Denali Historic Resource Study

On April 12, 1921, Director Mather sent a 10-page letter of instructions to Harry Karstens, formalizing the multifaceted charge that Karstens took on with Mount McKinley's superintendency. Much of the letter shows the hand of Arno B. Cammerer, Mather's administrative right hand and patient mentor to Karstens. But aside from details about Karstens' interim appointment as ranger-at-large until funds came on July 1, accountability of funds, budget preparation, and the like, the letter's substance was pure Mather. Taking into account the mining and hunting compromises that burdened the park's establishment act, Mather noted that special regulations adjusted to these factors would soon follow. Karstens would apply general and specific NPS policies at Mount McKinley with " . . . tact, good judgment, firmness, fearlessness, and a cool head at all times." He would proceed gradually with enforcement—explaining and warning before charging and arresting. All persons, whether permanent on the land or visitors, would be treated with respect and courtesy. Violators of the law—poachers and trespassers—would be removed with only such "violence as may be necessary, with an admonition not to repeat the offense." Karstens would get to know park neighbors, officials in other agencies, the U.S. District Attorney in Fairbanks, and potential concession operators who could provide services to visitors. He would canvass local people to find a suitable man for assistant ranger. And he would report his work regularly to the Director. [5]

This would be a ticklish business. Karstens would stand alone in this huge and totally undeveloped wilderness park, itself nested in a vast surround of wildness. He would bring with him a public lands philosophy still new in the States and completely alien to Alaskan attitudes and experience. Likewise new and alien were the laws and regulations with which Karstens would apply and enforce that philosophy. Of local precedent and backup he had none. Steve Mather concluded his letter to Karstens with the promise of all possible support from Washington. Then he said with somber understatement, "The rest is up to you." [6]

The core of the Service's philosophy derived from the Yellowstone National Park Act of 1872 and the National Park Service Act of 1916. Horace Albright, with the aid of the Nation's leading conservationists, had translated these graven statutory tables into a letter setting forth the policy objectives and management principles that would govern the Service. On May 13, 1918, Interior Secretary Franklin K. Lane sent this letter to NPS Director Mather, thus formalizing the Service's charter.

The chief principle was that "Every activity of the Service is subordinate to the duties imposed upon it to faithfully preserve the parks for posterity in essentially their natural state." Only those commercial activities specifically authorized by law or permitted for the accommodation and pleasure of visitors would be allowed. In its own planning, development, and operations the Service would avoid the inroads of modern civilization so that unspoiled bits of native America could be experienced by present and future generations. Where improvements were necessary, they would be designed to harmonize with the landscape. Hunting, timbering, grazing, and other consumptive uses would be disallowed or phased out, consistent with law. Private inholdings, especially those seriously hampering the administration of these reservations, likewise would be phased out over time by purchase or donation. [7]

Armed with such notions, Karstens surely had his work cut out for him. Alaskans were used to using at their pleasure the whole spread of the essentially unsupervised public domain, which constituted all but a few parcels of Alaska's huge territory. Now someone, albeit one of their own, would be telling them to "stop and git," and arresting them if they didn't. Karstens' first imperative was to protect the park's wildlife. This was policy. In the Director's Annual Report for 1919, Mather had informed the Secretary and the Congress that:

It will not be the policy of the National Park Service to immediately open this park to tourists; in fact, several years may elapse before any program for developing the scenic and recreational features of the park is adopted. We are interested now only in the preservation of the caribou, mountain sheep, and other animals that make this region their home . . . . [8]

To protect the park Karstens needed a base camp accessible to both the railroad—his line of access and supply—and the park itself. McKinley Station on the railroad near the Riley Creek-Nenana River junction had to be the location, for it was the topographically determined entrance to the park. The original configuration of the park placed its nearest boundary some 16 miles west of McKinley Station. Even after Congress extended the park to within 3 miles of the station on January 30, 1922, Karstens had to secure an administrative corridor to assure his unhampered access to the park and an entrance for "a main artery road through the upper passes," which Karstens cited in his June 1921 report to the Director as "the park's most urgent need."

Eventually, executive orders gave him the corridor and land upon which to build his base camp, but not before the expenditure of much blood and sweat over strategically placed homesteads that temporarily blocked his plans. From this base camp—with its cabins, barns, and kennels—Karstens and his men (when he got them) could range the boundaries and the choice hunting grounds, tracking, warning, and, if necessary, arresting wrongdoers.

After a summer 1921 swing into the park with pack horses—touching bases with his old Kantishna comrades and explaining the park and its regulations—Karstens began to scrounge, beg, and borrow tools and materials for the base camp. He made a deal with Pat Lynch, who agreed to relinquish his homestead on Riley Creek at the south end of the railroad bridge, so Karstens had a place to build. This site had been used by the AEC for its Riley Creek-bridge construction camp. From this and other abandoned camps, Karstens salvaged buildings and equipment for his own camp. This location in the creek bottom was Karstens' second choice. He wanted to be on the high ground on the same level as the railroad and the station. But Maurice Morino's homestead and roadhouse complex occupied all of that ground, and difficulties between the two men produced an impasse. The AEC, trying to secure its own right-of-way and administrative site on the Morino property, distanced itself from Karstens during this time to preserve good relations with Morino. It was a pretty tangle that caused Karstens sleepless nights and provoked long letters to Washington officials and Charles Sheldon.

Riley Creek bridge construction camp, during the winter of 1921-22. Alaska Railroad Collection, AMHA.

Karstens' ad hoc deals, his loan and salvage arrangements with the AEC, his commitments to Nenana storekeepers for essential supplies—all necessary acts to get the park going—threw the auditors in Washington into a tizzy; but Cammerer understood, calmed the auditors, and continued to coach Karstens on the procedures that would let him proceed, yet keep the accounts and administrative proprieties straight. The correspondence between the two men followed a cycle something like this:

Karstens: Wait 'til I tell you about this one.

Cammerer: Harry, I know you had to do it, but next time do it this way.

Karstens: Thanks, Mr. Cammerer, I sure won't do that again, and by the way, what do you think of this deal I just pulled off? [9]

Thus, by hook and by crook Karstens could report these accomplishments after a year on the ground:

A Superintendent and assistant were provided for. Two dog teams of five dogs each with harness, sleds and equipment for winter operations; also three horses, harness, bobsled, wagon, and horseshoeing, blacksmith and harness repair outfits with necessary equipment were acquired.

Base camp was established at McKinley Park Station on the Government railroad, where a portion of land one mile wide extending into the park was set aside for entrance and administrative purposes.

The superintendents dwelling and office were built at this point with barn, storehouse, workshop and necessary out buildings. [10]

Already the plan to protect first and do other things later had gone awry. Karstens had too many things to do all at once. He oversaw the park boundary survey and marked the line with boundary signs. Lands issues had obtruded, as had the building of the base camp, which was prerequisite to any substantial and steady in-park operation.

This is the only known map of the early (1922-25) park headquarters area. The map was sketched during the 1970s, showing conditions as they appeared in the summer of 1923. George Flood, a horse packer, and Bob Degan both worked for concessioner Dan Kennedy during his first year of operation; they resided in adjacent cabins along Hines Creek. The NPS took up residence along Riley Creek; the only two employees that summer were Supt. Karstens and Ranger E.R. McFarland. (Flood apparently thought that McFarland served as assistant superintendent.) The map is redrawn, and is not to scale. Drawn from the memory of George Flood, in DENA archives

Getting supplies into the park and selecting tent or existing cabin sites for patrol shelters also had to be done first. Deploying the supplies, erecting tents, cutting and transporting wood fuel, repairing abandoned cabins (after checking with locals whether they were abandoned, or if the builders had any rights to them)—all these things, too, had to be done first, if ranger patrols were to be anything but easily eluded charades.

Squatter's cabin near the park headquarters, ca. 1930. "MIscellaneous MOMC" file, AMHA.

As a first step toward maintaining the NPS presence inside the park, Karstens and his assistant ranger pioneered a wagon road 12 miles along Hines and Jenny creeks to Savage River. On this rough track they conveyed a ton of supplies drawn by a four-horse team, then established a cache and supply point for interior-park patrols. [11]

The intent to deal with visitors later, after first things had been done, went against the old saying: Time and tide wait on no man. Imminent completion of the railroad forced the issue. Tourism promoters, shipping lines, railroad officials, and boomers and boosters in various Alaska towns were already advertising tours by ship, steamboat, auto, and railroad. Mount McKinley National Park ranked as the prime objective of this grand loop through the Interior.

Potential concessioners crowded Karstens' office with schemes for hotels and transportation systems into the park. Much correspondence ensued between the park and Washington to evaluate these proposals. And the concession candidates were less than loath to contact the Governor and the Delegate to Congress in their pursuit of monopoly rights within the park. This, too, required correspondence.

The proposed main road into the park, the one the ARC would build for the NPS, tied directly to the concession proposals. For, lacking the road, all but the hardiest visitors would be left standing and fuming at the station waiting for the next train. [12]

While Karstens labored to create a rudimentary park administration and operation, the ARC moved forward on park-road construction. Col. James Steese of the ARC had outlined the dual park and commercial road project in an April 1922 letter to Director Steve Mather, conditioned upon NPS provision of funds and design control. [13] Mather's acceptance sealed the agreement and spurred the ARC's route survey and erection of shelter tents and trail markers clear to Kantishna that summer. From 1923 to 1938, the ARC gnawed away at the road project: 2 miles in 1923, 5 or 10 miles each succeeding construction season, depending on terrain and funds available in the Service's park-road account. At each construction camp the ARC built a standard-plan 14-foot by 16-foot log cabin that served as cook house in summer and storage cache in winter. Work-crew tents clustered around the cabin, forming the season's home camp, which would move on westward with construction progress. [14] As camps were abandoned, the cabins could be used as ranger-patrol shelters. Several of these ARC cabins survive today as ranger stations along the road. Also still used are similar patrol cabins of the 1920s-30s, built by the rangers at strategic points along the old park boundary.

By end-of-season 1924, the road was passable for buses and touring cars out to Savage River, 12 miles from McKinley Station. [15] The primitive concessioner tent-camp there, operated in 1923-24 by horse-packer Dan Kennedy, was taken over and improved by the Mt. McKinley Tourist and Transportation Company under Robert Sheldon's management (no relation to Charles Sheldon). The 1925 tourist season recorded the first significant visitation into the park, 206 persons vs. only 62 in 1924. The company's four touring cars had trouble at times handling visitor traffic between McKinley Station and Savage Camp.

Dan Kennedy was the park's first concessioner.

The Mt. McKinley Tourist and Transportation Company took over from Dan Kennedy in 1925. It retained park concession rights until the eve of World War II. AMHA.

The camp itself became a "tent house colony" during the summer. Dining hall, social hall, and tent houses took care of some 60 people at a time. Barns, a corral, and utility buildings completed the camp, which was served by running water.

From this base, visitors could proceed on horseback, and later by Concord stages, on various loop trails into the Savage and Sanctuary rivers country. Spike camps allowed overnight wilderness experiences. More adventurous visitors could take guided pack-train trips into the park's farther hinterlands.

By 1928 the company had progressed westward along the ever extending road and beyond, on the grubbed out trail that marked its future course. Smaller camps at Igloo Creek, Polychrome Pass, Toklat River, and Copper Mountain (renamed Mount Eielson in 1930 for bush pilot Ben Eielson) hosted those who sought the more primeval spaces. By 1929, the company's 22 buses, 9 touring cars, 4 stages, 2 trucks, and a trailer were pressed to the limit to handle visitors and logistics. At that, with only 150 or 200 visitors in the park at a given time, this was the golden age of park touring: the festive train ride and arrival at McKinley Station, the lined up buses and touring cars, the scenic drive into the park, with welcoming arrival at various camps. Here amidst rustic but comfortable settings (and at Savage quite civilized dining and dancing) visitors could choose amongst many treks by horseback, packtrain, and stage that took them into Mount McKinley's wildlife and scenic splendors. [16]

A Yellowstone stage at Savage Camp. The social hall, adorned with a moose rack, is at the right. Herbert Heller Collection, UAF.

But, as the Superintendent's Monthly Reports reveal, all was not rosy. Karstens spent inordinate time monitoring both road construction and concession operations. Disputes between him and the road engineers over clean-up of construction debris, micro-choices of route and design to meet the "park ideal," and management of NPS funds kept the air and the wires humming. Depending on the tourist-camp crew make-up, Karstens had some good years and some bad years. Once the proximity of game tempted nimrods on the crew to poach. Sometimes rates or food and sanitation standards departed from concession-contract terms. But all in all, the park had become a legitimate and much enjoyed objective for tourists.

Despite the increasing pace and strain of his work, and as a part of his charge to win the hearts and minds of Alaskans, Harry Karstens took every opportunity to express his poet's love of the park. On one of his business trips to Anchorage he addressed the Women's Club on the park's progress, ending with this peroration:

A natural park is being preserved in its naturalness for you and for me and for our children—unspoiled, unmarred. To enjoy this "pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people," its sublimity of beauty and grandeur, one must be in tune with these things. There is little to offer visitors who need attendants to make them comfortable, who think of walking in terms of cement and board paths, riding in terms of cushioned motor cars, who cannot appreciate a forest unless it is manicured or enjoy animals that have never felt the touch of the hand of man and do not wish it, who would be annoyed by noisy squirrels and gophers and whistling marmots and myriads of ptarmigan, hordes of rabbits, who would become hysterical about a few insects or faint and panic stricken if they missed a meal or two. Neither is there much consolation for the one who is prone to indulge in the pompous manner and the arrogant word.

But there is much to offer those who understand the language of the "great silent places," the "mighty mouthed hollows, plumb full of hush to the brim." To the hardy, venturesome ones there are heights to be scaled where bands of sheep and herds of caribou look with wonder and curiosity at the traveler. There are noisy mountain and glacier streams, noble crags and precipices, master pieces of nature's rugged architecture that have never yet been photographed. There are glaciers to cross. There are mountains to climb, from the easily ascended near-by domes to the dizzy peaks amid the everlasting snows. Eagles will be seen soaring about their breeding places among the pinnacles on the jagged sky-line.

Mount McKinley National Park has an abundance for each and everyone. Here will be found an indescribable calm; a place to just loaf; healing to the sick mind and body, beyond reach of the present day mental and nervous and moral strain. [17]

One of Karstens' most important acts as superintendent was relocation of the park headquarters in 1925. The base camp on Riley Creek below the railroad bridge was inconvenient, a second-choice location from the beginning determined by the Morino homestead, which occupied the best ground around McKinley Station. Moreover, in winter the frigid air sank into the creek bottoms making them 10 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit colder than nearby benchlands. The difference between -45 degrees and -60 degrees is profound and potentially lethal. Colonel Steese had helped Karstens out some by giving him office space in an ARC building at the station. But the families of Karstens and his staff, and the park's horses and dogs benefitted not at all from this partial solution.

In February 1924 Karstens wrote to the Director:

Owing to the survey and part construction of a road from the Alaska Railroad at McKinley Park station through the strip of land set aside by Executive Order for Park purposes, to the Eastern boundary of the Park, I believe it is time to take up the question of moving our headquarters from its present location to a point along this road. There is a beautiful spot, with ample room for expansion, one and two-third miles from the railroad, which is not within the boundary of the Park proper but is on the land temporarily set aside by Executive Order dated January 13, 1922.

I wish the Service would advise me if I could build headquarters on this land, and if I could expend Park funds (if available) on such work. My idea is to make this a permanent location, plotting out the site with a view to future development and adequate sanitation. Such buildings as we can construct will be built of logs, having an eye to their permanency and attractiveness, and also for warmth and comfort. Building headquarters at this point will simplify the work of checking persons entering the Park or leaving it. The present location is very unsatisfactory in this respect. [18]

After several exchanges of correspondence on the relocation Karstens' old friend, Acting Director Cammerer, ratified the new headquarters site and coached him to proceed promptly with construction of "temporary" buildings even before appropriated funds became available:

There has been one point that you have mentioned here and there in preceding correspondence and that is the possibility of establishing park headquarters farther on in the park, or near the park boundary. I am fully convinced that such a move is very desirable from an administrative standpoint and for other reasons, particularly now that the new road into the park is being developed. You should, therefore, bring with you to Seattle a map showing the proposed location of such new administrative headquarters, and you should include in your supplemental estimates an amount sufficient to construct a few permanent buildings, adequate in size and design for permanent construction. Of course, if headquarters is established before funds for such buildings will be available, as I expect will be case, it will be necessary for you to establish in temporary living headquarters, such as you are now living in at McKinley Park Station, temporary structures. [19]

Karstens and his rangers moved rapidly. They dismantled several structures at the Riley Creek base camp and built, largely from the salvage, three one-room log cabins, a barn, and other utility shelters at the new headquarters site. This small, park-like plateau, girt by mountains, with a cover of white spruce and willow, lay in the angle between Rock and Hines creeks. At an elevation of 2,000 feet above sea level and 600 feet above McKinley Station, the headquarters benefitted from the warm-air inversion typical in winter. It offered a stunning view down the Hines Greek fault and across the Nenana River to the alpine peaks that rim the Yanert drainage.

In time, with the efforts of Karstens and his crew—and the work of successor superintendents Harry Liek, Frank Been, and Grant Pearson—the headquarters complex of the early Forties gave the park a first-class administrative, residential, and utility base, including stables and kennels for pack and patrol animals. Together with the patrol and boundary cabins (15 in all built by 1939), and the ARC cabins along the road, the park boasted an operational plant that, with a few additions in the 1950s, proved adequate until the advent of highway access in 1972. [20]

Karstens' headquarters locale would be challenged in 1929, when Chief Landscape Architect Thomas G. Vint visited the park to initiate the first professional planning effort. He thought the headquarters should be moved back to McKinley Station. But Director Horace Albright, knowledgeable about cold and wind from his Yellowstone superintendency days, vetoed any shift back to the low, exposed country along the railroad. When Albright visited the park in 1931 he said the clean and well laid-out headquarters area, with its sturdy and handsome log structures, compared favorably with any park headquarters in the States. He described it as ". . . a distinct credit to the Service, and an important asset, as it is seen by all tourists as they go down to visit . . . the dog kennels." [21]

Today the log buildings built by Karstens and his successors comprise a functional registered historic district still used for administrative and residence purposes by the Service. Visitors still enjoy this rustic period-piece as they wander through it on the way to the kennels and dog-sled demonstrations.