Katmai National Park
Quintin Heatley
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Katmai National Park and Preserve is an American national park and preserve in southwest Alaska, notable for the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes and for its brown bears. The park and preserve encompass 4,093,077 acres (6,395.43 sq mi; 16,564.09 km2), which is between the sizes of Connecticut and New Jersey. Most of the national park is a designated wilderness area. The park is named after Mount Katmai, its centerpiece stratovolcano. The park is located on the Alaska Peninsula, across from Kodiak Island, with headquarters in nearby King Salmon, about 290 miles (470 km) southwest of Anchorage. The area was first designated a national monument in 1918 to protect the area around the major 1912 volcanic eruption of Novarupta, which formed the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, a 40-square-mile (100 km2), 100-to-700-foot-deep (30 to 213 m) pyroclastic flow. The park includes as many as 18 individual volcanoes, seven of which have been active since 1900.
Initially designated because of its volcanic history, the monument was left undeveloped and largely unvisited until the 1950s. The monument and surrounding lands became appreciated for their wide variety of wildlife, including an abundance of sockeye salmon and the brown bears that feed upon them. After a series of boundary expansions, the present national park and preserve were established in 1980 under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.
Katmai occupies the Pacific Ocean side of the Alaska Peninsula, opposite Kodiak Island on the Shelikof Strait. The park's chief features are its coast, the Aleutian Range with a chain of fifteen volcanic mountains across the coastal southeastern part of the park, and a series of large lakes in the flatter western part of the park. The closest significant town to the park is King Salmon, where the park's headquarters is located, about 5 miles (8.0 km) down the Naknek River from the park entrance. The Alaska Peninsula Highway connects Naknek Lake near the entrance to King Salmon, continuing to the mouth of the river at Naknek. The road is not connected to the Alaska road system. Access to the park's interior is by boat on Naknek Lake. Another road runs from Brooks Camp to Three Forks, which overlooks the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. The 497-mile (800 km) long coastline (however, see coastline paradox) is deeply indented, running from the entrance to the Cook Inlet at Kamishak Bay south to Cape Kubugakli. The mountains run from southwest to northeast, about 15 miles (24 km) inland.[4][5]
The park includes McNeil River State Game Sanctuary and Refuge on Kamishak Bay. The Alagnak River, designated a wild river, originates within the preserve at Kukaklek Lake. The Naknek River, which empties into Bristol Bay, originates within the park. The park adjoins Becharof National Wildlife Refuge to the south.[4] Of the park and preserve's acres, 3,922,529 acres (1,587,391 ha) are in the national park where all sport and subsistence hunting is prohibited. 418,548 acres (169,380 ha) are preserve lands, where both sport and subsistence hunting are permitted. The most commonly hunted species in the preserve includes the brown bear, which has led to some problems about bear hunting due to small preserve population sizes and stalking bears to close limits.[6][7]
The foundation rocks on the Alaska Peninsula are divided by the Bruin Bay Fault into fossiliferous sedimentary rocks of Jurassic and Cretaceous age to the east and metamorphic and igneous rocks to the west. The granite Aleutian Range batholith has intruded through these rocks. The majority of the higher mountains in the park are of volcanic origin. The park has been extensively altered by glaciation, both in the high lands where the mountains have been sculpted by glaciers, and in the lowlands where lakes have been excavated. Outwash plains and terminal moraines are also featured in the park. Soil types vary from rock or volcanic ash of vary depth to deep, wet soils overlain with peat. Although permafrost exists at higher elevations, it is not present in the lowlands.[8]
Two physiographic provinces cover the park. The Aleutian Range province is composed of the Shelikof Strait coastline, about 10 miles (16 km) deep along the coast, the Aleutian Mountain zone, and the lake, or Hudsonian zone. Farther west the Nushagak-Bristol Bay Lowlands province is separated from the Aleutian zone by the Bruin Bay Fault, occupying a small corner of the park.[9]
Mount Griggs is a 7,602-foot (2,317 m) stratovolcano near Novarupta, and somewhat to the northwest of the otherwise straight line of volcanoes in Katmai. The flat-topped mountain has three concentric craters, the largest 1,500 metres (4,900 ft) wide. The mountain's geochemistry differs from its neighbors. Griggs has active sulfurous fumaroles.[24] Snowy Mountain is a small volcano 7,090 feet (2,160 m) tall, with ten significant glaciers covering almost all of the mountain. Roughly a third to half of the mountain has been eroded by glacial action. The volcano has two vents about 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) apart, and active fumaroles at the tallest summit.[25] Mount Denison is a 7,605-foot (2,318 m) peak with four related vents at the head of three glaciers,[26] the tallest point in the park.[9] Mount Kukak is another ice-covered volcano, 6,693 feet (2,040 m) tall. It has a strong fumarole field near the summit.[27] Devils Desk is a heavily eroded stratovolcano, 6,411 feet (1,954 m) high.[28] Kaguyak is a stratovolcano truncated by a caldera, like Katmai. The highest peak is 2,956 feet (901 m), with a 2.5-kilometre (1.6 mi) diameter crater lake. There are two large domes within the caldera and two on the flanks.[29] Mount Douglas is a 7,021-foot (2,140 m) stratovolcano, extensively eroded by ice, with a small acidic crater lake at its summit.[30] 7,454-foot (2,272 m) Mount Steller is located between Kukak and Denison, with an unknown number of vents in ice-covered terrain.[31] Kejulik is a 4,977-foot (1,517 m) eroded volcanic remnant.[32] None of these volcanoes have exhibited significant behavior in historic times.
The vast majority of Katmai visitors come to Brooks Camp, one of the only developed areas of the park, and few venture further than the bear viewing platforms and the adjacent Brooks Camp area. Rangers at the park are extremely careful not to allow bears to obtain human food or get into confrontations with humans. As a result, bears in Katmai Park are uniquely unafraid of and uninterested in humans,[34] and will allow people to approach (and photograph) much more closely than bears elsewhere. The bears of Brooks Camp can be seen on computers and smartphones via webcams pioneered by the National Park Service.[36][37] July and September are by far the best months for viewing brown bears in the Brooks Camp area.
Mammal species that inhabit Katmai include snowshoe hare, moose, timber wolf, brown bear, coyote, beaver, lynx, wolverine, river otter, mink, Arctic and red fox species, weasel, porcupine, and marten. Marine mammals include the harbor seal, sea lion, sea otter, beluga whale, killer whale and gray whale. Caribou are occasionally within the park during winter seasons.[41]
The most important fish in the park are sockeye salmon, which feed bears, bald eagles and others during their spawning runs in the park's rivers. Salmon enter the Naknek River drainage from Bristol Bay in June and July and spawn from August to October.[42]
Prehistoric artifacts have been found dating to about 6,000 years before the present near the old Katmai village on the park's south coast. A number of other sites have been found along the coast, notably those of Kaguyak and Kukak, with occupation into historic times. Some of these, including sites "49 AF 3" near Kanatak and "49 MK 10", present clear evidence of habitation up to the 1912 eruption, but have not been investigated in detail.[44][45] The Amalik Bay Archeological District is a major area containing evidence of some of the earliest human activity in the area, with finds dating back more than 7,000 years.
Russians were the first Europeans to arrive in the area in significant numbers, trading in furs. They encountered the Aglegmuit Eskimos on the Bristol Bay side of the peninsula and the Koniag Eskino on the Shelikov Strait side. Katmai Village was the only location within the park where Europeans lived through the mid-19th century, though their numbers were always few. In the latter part of the 19th century a few villages were established inland at Severnosky and along the coast at Douglas and Kukak. American traders operating for the Alaska Commercial Company took the place of the Russians. As sea otters became scarce the trade dried up, and Katmai and Douglas were abandoned in the early 20th century. In the 1890s the region was a route for travelers going to Nome for Nome's short-lived gold rush. Writer Rex Beach was one of these, writing about life on Bristol Bay during the salmon run in The Silver Horde. Prospects for oil, gold and coal received brief attention, then died out by 1912.[9]
The National Geographic Society backed five expeditions to Katmai, beginning in 1915 with a trip to Kodiak Island and a short stay on the mainland. The expedition, led by Robert Fiske Griggs, a botanist who was initially interested in the study of plant recolonization. Griggs' follow-up expedition in 1916 discovered and named the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes and found Novarupta. The National Geographic Society, delighted with the discoveries, funded a larger expedition in 1917 to make a survey of the region. The subsequent articles published in National Geographic magazine brought the region to prominence in the public, and Griggs began to advocate for the protection of the area in the national park system, backed by the National Geographic Society. At this time legislation to establish Mount McKinley National Park (later renamed Denali National Park) was pending, and the idea of making Katmai a national park was discussed by National Park Service acting director Horace M. Albright and National Geographic Society president Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor. Albright advised that national park legislation was unlikely to pass, suggesting instead that the region be protected as a national monument by the President, using the Antiquities Act of 1906. After some negotiation, and after a 1918 expedition opined that the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes was a permanent feature, a proclamation was prepared to protect 1,080,000 acres (440,000 ha) around Mount Katmai, the valley, and the most of Iliuk Arm of Naknek Lake. Although only a third the area of the present park and preserve, the monument was nevertheless half the size of Yellowstone National Park from the outset. President Woodrow Wilson signed the proclamation of Katmai National Monument on September 24, 1918.[46]
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