casual visitors such as the hands of the clam cannery at Kukak Bay." What the agency did not know was that canning interests had been investing in facilities along the shore of Swikshak and Kukak bays since 1923. The canneries, however, escaped General Land Office scrutiny because their operations had not been patented. The cannery owners were probably never informed of the impending monument expansion. [48]

In February 1936, Surf Canneries called attention to its operations when it wrote Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes. A company representative noted that it owned a clam and salmon cannery at Kukak Bay, and fishing cabins, docks, and other improvements in and near Swikshak Bay; the appraised valuation of its facilities was over $90,000. The company requested a patent for four tracts of land in the two bays, and implored the secretary to remove those lands from the monument. [49]

Ickes, the Commissioner of the General Land Office, and the NPS Director Arno Cammerer all recognized the validity of the claim. Cammerer was in no mood to delete lands within the monument, so he instead proposed an executive order "so that all valid existing rights at the time of the issuance of the proclamations shall be restored." [50] Higher-ups agreed with his suggestion, and on June 15 President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Proclamation No. 2177 on their behalf. The new law stated that "it appears that it would be in the public interest" to modify the proclamations of 1918 and 1931 to make "subject to valid claims under the public-land laws affecting any lands within the aforesaid Katmai National Monument existing when the proclamations were issued and since maintained." The proclamation was intended to apply to any operation which could prove its legitimacy. As shall be seen, both cannery companies and trappers tried to take advantage of the 1936 proclamation by applying for patents. No patents, however, were ever issued to either interest. [51]

NPS officials may not have been aware of it at the time, but the land they acquired in the 1931 proclamation gave them control over an area in which another Federal agency had previously been active. Personnel from the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, an agency within the Department of Commerce, had visited the mouth of Kidawik Creek (Brooks River) each year from 1920 through 1925 as part of their predatory fish destruction program. In 1921, they blasted the north end of Brooks Falls in order to ease the way for migrating salmon. [52] They did so in hopes of decreasing salmon mortality. But subsequent studies were not performed, so the agency had no way of knowing whether its action improved salmon reproduction.

The NPS Expresses an Interest

Although the 1931 proclamation made Katmai the largest of the National Park Service units, the monument continued to be as woefully managed as it had ever been. The superintendent at McKinley Park, Harry J. Liek, still ignored its existence, and the NPS directorate in Washington saw no need to spend money or effort for an area that few people visited and where the resources were perceived not to be in danger. When Franklin D. Roosevelt became president, he unleashed a bevy of agencies intended to help the nation's unemployed. Several of those agencies, including the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Civil Works Administration, the Public Works Administration, and the Works Progress Administration, brought workers out to America's parks to work on trail building, improvements, reconstruction work, and similar activities. [53] But the only New Deal program that sent workers to an Alaska NPS unit was the CCC, which operated in Mount McKinley National Park from 1937 to 1939. [54] Katmai, which was remote and had no staff, was not a site for New Deal projects.

During the mid-1930s, the NPS was finally able to direct some of its energies toward Katmai. The agency had had its budget substantially increased with depression-era relief funds (its operations budget rose from $2.5 million in FY 1934 to $11.2 million in FY 1937), and its administrators were able to attend to conditions that it had long been forced to ignore. In June 1936, Arthur Demaray, who was second in command to NPS Director Arno Cammerer, came to Mount McKinley National Park on an inspection tour. Demaray was not the first high official to visit the park; Stephen Mather in 1926 and Horace Albright in 1931 had preceded him. [55] What was special about the trip was his desire to see Alaska's national monuments. By the time he had arrived at McKinley Park he had already visited Sitka and Glacier Bay. He had also planned an aerial inspection of Katmai, but inclement weather forced him to cancel his flight. [56]

Demaray's trip took place shortly after outside pressure began to be applied regarding the monument. The Alaska Game Commission warden in Dillingham, Hosee R. Sarber, visited Naknek in early 1936 and was surprised to find that "quite a number of trappers" were operating in the Naknek-Lake Grosvenor country, most of whom were unaware that they were within the monument. The most aggressive was reported to be a man named Weatherspoon [Harry Featherstone?], who had "several trapping cabins at or near the head of the Naknek Lakes." [57] Shortly afterwards, the Game Commission made five patrols along Shelikof Strait and found "several violators operating in and adjacent to the Park." Both of these reports were sent on to the NPS Director Cammerer in Washington. Frank Dufresne, the Juneau-based Executive Officer of the Alaska Game Commission, delivered much the same message when he visited the director in late March. Mount McKinley Superintendent Harry Liek, who had apparently been apprised of the situation by Dufresne, also passed on his concerns to Cammerer. Cammerer, when confronted with the problem, was caught flat-footed because he knew little about the area. All he could do, for the moment, was reiterate a sense of concern. [58]

Over the next few months, responsibility for the Katmai patrol was kicked about from one official to another. Dufresne hoped that someone on the McKinley staff might carry it out; Liek claimed lack of funds and hoped that Washington might fund the patrol. NPS officials hoped that the Alaska Game Commission could continue its patrols, but the severely understaffed agency was unwilling to do so without financial assistance from the park service. [59]

Demaray, shortly after his McKinley visit, broke the stalemate by assigning the patrol to one of Liek's rangers, the expenses to be paid for from the general national monument appropriation. Katmai was provided a $600 budget for the 1937 fiscal year. [60] The money was intended to allow a Mount McKinley ranger to "make a reconnaissance survey in Mount Katmai National Monument for the purpose of establishing a winter patrol in that area." Louis M. Corbley, who was Superintendent Liek's chief ranger, was given the Katmai assignment in October 1936. He was to arrive at Katmai by November 10 and remain for a minimum of five months, enough for an entire trapping season. A maritime strike, however, quashed his immediate plans. He was not able to visit Katmai until the following spring. [61]

Corbley spent most of June 1937 away from Mount McKinley. He sailed around the peninsula to Naknek, then chartered a boat to go up the Naknek River. But the boat was unable to overcome the rapids, so he returned to Naknek and chartered a flight to Lake Coville, Lake Grosvenor, and the upper end of Naknek Lake. Corbley later flew over the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. He landed just twice, at "Old Village" (probably Savonoski) and at Brooks Lake, where he spent a few hours. His time being limited, he then returned to McKinley Park. He gave no account of his one-day excursion save a brief trip report, which included no information about either the structures or the people he encountered. [62]

The visit was the first that any National Park Service official had made to Katmai since it had been established 19 years earlier. Information, even if brief and sketchy, had been compiled. So, to use Gruening's analogy, the agency's management rose from that of "total neglect" to "flagrant neglect." But Corbley, unfortunately, left the Mount McKinley staff within the next few years. The agency made no attempt to make its patrol an annual event, and its previous inclusion in the Mount McKinley budget was eliminated.

In the meantime, the Bureau of Fisheries, which had performed some rudimentary "improvement" work by blasting out the north end of Brooks Falls back in 1921, applied to make its presence more permanent. In response to concern about Japanese offshore fishing in the Bristol Bay area, Congress directed the bureau to investigate the bay's salmon resources. The plan, conceived in 1938, called for a data collection effort by both offshore and land-based teams. Naknek River, one of five major study targets, received a three man team in 1939, which made a survey of the river system's major spawning grounds. The following year the Bureau established a weir and cabin near the outlet to Brooks Lake. As noted in Chapter 8, they were to maintain their presence at the site for decades to come. [63]

Chapter 3: (continued)
An Era of Neglect: Monument Administration Before 1950

Trappers and the Kinsley Investigation

Reports of Katmai trapping violations, first voiced in early 1936, reached a sufficient crescendo by late 1937 that NPS officials were forced, once again, to pay attention to the monument. [64] The NPS had no staff to deal with the problem, but they hoped to gain some assistance from cooperating agencies.

The NPS soon found that few in the local area had much sympathy with them. Residents had not been consulted about the 1931 expansion, but most had tacitly accepted the enlarged monument as long as the regulations had not been enforced. [65] The first hint of enforcement activity, however, brought resistance. Two of the trappers, Stephen M. Scott and John Monsen, protested that they had a legal right to use the monument's lands. [66] In addition, several other trappers headed a petition of 53 residents from the Naknek vicinity that implored Alaska Delegate Anthony J. Dimond to "help us in any way possible" to relax the enforcement of monument regulations. [67]

The NPS responded to the protests in two ways. First, it squelched any ideas that the agency would willingly give up on Katmai. Also, it asked the General Land Office to find out which trappers had valid land claims, based on the 1936 presidential proclamation. The GLO undertook the task in January 1938, and assigned A. C. Kinsley, a special agent from the Department of the Interior, to investigate.

Throughout this period, both the GLO and the NPS told the trappers that their claims were being investigated; they did not try to evict any trappers from their cabins. But Stephen M. Scott, speaking for four other trappers beside himself, complained to Anthony Dimond that "The Game Warden and another gentleman of the Forestry Department have issued [an] order to get out without so much as by your leave" sometime during 1937. [68] The NPS, when told of Scott's charge, had no knowledge of such an eviction, and representatives from the Alaska Game Commission, the U.S. Forest Service, and the Alaska Road Commission all told the NPS that no one in their agencies had tried to evict anyone. [69]

Kinsley spent the next year investigating the validity of the trappers' claims. He visited the Naknek area in July 1938, tried to contact each of the claimants, and submitted his recommendations in the GLO Commissioner in January 1939. The GLO, in turn, forwarded them to Cammerer in May. The GLO concluded that four trappers--Stephen M. Scott, John Hartzell, Verner Eckman, and John Monsen--were already established in the area before the 1931 monument expansion. Therefore, as a result of the 1936 proclamation which validated existing rights, the four had "a possibility of their claims being valid" even though they were now located on monument land. [70] Roy Fure, another trapper, could not be contacted during the initial investigation. During the summer of 1939, however, his claim of residency in the area prior to 1931 was also substantiated. [71] The GLO found that four other trappers--Richard Mitchell, Paul Chukan, Gunnar Berggren, and Sigurd Lundgren--had begun trapping after 1931 and thus had no valid claims to their property. [72] The GLO report did not investigate the claim of other monument trappers, including John "Frenchy" Fournier, Martin Monsen, Alfred Cooper, and a man named Karvonen. These people, presumably, began trapping after 1931; their claims, at any rate, were never investigated. [73]

The GLO concluded the investigation by notifying Mitchell, Chukan, Berggren and Lundgren that they were trespassers and should leave the monument if they had not already done so. (Chukan and Berggren protested the decision, but were ultimately overruled.) [74] Scott, Hartzell, Eckman, Monsen, and Fure were free to continue residing in the monument. Monument regulations, however, forbade them to trap. Those spotted in the monument with trapping gear or hides were subject to arrest--if authorities were willing to expend the effort to track them down. As time would prove, the legal process prodded some to abandon their trap lines, but others continued to evade monument regulations for years afterward.

During the investigation, several trappers had contended that they were unaware that they had been operating in the monument. The boundaries as set forth in the 1931 proclamation, moreover, did not easily correspond with identifiable physical features. The NPS, therefore, tried to get the GLO to survey the monument. At a minimum, they hoped to survey the northern and western boundaries, where trapping activity was highest. The first such request was made in early 1937, and was repeated in the spring of 1939, 1940, and 1941. [75] NPS officials recognized that the man to conduct such a survey would be George A. Parks, GLO's District Cadastral Engineer in Juneau. The engineer repeatedly promised to survey the monument's western boundary. But Parks, for whatever reason, was unable to get a surveying crew out to Katmai. [76]

Carson and Been Visit the Monument

During the adjudication process of 1938-39, officials at Mount McKinley National Park were acutely aware that all of Alaska's NPS units were woefully understaffed. Officials at the Alaska Game Commission, asked to enforce the game laws throughout the territory, felt likewise. Both agencies soon realized that the best way to deal with poaching and similar problems was to share enforcement responsibilities. To help the NPS in southwest Alaska, the Alaska Game Commission asked its Dillingham wildlife agent, Carlos M. Carson, to keep tabs on Katmai National Monument. In December 1939, the NPS reciprocated by naming the various Mount McKinley rangers to be Deputy Game Wardens of the Alaska Game Commission. The cooperative effort may well have been spearheaded by Mount McKinley superintendent Frank T. Been, who replaced Liek in June 1939. [77]

In January 1940, Superintendent Been represented the NPS in Anchorage at a meeting of the Alaska Game Commission. Shortly thereafter, he was told that "although it was not determined from inspections, it was learned through reliable sources that trapping is being done at Katmai National Monument, just as though there was no national park area there." Carlos M. Carson, the AGC warden in Dillingham, decided to see for himself on March 20. He and pilot Grenold Collins flew into the monument, and at the eastern end of Naknek Lake, Carson found three trappers--Alfred Cooper, Martin Monsen, and John Monsen--and apprehended them for taking fur in the monument. Been soon heard about it, and he gratefully approved the game commission's request to prosecute the violators. [78]

Carson, in an April 7 letter, told Been that the area was "an animal paradise" in which "trapping is done openly and widely." The superintendent, clearly alarmed at the news, wired the NPS director with the news and requested funds "to patrol the monument during times of the year when violations are most likely to occur." [79]

Carson apparently returned to the monument in May, apprehended several more trappers, and confiscated fur from illegal operations in the monument. Been, meanwhile, told his Washington superiors that the level of resource management at Katmai was clearly inadequate. Having been granted funds to visit, he promised a full report on trapping activities. [80]

Superintendent Been spent most of the summer of 1940 in the field; during September, he traveled around Katmai National Monument accompanied by Victor Cahalane, a biologist with the U.S. Biological Survey. [81] The two flew from Anchorage to Naknek; they then took a short flight that led to the lower end of Brooks Lake, to the Savonoski River and on to the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. They returned to Naknek by way of lakes Grosvenor and Coville. On September 4, they headed out on a boat trip which took them up the Naknek River and on to Brooks River, and on to a trapper's cabin near the mouth of the Savonoski River. They also boated around Brooks Lake in search of trapping activity, and hiked from the mouth of the Ukak River into the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. On their way out of the monument, Cahalane and Been flew east over the Ukak River valley one last time, then went over Katmai Crater and down to Kukak Bay before continuing on to Kodiak. The two then separated, Been heading to Anchorage on his way back to McKinley Park. [82]

Been's report on the trip showed that the monument was far more scenic than he had been led to believe. Before he left, he had received "rather definitely unfavorable comments about the monument from men occupying important positions." [83] But his narrative was replete with descriptions of the area's beauty and bounteous wildlife, and he emerged from the trip "strongly inclined toward its retention in the national park system," noting that "the monument abounds in natural wonders and grandeur." He recognized the tourist potential of the area, although he felt that its remoteness precluded it from becoming a tourist center for many years. [84]

In addition, Been was pleased to discover that he found no signs of active trapping. On the contrary, he saw several stripped cabins and abandoned caches. The trappers, hounded by Carson, had apparently moved out of the park. [85] For the time being at least, Been was satisfied that monument-based trapping had been squelched on the Bristol Bay side of the Aleutian Range.

The 1942 Boundary Expansion

At the end of their trip to Katmai, Been and Cahalane spoke to the local Alaska Game Commission agent in Kodiak, Jack Benson. The agent was aware that trapping was taking place on the coast of the monument; he even knew the locations of several cabins. But he had no boat assigned to him worthy of the Shelikof Strait crossing, and he had not yet been asked to include the Katmai coast in his patrols. Been gave him permission to patrol that area and to act on behalf of the NPS when so doing. [86]

Cahalane remained on Kodiak Island for the next several days. He accompanied Benson on his patrols, and traveled with him over to the Katmai coast. He did not like what he saw. Two months later, he sent his concerns on to Ben H. Thompson, head of the NPS Land Planning Division. He noted that

it is perfectly feasible for poachers to base their operations on any one of the numerous islands in the bays of the Shelikof Strait section while they may trap on the mainland of the monument with greatly enhanced chances of escaping detection.

He told Thompson that the best solution to the trapping problem was to extend the existing boundaries to include the various islands in the coastal area. He noted that an added benefit of including the islands was to prevent the possibility of any fox-farming operations being started. But Kiukpalik Island, he noted, had had a fox farm for a number of years; therefore, he urged that the island be excluded from any proposed additions to the park. [87]

Superintendent Been wrote a concurring note to the NPS Director in mid-December. He suggested that the boundary be extended two miles from the shore line, and that "Any islands touching this line should be included." Based on the maps he had available, he felt that the monument would include just three new islands: Shaw Island, north of Cape Douglas; Ninagiak Island in Hallo Bay; and Takli Island, at the entrance to Geographic Harbor. [88] He chose those islands because they were the only coastal islands which, in his opinion, were not already claimed as a fox farm and were sufficiently distant from the coast that a fox farm might logically be located there. [89]

Been, meanwhile, asked authorities in Alaska to comment on the proposed monument addition. Neither the District Land Office or the District Cadastral Engineer saw any difficulties in such an action. Frank Dufresne, who worked for the Alaska Game Commission in Juneau, thought that a boundary extension was the best way to ward off the illegal taking of game and fur in the monument, but Jack Benson, the AGC agent in Kodiak, thought that the problem could be managed under existing arrangements. Alaska Game Commissioner Andy Simons likewise opposed the addition of the islands, citing possible impact on the fishing industry and negative reaction from local residents. [90]

On January 30, 1941, Been sent copies of those comments to the NPS director. He noted that "Examination of the opinions and comments contained in these letters shows no substantial reason for opposing the Monument extension; the doubts raised are from exaggerated impressions of Park Service protection restrictions." He did acknowledge possible negative impacts to the clam fishery. [91]

To evaluate the legal ramifications of the boundary extension, the GLO Commissioner called in A. C. Kinsley one more time, in order to investigate the validity of trapping operations along the Shelikof Strait coastline. [92] His report on the area, completed in August 1941, revealed that only two men had an existing fur farm lease: Earl L. Butler of Kodiak, who had initiated a 10-year lease on Kiukpalik Island in 1937, and John A. Smith, also of Kodiak, who began a 5-year lease of Takli Island in 1939. Kinsley noted that "Mr. Butler's success with this island has been small." Smith, he noted, had likewise encountered difficulty with his Takli Island lease. He had failed to stock the island as demanded by the lease, and had been guilty of game violations as well. No other people would be affected by the inclusion of any of the offshore islands in the monument. [93]

Based on Kinsley's report, Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes in November 1941 recommended a five mile boundary extension and noted that "it would in no way be harmful to potential business enterprises in that general part of Alaska." The following January, Ickes sent a draft proclamation to President Roosevelt, who circulated it to various executive departments. [94] On August 4, Roosevelt signed Proclamation No. 2564, which formally moved the boundary east to include "all islands in Cook Inlet and Shelikof Strait in front of and within five miles of the Katmai National Monument." [95] The proclamation included about twenty offshore islands, including Takli and Kiukpalik. Takli alone had an area of about 450 acres; there were slightly more than 3,000 acres on all of the newly added islands. [96]

The new proclamation, combined with those given in 1918 and 1931, gave Katmai an area of almost 2.7 million acres. But without a staff or budget, the National Park Service remained powerless to manage the unit. Throughout the 1940s, as noted below, there would be repeated attempts to establish active management authority over the expanse. The same period would witness an increasing number of problems at the park, most of which were either caused or exacerbated by the lack of a management presence.

Attempts to Establish a Management Presence

The recognition that trapping was taking place throughout the monument convinced Been that Katmai needed on-site management even before his September 1940 inspection trip. He sympathized with the anger that many Alaskans had no doubt vented to him when he wrote, "It is hoped that funds will be provided so that the NPS will be able to administer the areas rather than have them continue as illustrations of apparent mismanagement or service indifference." He felt that in order to patrol the monument, "a custodian should be assigned at once--preferably two who can travel together as there are many hazards." [97]

To implement his suggestion, he requested a $14,300 budget for Katmai in May 1940--enough for two staff, a power boat and travel expenses. But in November the NPS Director informed him that his request had been slashed to $3000, sufficient only for one Naknek-based permanent ranger, supplies, and travel expenses. And in early 1941 he was told that "we shall be fortunate if we get an appropriation for administration and maintenance." His request for a patrol boat was denied. [98] Been responded by submitting a fiscal year 1943 budget for $20,293. It called for both chief ranger and ranger naturalist positions. Also included was a provision for purchase of a patrol boat and a 16-member dog team, along with needed travel, supplies, and ancillary items. [99]

Joseph S. Dixon, a biologist for the Fish and Wildlife Service (F&WS), concurred with the need for Been's request. Herbert Maier, the Acting Regional Director in San Francisco, was also supportive that a presence be established at Katmai, noting that "it is difficult for us to see how any area, particularly one of such an enormous size, can function without any resident personnel." [100] But the national office slashed Been's budget to just $4,000: $2,000 to employ a permanent ranger, $1000 for the purchase of a dog team and radio, $400 for a superintendent's trip to the park, and $600 for miscellaneous expenses. [101] Congress ignored the Service's Katmai funding request.

In January 1942, Been submitted 21 Project Construction Program (PCP) proposal forms for projects at Katmai. The proposals were requested by the regional director, and afforded a means of recording information and suggestions of one of the very few Service employees who had any first-hand knowledge of the monument. The request for project proposals, therefore, did not indicate a renewed interest in Alaska's monuments, and a actual establishment of a construction program was considered "most unlikely." [102] Ten of the PCP proposals called for the construction of remote shelter cabins. He also called for the construction of a monument headquarters and visitor center in Geographic Harbor, unspecified developments at Brooks River and Brooks Lake, and a series of roads and trails. Finally, he recommended a $25,000 project to restore Old Savonoski by reconstructing its buildings.

Been gave considerable thought to the location of the monument headquarters. He chose Geographic Harbor, in part, "because of its proximity to travel from the states," and he also liked the local scenery, the ample fresh water, its protection from winds and its location vis-à-vis the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. He noted, however, that

there is still some justification for having Naknek as the monument base until funds are provided for its development. Naknek provides a place of residence for the first personnel and is accessible to the part of the monument in which most of the violations are occurring from hunting and trapping. Out from Naknek, the development at Brooks Lake and Brooks River can be prepared and many of the proposed shelter cabins constructed. [103]

Been had visited Naknek but not Geographic Harbor; his choice of the latter site, therefore, was probably based on a 1940 visit by NPS biologist Victor Cahalane (with whom he had traveled that summer), combined with descriptions provided by the 1919 National Geographic Society expedition. [104]

Regional office staff had mixed feelings toward the proposals. The cabins, for instance, were criticized because they would "provide shelter, indiscriminately, to 'friend or foe' of the park." Regarding the Savonoski project, they thought it more appropriate that the village should first be measured and have drawings made before a restoration was attempted. Another noted that the Savonoski work would "require questionable methods and after the work is done considerable annual maintaining will have to be done to prevent loss of work done." Agency officials generally supported the other PCPs. The regional office recommended all but the Savonoski project to the directorate in Washington, but none of the other 20 projects were funded. The U.S. government, now fully involved in World War II, was not about to expend funds for recreational or interpretive facilities in an Alaskan national monument. [105]

The Region Four office apparently used Been's personal knowledge of the monument, combined with the information contained in his project construction proposals, to write Katmai's first master plan. The plan, part of an agency-wide effort to get ready for the expected tourist boom that was sure to follow the war, was written in the summer of 1942, and Been approved it on September 10. Almost two years later, on June 29, 1944, it received Washington's approval when it was signed by Assistant Director Hillory A. Tolson. What the plan said is a matter of conjecture. Only two copies of the plan were produced, neither of which are known to exist today. No evidence suggests that the plan was ever used as a context for future monument decision-making. [106]

Been, who had a personal interest in the monument as a result of his month-long stay and his role in the 1942 monument expansion, left the NPS to join the army in May 1943. His successor, acting superintendent Grant Pearson, had been a McKinley ranger since the 1920s and had little initial interest in Katmai. Because the war brought restrictions on both travel and materials usage, few plans appeared for monument development.

Wartime Usage of the Monument

The onset of the war, however, resulted in a sharp increase in use in and around the monument. In 1941, the U.S. Army Air Service established Naknek Air Base, [107] and commercial salmon fishing stayed active throughout the territory. The growing popularity of travel by small planes, combined with the presence of the nearby air base and Bristol Bay salmon canneries, made the drainages of the upper Naknek basin increasingly attractive to recreational fishermen. Military and construction personnel at the air base flew to Brooks River, the Bay of Islands and other fishing spots and reportedly pulled "thousands upon thousands of trout" from the water. Pilots for the Ray Petersen Flying Service, Bristol Bay Flying Service and Woodley Airways flew an increasing number of cannery personnel into the lakes and rivers of the upper Naknek drainage. [108] They were soon joined by Bud Branham and other pilots familiar with southwestern Alaska. The NPS, whose nearest personnel were stationed 300 miles away, was powerless to stop the onslaught. [109]

To cater to military personnel who wanted to fish closer to the base, the Army Air Service established two nearby rest and recreation camps. Rapids Camp (also called Annex No. 1) was located at the foot of the Naknek River Rapids, five miles southeast of the base, while Lake Camp (Annex No. 2) was located at the west end of Naknek Lake, seven miles to the east. Naknek River and the western end of the lake, therefore, were also subject to heavy fishing pressure for the duration of the war. Neither camp was within the monument, but boundary changes in 1969 and 1978 would bring them within the sphere of NPS influence. [110] (See Chapter 5.)

Pearson and Kuehl Visit the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes

Pearson probably knew little about the extent of illegal fishing that took place at Katmai during the war. But in August 1945, he received a request that promised legal use of the monument's fishery. The U.S. Naval Operating Base in Kodiak sought permission to establish a fishing camp in the monument near Brooks Lake. The camp, consisting of two 16' x 30' Yakutat huts, was to be located "one-half mile east of Brooks Falls and one mile east of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Biological Station," at or near the site of present-day Brooks Camp. [111]

Perhaps in response to the Navy's request, Pearson visited Katmai to take a closer look. On August 17 he left McKinley Park; shortly afterwards, he and Alfred C. Kuehl flew from Elmendorf Field to Naknek Air Base on an Air Force plane, passing over the Mt. Mageik and the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes en route. [112] Flying back over Naknek Lake the next day, Pearson "was astonished to see that two-thirds of Katmai Monument didn't seem to have been affected at all by the eruption." The two completed their explorations by hiking up into the Valley, returning to wait for their plane, and heading out of the monument.

Pearson was obviously impressed by what he saw. He exclaimed that "This should make a hit with tourists if we could ever get 'em in here." He reported that an airfield could be built in the valley, and even suggested that a road could be built there from Naknek. Kuehl, by comparison, was nonplussed by it all. Though he was convinced that Katmai was worthy of NPS management, he felt that "the scenic values of the monument are not particularly outstanding when compared with other scenic regions of Alaska," and that the "lakes within the area are large but lacking in a magnificent adjacent setting." [113]

The two also differed on how realistic it would be to attract tourists to the remote location. The ebullient, can-do Pearson noted that the two began to "scheme out ways and means to bring in visitors and take care of them." [114] They may even have made tentative plans for a tourist lodge, boat docks, trails, patrol cabins and administrative sites. But Kuehl, in his trip report, felt that Katmai was so inaccessible that "visitor use, if any, will be extremely limited" and that "Only the curious wealthy sportsman and the scientifically inclined able to stand the expeditionary expense will be likely to view the area." [115]

Three weeks after Pearson returned to the park, he received a visit from Commander Jack Benson about the proposed Brooks Lake camp. [116] Benson said that it was the Navy's plan to allow its personnel to spend short furloughs there. Pearson liked the Navy's idea, and sent his approval to his Washington superiors. But in mid-October, the Navy notified Pearson that its plans had changed. It now proposed to build its main camp "near the head of the Naknek River, just northwest of Naknek Lake" and thus near the Lake Camp facility. The superintendent was told that the Navy would later build an auxiliary camp at the Brooks Lake site, but he heard no more from them about it. [117]

Katmai Management Issues, 1945-1948

During the latter half of the 1940s, the NPS had a host of resource management issues with which it had to grapple. A clam cannery on Kukak Bay demanded the right to operate. Similarly, local interests sought the right to mine pumice and volcanic ash within the monument, and additional prospecting was taking place for hard rock minerals. Each of these operations were technically illegal, but had the support of Alaska's delegate to Congress and Alaskan development interests. (Clamming and mining are covered in greater detail in chapters 8 and 11, respectively.) Trapping became an issue once again, and portions of the monument became so heavily fished that officials began to worry that overfishing might deplete the fish stocks.

But the government seemed no more inclined to provide basic funding than it had in previous years. Much of its lack of interest was based on its low priority to NPS officials. Ever since the days of Stephen Mather, the NPS had gained popularity and legitimacy through publicity and by encouraging appropriate tourist development. This policy worked well for most areas, but it put Alaskan parklands at a great disadvantage. During the postwar period the agency was particularly sensitive to the parks as recreational destinations. Katmai, which had recorded only 32 official visits in the 30 years after its establishment, was perceived to have little potential for visitation because of its remoteness and inaccessibility. [118] By September 1945, the agency had formulated development plans for Mount McKinley and Glacier Bay, and a plan for Sitka was in the works. But regarding Katmai and Old Kasaan, NPS Director Newton Drury admitted that "we are almost totally lacking in information upon which to base even tentative plans for the[ir] future development." [119]

Little facilities development took place in any of Alaska's national park units during the 1940s. Year after year the Mount McKinley superintendent proposed a budget which included development plans for most Alaskan park units; just as predictably, the proposals went unfunded. Sometimes it was the NPS directorate in Washington that wielded the budget ax; more often the culprit was a Congressional committee. As funds subsumed in the war effort were freed up for alternative uses and as Alaskan interests became more persistent in their demands, increasing headway was made in the budgetary process. But no action was forthcoming before the end of the decade. [120]

In January 1947, Frank Been returned from the army and resumed his duties as superintendent at Mount McKinley. Not long afterward, Katmai issues crossed his desk when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service informed him that trapping had resumed in the monument. [121] Carlos Carson, the Fish and Wildlife Service agent in Dillingham, had discovered four men living and trapping inside its boundaries. The four, one of whom was Stephen M. Scott, were quickly arrested and hauled out for a commissioner's hearing. [122]

Been, through Carson, learned that the local trappers were pleading innocent to trapping charges because they claimed ignorance of the boundary location. To mitigate the problem, he contacted George Parks, the Regional Cadastral Engineer for the Bureau of Land Management (formerly the GLO), regarding a possible survey of the northern and western boundary. Parks considered the idea, but he was no more able to undertake such a survey than he had been during the years preceding World War II. [123] Lacking a survey, Been relied on the Fish and Wildlife Service agents to contact each trapper and explain the various boundary locations. [124]

The following year, Carson found much the same activity going on. He told Been that he had discovered a trapper's cabin at the mouth of Headwaters Creek, at the southwest end of Brooks Lake. Kirk Adkinson, who lived there, was tried but released; Henry Nelson, who claimed a residence just outside the monument, was declared innocent of any wrongdoing. Both had been active in the monument the year before. Carson also found "fresh evidence of others using the cabins within the park and on the bank of the upper Naknek Lake," and was told that "the army [Air Force] boys go into this park and kill moose all winter." Finally, he heard that one local trapper, Jim Marlette, was using a small plane and had "a sizable illegal beaver cache in there." Recognizing that he was fighting a losing battle, he declared that "Something should be done and quickly." He called for the installation of on-site staff, noting that "if there is not a Ranger in there to protect things it might as well be turned out to the public." [125]

Been and Carson also knew that fishing pressure was steadily increasing in the monument. There was a temporary lull in sport fishing after World War II, but Northern Consolidated Airlines (NCA), along with independent pilot Bud Branham, took groups of fishermen into the area as early as 1947. The three most popular areas were the waters surrounding present-day Brooks Camp, Grosvenor Camp, and Lake Camp; Brooks River became so popular that the Standard Oil Company of California sponsored a color film, in the spring of 1948, on the stream's rainbow trout fishing. [126]

During this period, fishing in Katmai was illegal--aircraft landings were against the law except on official government business--but officials winked at the activity because it had an insignificant impact, in most places, on area fish stocks. Fishing regulations specified that no more than ten fish could be caught per day and that the total catch be limited to twenty fish, and in most cases (so far as is known) fishermen followed those regulations. [127] Along Brooks River, however, the fishery began to be abused. As Ray Petersen remembered the situation, "poaching was rampant and the trout were caught with gobs of salmon eggs on giant Colorado spinners and hooks." [128] By the summer of 1948, Fish and Wildlife Service representatives stationed at Brooks Lake noted "quite definitely that the rainbow trout have decreased as the result of the popularity to air borne sportsmen." [129]

Carlos Carson, the local fish and wildlife agent, was well aware of the growing abuses being perpetrated in the monument. Fortunately, his March 1948 plea for a ranger did not fall on deaf ears. Been reacted by offering him the position of Deputy Park Ranger, which gave him "complete authority to act for the National Park Service." [130] He then sent a copy of the letter to the Washington office. Hillory Tolson, an NPS Assistant Director, responded by suggesting a presence by both NPS and F&WS personnel. He requested the Regional Director, Owen A. Tomlinson, to send him a budget estimate for NPS patrols in the monument in cooperation with Fish and Wildlife agents. He also suggested that Grant Pearson, then at Sitka National Monument, should be sent on one or more trips to Katmai to check on fishing activities and the possible careless use of firearms. The naming of George Kelez, a Fish and Wildlife agent stationed at Brooks Lake, as a Deputy Park Ranger, was an additional action intended to establish an enforcement presence. Kelez, however, was soon elevated to a supervisory position and spent little time in the monument. [131] That August, regional office staff also considered the appointment of F&WS agents at Kodiak as deputy park rangers. [132]

Plans, and a budget, were made to allow for Pearson to visit the monument, but no trips took place that year. Been realized that it would be advantageous to have a resident ranger (not necessarily Pearson) rather than a custodian who made brief visits. The ranger, to be stationed "in a tent near the Brooks Lake salmon weir," would mingle with fishermen, advise them on regulations, keep the area clean, post necessary signs, and maintain a register. The regional director liked Been's suggestion when it was first promulgated in May; a month later, however, he recanted, citing a lack of transportation for patrols. [133] Been, in response, held out for a short-term ranger presence beginning in early September, and suggested that a suitable candidate would be William J. (Willie) Nancarrow, who had just transferred to the park from Lake Texoma, an NPS recreation area (now delisted) on the Texas-Oklahoma border. [134] The regional office concurred, but in late July the Katmai assignment had to be withdrawn. The Mount McKinley staff was limping along with only two of its regular four rangers; it therefore could spare no one for duties outside the park. Kuehl went instead, but only for a short, fact-finding visit. Some of the Katmai funds were later directed to Glacier Bay management efforts. [135]

Alaskan Attempts to Dismantle the Monument

The trapping which was taking place in the monument caused NPS officials to redouble their efforts to protect the resource. The operation of a clam cannery at Kukak Bay, pressure to mine volcanic ash along Shelikof Strait, and reports of the discovery of valuable minerals within the monument all caused additional worries among government bureaucrats. These activities, however, had just the opposite effect among many Alaska residents. Those who felt that the Federal government was intent to preserve Alaska at the expense of its citizens occasionally pointed to Katmai as an example of "useless conservation." [136]

It should have been no surprise, therefore, that territorial interests appealed to loosen the Federal grip on the monument. This sentiment was expressed throughout the decade, but particularly during the postwar years. As early as 1941, a Territorial Department of Mines report, noting an "apparently rich mineral area" in the Aleutian Range and the favorable opportunities for prospecting, concluded that the justifications for the monument were no longer valid. [137] Six years later, commercial interests showed an interest in extracting pumice (volcanic ash) from Takli Island and the shores of Kukak Bay, and as noted in Chapter 11, Alaska Delegate E. L. Bartlett made a repeated series of attempts to open the area to the mining interests. [138]

Others wanted to entirely rid themselves of the park service's presence. In the spring of 1946 the Alaska Legislature, incensed at the state of monument affairs, cited a long list of grievances and passed House Joint Memorial 7, which demanded "that steps be taken to have the Katmai National Monument abolished in the interest of the Territory of Alaska so that fishing and mining may be carried on legally in that area." Governor Gruening signed the memorial on April 2. [139] Six months later, Governor Gruening became annoyed at the way Washington-based Park Service officials were treating the cannery owners who utilized the Shelikof Strait coastline, and at one point he grew so annoyed that he suggested to those officials that the monument be abolished. The following February Delegate E. L. Bartlett, another champion of local concerns, submitted H.R. 206, an Alaska statehood bill. The legislature and governor quickly passed a memorial bolstering the delegate's bill. Bartlett was by no means the first delegate to draft a statehood bill--James Wickersham had done that back in 1916--and he would not be the last to do so. His bill differed from others, however, in that it called for the state to gain control over practically all of Alaska's public lands, including those within Katmai National Monument. [140] In October 1948, Jessen's Weekly, a well-respected Fairbanks newspaper, joined the chorus when it editorialized that the monument should be returned to the public domain because "absolutely nothing has been done to make its 'beautiful lakes and mountain scenery' available to the public," and because the thousands of fumaroles which had once been active in the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes had been reduced to a mere handful. [141]

In January 1950 a strong challenge came when the Naknek Civic Club campaigned to open the monument to trapping. Naknek had long had an economy based on fishing and trapping, and because the 1949 fishing season had been so poor, local citizens pleaded to Alaska Delegate E. L. Bartlett several times during the next few months. Bartlett, a longtime development advocate and NPS foe, was sympathetic to their plight. He urged both the NPS Director and the Secretary of the Interior to consider a substantial reduction in Katmai's area. [142]

Interior Department officials rebuffed each attempt. The 1946 legislative action did not result in a Congressional bill, and the provisions in Bartlett's 1947 bill were resisted by NPS Director Newton Drury, who called Katmai "among the most outstanding scenic and scientific areas in the North American continent." Stateside conservation groups, such as the National Park Association, also dug in their heels against any change in Katmai's status. Three years later, Bartlett gained little more headway than he had earlier. [143] The park service tried to calm development advocates by noting, somewhat apologetically, that Katmai was not the only Alaska park being ignored; because of the relatively small numbers of visitors to Alaska, none of the other NPS units were being developed either. They declared that even though the fumaroles in the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes were "dead," they were still an outstanding geological area. They also declared that they needed to assess the validity of the current boundaries. [144]

Beyond that, the NPS was willing to make some significant compromises. They clarified to the canning interests, for example, that nothing in the monument regulations prevented companies from operating below the high tide line; furthermore, they were glad to issue them permits for the structures and facilities they used. Regarding pumice extraction, NPS officials refrained from opposing legislation which would grant permits for pumice removal. [145]

Management Activities, 1948-1950

The NPS, recognizing the increasing level of interest in the monument, slowly adopted a conciliatory attitude to prospectors and fishermen who wanted to fly into the monument. The agency was aware that local interests bridled against the longstanding regulation, and as early as 1946 an NPS official had urged that amphibious landings be approved. In the spring of 1949 Superintendent Grant Pearson was informed that prospectors had flown supplies into the monument the previous fall. [146] Rather than prosecute the prospectors and further alienate local interests, however, Pearson urged that the NPS adopt a regulation which allowed aircraft landings between May 15 and September 15. The new regulation was implemented in July. [147] NPS officials were less than enthusiastic that they had to make these concessions, because they had no staff on hand to enforce monument rules and regulations. But they also wanted to avoid a storm of protest that might occur if they tried to enforce the status quo.

Although these actions blunted some of the criticism, the NPS was clearly under increasing pressure to develop the monument in some way. The agency therefore stepped up its efforts to allot funds for the monument. But in the interim, it was forced to rely on Fish and Wildlife Service officials to patrol the monument. Regional NPS officials recognized their dependence on the F&WS when, in the fall of 1948, they laid out $500 to them for patrol work. [148]

Carlos Carson, who patrolled the monument the following March, found trapping as active as ever. He found one cabin had been extensively used for trapping, and understood that "not a few hunters fly into the Monument and hunt moose and bear." He also believed that a beaver ring was working in the park. The following month, he reported an increased number of violations. To combat these abuses, he again urged the establishment of a full-time park ranger. [149]

NPS officials were thankful that Fish and Wildlife officials could assist them, and made tentative plans to repeat the arrangement the following year. Both agencies, however, hoped that the arrangement would be limited in its duration. The NPS took Carson's warning of increased violations and pressed for a separate Katmai budget.

In the spring of 1949, regional officials took part in a department-wide six year program for the development of Alaska's park areas. Remote Katmai was considered a less likely development candidate than either Mount McKinley or Glacier Bay, but it was not ignored. The NPS proposed that $39,635 be expended at the monument during FY 1950 for "a small residence, utility services, essential equipment and a minimum amount of access trail construction." [150] In FY 1951, the NPS proposed that Katmai receive a $10,000 Administration, Protection, and Maintenance budget; this figure would be sufficient to support an eight month ranger detail at Katmai. (The ranger was to spend the remaining four months at Mount McKinley.) The administrative budget was proposed to double by FY 1954. Visitor facilities were not contemplated until FY 1954 and 1955; the six-year plan called for a $150,000 construction budget during the two fiscal years. [151]

Most of the suggestions made in the department's six-year plan were quietly shelved. The most pressing priority in the plan, the realization of a FY 1951 administrative budget, barely survived. By the time the proposal had emerged from the NPS directorate and the Secretary's office, the $10,000 originally proposed had been slashed to $2,000. Small though the budget was, it was an important step that the Interior Department was finally recommending funding for Katmai. The $2,000 allotted to Katmai was minuscule--it was the smallest line item in the $508,000 budget which had been designated to the Alaska program--but it was a start. [152]

The 1951 budget, unfortunately, got no farther than those for previous years. [153] Perhaps in reaction to its inability to increase budgets to Alaska parks, the NPS broadened its scope and launched the Alaska Recreation Survey. The ARS, which is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 4, promised to stimulate and direct recreation-based economic development. The survey, however held little enthusiasm for Katmai as a tourist destination. An initial overview mentioned that

No major development can be considered [for Katmai] until Alaska is further developed and transportation will put the area within easy reach. It will be 10 years or more before major developments will be needed.... Objectives for the time being are protection of the wildlife and scenic values.

Citing the increase in military visitation and the increase in game and prospecting violations, the report reiterated the need for a $2,000 Katmai budget, which would pay for a four-month ranger patrol, supplies, and equipment. [154]

Ray Petersen Establishes the Katmai Concession

The $2,000 budget may well have been rebuffed, as others had been, had it not been for the actions of Ray Petersen. A man who had been flying in southwestern Alaska since 1935, Petersen was familiar with the exceptional quality of the Katmai fishing resource; since 1945, he had headed Northern Consolidated Airlines, a small regional carrier which hoped to develop tourist travel over its routes. To that end, he met in Washington in December 1949 with various Interior Department officials. At the meeting, he laid out plans to create a series of fishing camps along the shores of the larger lakes on the Bristol Bay side of the Alaska Peninsula. By January 1950, his plans had become more specific: he hoped to operate camps at two sites within Katmai monument--at the mouth of Brooks River and the western end of Lake Grosvenor--and stake out three camps on BLM land north of the monument. [155]

Government officials were delighted at Petersen's plans. Those in the NPS had been searching for years for an opportunity to develop the monument and thus legitimize its existence in the eyes of the public. Petersen's plan offered to do just that. It gave the NPS the opportunity to develop the monument without paying for it, and because his airline was a common carrier, his plan offered the general public (not just guests at the fishing camps) a better opportunity to gain access to the monument. The fact that Petersen was promising to abide by a strict, self-imposed set of fishing regulations was in his favor, and he readily agreed to a number of other clauses which NPS officials routinely required of businesses operating in the parks. By February 15, the NPS had issued a draft Special Use Permit for the two camps, and on March 10, regional officials and Petersen signed Concession Permit No. I-34np-299. Petersen had originally sought a two-year permit; therefore, he was pleased to discover that it was valid through 1954. [156]

Whether by accident or design, the National Park Service reacted to the concession permit by assigning a seasonal ranger to the monument for the 1950 summer season. On March 21, just eleven days after the concession permit was signed, Mount McKinley Superintendent Grant Pearson noted that "after June 1, 1950 a Park Ranger will be stationed within the boundaries of Katmai." A month later he chose Willie Nancarrow, the same ranger who had been tentatively chosen to go there in 1948, "as he has proven to be a very good all around man." [157]

The NPS's presence at Katmai that summer was modest indeed, and was easily overshadowed by that of the concessioner. At long last, however, the park service was attempting to manage its far-flung acreage in southwestern Alaska; as Ernest Gruening might have phrased it, management concerns were elevated from "flagrant neglect" to "mild but unenlightened interest." It had taken 32 years for the NPS to establish itself at Katmai--32 years of management in the breach, and 32 years of repeated frustration at not being provided the financial wherewithal to carry out any semblance of a development program. The agency still had another 20 years to wait before it gained an independent management presence. In the future, however, it would insist upon retaining at least a modicum of authority over the Katmai country.