Denali Historic Resource Study

Despite plans for staging, things had happened "all at once" from the beginning at Mount McKinley National Park. Aside from setting up physically to manage the park, Karstens had to have a charter of authority, adapted to the statutory provisions that, among other things, protected valid mining claims, allowed new-claim entries under the mining laws, and gave prospectors and miners operating within the park the right to:

take and kill therein so much game or birds as may be needed for their actual necessities when short of food; but in no case shall animals or birds be killed in said park for sale or removal therefrom, or wantonly. [22]

These provisions, the price of getting the park bill through Congress, and particularly the hunting exception, caused immediate foreboding among the Founding Father conservationists, Washington officials of the Park Service, and Harry Karstens himself. John Burnham of the American Game Protective and Propagation Association, in late 1920, coordinated the efforts of his organization, the Boone & Crockett Club, and the Camp Fire Clubs to pay for weatherproof posters to be placed in the park quoting the Congressional proscriptions on hunting. Early in 1921 Burnham and his associates drafted suggested regulations for the park that emphasized the Interior Secretary's legal obligations under Section 5 of the park act to regulate the taking of game to assure its protection. The draft regulations would empower the park superintendent to confiscate game killed, along with the hunting outfits of violators of the Congressional proscriptions. They also provided for fines and imprisonment of those convicted. [23]

In April 1921 Assistant Director Cammerer sent to Karstens the Park Service draft regulations, which included much of the Burnham material, plus pen-and-ink comments solicited from Charles Sheldon, who wanted Karstens to review the regulations. All of Sheldon's suggestions concerned the hunting issue. Paramount was the need for a permit system that would enable the superintendent to distinguish real prospectors miners from the poachers and market hunters who posed as such.

In forwarding the draft and comments to Karstens, Cammerer stated that the

act creating the park was particularly specific in giving miners and prospectors all possible leeway in pursuing their work, and I think they are permitted to go in without a permit; in other words, it would be difficult to enforce a permit clause if a miner decided not to apply for it. [24]

Cammerer sought Karstens' best thought on this issue, which came in a quick reply to the Director just before Karstens embarked from Seattle to start his new job at the park. [25] He strongly endorsed the idea of a permit system to control both hunting and timber cutting in the park. As an added benefit, the permit system would require face-to-face contact with permittees, giving Karstens a chance to explain the park rules to them. He said, "Alaskans as a general rule try to be law abiding in everything except hunting, and in that they think they have a perfect right to game—and wherever they want it." Karstens plugged for a regulation requiring prospectors and miners to keep a record of game killed so he could judge if they were hunting only when truly necessary, as Congress intended. He agreed with Sheldon that there should be no exception to confiscation of violators' game and outfits, for ". . .confiscation would have a tendency to keep wrongdoers out of the park." Differing from Sheldon, Karstens would allow miners to feed game meat to their dogs if the alternative were killing the dogs, for local fish were poor and supplies out of reach in hardship conditions. He believed that Toklat-Nenana Indians, who usually ran out of their dried and smoked fish by spring, had a special claim to survival hunting in the park up the Toklat's forks; and for the same reason, Birch Creek Indians of the upper Kuskokwim sometimes were forced to get a few caribou and moose in the park near Kantishna. (On the last, Cammerer in a letter of May 4, 1921, granted that this was a delicate issue and gave Karstens leeway to use his own judgment.)

As finally issued on June 21, 1921, the special regulations for Mount McKinley National Park avoided the permit issue, but required that prospectors and miners keep records of game killed, open to examination by the superintendent. Killing game principally for dog food could occur only on the condition of an advance permit from the superintendent, but excess meat left over from human food could be fed to dogs without a permit. Confiscation of violators' game and outfits was affirmed. Other provisions relating to miners and prospectors working in the park (e.g., carrying guns without a permit; using dogs for transportation and packing) reflected standard Alaska practice. [26]

The patchwork nature of these regulations, the ambiguities dictated by law, and the near impossibility of nailing down a prosecutable violation, especially in Alaska's social environment, are obvious. As park proponents feared, it was the hunting provision more that any other that would plague the park's administration and preservation. Letters of complaint about wanton killing of park game from conservation luminaries such as Dan Beard, Sr., [27] vied with inquiries from the mining constituency, such as the interrogatory from J.A. Davis of the Bureau of Mines Experimental Station in Fairbanks. [28] Davis wanted clarification of the regulations to guarantee the miners rights to work and hunt in the park in a way that would aid the mining enterprise—including use of timber, water rights, construction of ditches and dams, etc. But always the hunting provision and its abuse by some miners and a hard core group of dissembling poachers and market hunters grabbed the spotlight.

The latters' numbers increased under cover of the Kantishna mining excitement in the early Twenties. This got the attention of the joint National Parks Committee of the Nation's leading conservation organizations. The minutes of the committee's meeting of April 17, 1923, quote a resolution urging the Secretary of the Interior and the National Park Service to take all necessary action to control hunting at McKinley, and calling on Congress to increase appropriations for wardens to enforce the controls. [29]

In his 1923 Annual Report to the President, Interior Secretary Hubert Work decried the miners' wanton killing of game in the park for themselves and their dogs. He asserted the need for amendatory legislation to repeal the hunting provision of the park act. [30]

Even the Pathfinder of Alaska, after isolating the renegade few from the majority of law-abiding prospectors and miners, conceded that if Mount McKinley's game was in fact being destroyed as reported by the Secretary, ". . . he is right in taking steps to put a stop to the practice," for the one place where plentiful wildlife "should be saved is in a National Park." [31]

The Secretary's idea of legislative repeal got locked in after he received his solicitor's opinion that—as Cammerer had earlier stated to Karstens—the park's legislative history did not support the Secretary's explicit regulation of hunting by prospectors and miners. The solicitor cited the settled rule of law, which states that if a right is granted by statute (in this case the park's establishment act) it cannot be abridged by the regulations of an executive department. [32]

The Service's Washington Office and the park tried all manner of expedients to restrict park hunting to actual necessity, as Congress intended. But these efforts fell far short. Reports of renegade trappers in the McKinley River drainage added to the concerns over wildlife destruction. Pleas to Congress for funds for more rangers went unheard. [33] In cooperation with the U.S. Biological Survey, by now in charge of Alaska Game Law enforcement, Alaska Game Wardens were appointed without pay as park rangers, and rangers were deputized as wardens. [34] Still, the park's vast spaces and the law's vast loophole defeated the objective of preserved wildlife.

In early 1924 biologist Olaus Murie of the Biological Survey, then studying caribou in the park, reported to his boss, Dr. E.W. Nelson, that the future of the park's game was really endangered. [35] About the same time Karstens wrote a long letter to the Director citing many hunting depredations—sled loads of meat being transported out of the park by men who maintained that everyone else was killing animals where and when they saw fit. It was impossible for Karstens, often away on public business, and his one assistant ranger to cover even the near hunting and exit sites, much less the far reaches of the park. He concluded:

My recommendation would be to close the park to all hunting. As long as prospectors are allowed to kill game, just as surely will the object of this park be defeated. Any townie can take a pick and pan and go into the park and call himself a prospector. This is often the case. Compromises will not do for compromises only leave loopholes for further abuse. [36]

Karstens' letter, along with the other reports that documented wholesale killing of park wildlife, inspired Washington officials to call together leading conservationists—Dr. Nelson and Olaus Murie of the Biological Survey, John Burnham of the Game Protective Association, and Charles Sheldon—to develop with the Service a strategy leading to repeal of the park-act hunting provision. During the course of this meeting Director Mather made the point that ". . . the United States was planning to put some $275,000 into new road work in Mount McKinley Park, and that any depletion of the wild life would be bound to have an adverse affect on the visitors, who, seeing the Mount McKinley National Park as the chief scenic asset of Alaska, would expect to see some of the wonderful caribou herds and flocks of sheep . . . ." He urged all present to make the point with Alaska Delegate to Congress Dan Sutherland that these visitors, potential settlers and investors, ". . . would do more toward developing Alaska's resources than any other possibilities to which Alaskans could point to build up their territory." [37]

Eventually, as a result of mounting conversation pressure and the perversion of the open-ended hunting provision that could not be regulated, Congress repealed it by an amendatory act approved May 21, 1928. The same act opened the way for more rangers by lifting the $10,000 annual appropriation limit imposed by the establishment act. [38]

In a related effort initiated by Director Albright, Congress in 1931 granted the Secretary explicit authority to regulate surface use of mineral land locations, and to require the registration of all prospectors and miners entering the park. [39] But not until 1976 were new-claim entries under the mining laws prohibited in McKinley Park. [40]

Slowly, structural changes and adjustments of law to make the park administrable were taking place. Meanwhile, Karstens and his rangers carried on their work—patrolling, stopping wrongdoers, making friends or enemies as occasion demanded, and, as a by product, establishing an enduring Park Service tradition in Alaska.

As a Sourdough himself—Klondike stampeder, hunter, dog-driver, mountaineer—Karstens set the tone for that tradition. When Grant Pearson came to work for him as a buck ranger in 1926 he knew he was in the presence of a living legend. [41] Pearson, who would become McKinley's superintendent and a legendary outdoorsman in his own right, never lost his affection and admiration for Karstens. Even after the troubles that drove Karstens from the Service, Pearson held that the government ". . . couldn't have chosen a more competent man to pioneer the initial development" of the park. [42]

Pearson's recall of his testing days as a new ranger paint a picture of early park conditions and Karstens' demanding standards:

Superintendent Karstens certainly did not like government red tape, especially when he was of the opinion that it was necessary to discharge an employee. Quite often when some of the personnel became angry with him, he preferred to settle matters outside the office with their fists, rather than prefer official charges. That situation eventually led to his downfall in government work.

During the three years I worked under the supervision of Karstens, I found him to be very fair and considerate. I made several long trips into the back country of the Park with him and he taught me many original ways of getting along the trail.

On several occasions during the time I was at the park Karstens actually came to blows with some of the park personnel, and I never knew him to come out second best.

Considering that he was in a frontier area, he was a realistic administrator. Those were the days when a Ranger was not required to pass a Civil Service Examination. He had his own system, and considering the type of duties a Ranger was required to perform, his system certainly weeded out those who were unfit for the job. When I talked to Karstens about a Ranger's job, he asked me a number of questions about my experience as a woodsman and wilderness man.

I shall never forget that, when he got through asking questions, he said, "You're lacking in experience, but I think you can learn. I'll send you on a patrol trip alone. You will be gone a week. If you don't get back by then, I'll come looking for you, and you had better have plans made for a new job. Now this is what I want you to do." He then outlined a week's patrol trip cross-country through territory new to me. There were no blazed trails to follow. One could follow only the terrain cross-country. He also gave me a rough map and much valuable advice. No reliable maps of the Park were available in those days.

Karstens said, "This will be a trial trip, and real test for you. We can't use anyone on our Ranger force who can't take care of himself in the wilds.

The Ranger you are replacing was unfit for this service. We sent him out on the same patrol you are going to make and he returned in a most pitiful condition. He just staggered back, almost starved. The poor fellow was gone for three days and couldn't find the patrol cabin. He hadn't eaten a hot meal since he left. His reason was that he couldn't find any water that wasn't frozen to ice. The ground was covered with snow. He had a trail axe and could have cut some dry wood and melted ice or snow for water. Luckily the weather was warm, about zero and he didn't suffer any frostbite.

When this fellow took the job he said he had had plenty of experience out in the wilderness by himself. This trip you are making isn't too tough. However, it is the kind that separates the glamour boys from the type we can use in our work. [43]

Karstens never rested on his laurels. He got into the park whenever his administrative and public-relations duties allowed. And when he left town or office for the trail, he did more than tour. Often he traveled alone on long dog-team patrols, siwash camping in the woods as in the days before cabins. Whenever he went out, he did something that set an example for this men, whether it was long hours tracking a violator or building a patrol cabin with his own hands. He did this, too, because out there, off the beaten path, he was the happiest of men. [44]

The rangers who survived Karstens' weeding process—stalwarts like Fritz Nyberg and Pearson, and the temporaries who helped them—built a rangering record that made Mount McKinley the Yellowstone of the North, the operational academy for Alaska park rangers. That this record required exertion in difficult social and physical environments comes through in early park reports, a few highlights of which follow:

The case against Jack Donnelly for killing and transporting game from the Park was considered a very good one, but the prosecution failed because of the reluctance of the people, as represented by an average jury in this instance, to convict anyone for illegal hunting. This general disinclination to punish illegal game killers is recognized by everybody, and the Park seems destined to suffer along with the rest of the territory as a consequence. It is very discouraging for those appointed to protect game and who feel responsible for results. Our only hope for adequate conservation lies in the obtaining of whole-hearted support by the people. Once we get enthusiastic sympathy for our aims—and no thinking, unselfish person denies that they are right—co-operation will follow. The process of swinging the attitude of these people to the point of recognizing the importance and value of conservation of wild life, as practiced by the national parks, promises to be a slow and tedious one, requiring much missionary work.

Superintendent's Monthly Report, February 1924.

May 1927

Ranger Swisher, Pearson and I left for Toklat River in early morning. Going over Thoroughfare (Pass) and down into Toklat, we got in snowslush up to our necks. Dogs could neither walk or swim—we had to pull them across. Got in early, changed clothes, spent the balance of the day cutting logs for cabin.

Chief Ranger Nyberg

November 1927

There was four inches of snow during the month making about ten inches on the level. About two thirds of the month was bitter cold being about thirty-five to forty below towards the last of the month. The winds in the canyons and passes were very penetrating. Streams were overflowing and glaciering up very rapidly. During the coldest weather the dogs had to travel through water which was very hard on the dog's feet during the cold weather. The relief tent at East Fork is all surrounded by overflow ice. The new cabin at Toklat and the dog-houses made this stretch of freighting much less disagreeable than heretofore. If there were several more of these cabins along the trails and along the boundary, patrol work could be carried out much more effectively. It is not fair to the rangers to ask them to patrol in the cold weather and get wet in the overflows and then have to spend the night out in the open under a spruce tree. Especially as they travel alone it is too dangerous to ask any man to do. This month Ranger Pearson was caught in a blizzard in the Copper Mountain basin with the nearest cabin or shelter of any kind 17 miles away. There was no timber in the basin for wood to make a fire and he had to double back 17 miles to the Toklat cabin, arriving late at night. It is important that there should be a cabin at Copper Mountain.

Chief Ranger Nyberg

December 1927

There are twelve trappers at least along the east boundary and seven white trappers and several natives trapping along the northern boundary between Healy and Toklat. There are five trappers between Toklat and Wonder Lake. There are at least four and probably more between Wonder Lake and the West end. Practically all of these trappers have dogs that are fed from caribou and sheep. With a ranger force of three and hardly any cabins along the boundary it is practically impossible to properly patrol this section. With present conditions the rangers are forced to make a hurried trip through, spending the nights beneath spruce trees. Along the 150 miles of boundary which is about two hundred miles the way we would have to travel, there are only four cabins. In cold or stormy weather it is too risky a proposition to send the rangers over this hard stretch with no cabins to stop in. The trappers are well acquainted with these conditions and make use of the knowledge.

Chief Ranger Nyberg

March 1928

Chief Ranger Nyberg and I left Kantishna station at three oclock the morning of the 29th. As the light snow that was falling made the trail unusually good we made the 35 miles to Toklat by nine oclock in the morning; and continued on to Igloo 20 miles farther.

There was game on the trail between Polychrome Pass and East Fork. The teams broke into a fast run, one of the dogs in my team went down and they dragged him a hundred feet before I could stop them. He was unable to rise and I found one of his front legs was broken close to the shoulder. The break was so bad there was no hope of recovery so I took the collar and harness off and shot him. The dogs were continually breaking through the ice on the creek; he was the slowest dog in the team and getting tired he must have stepped through the ice and was unable to pull his leg out soon enough.

Park Ranger Arthur Gardner

Ranger Gardner's evident distress at having to destroy one of his dogs testifies to the rangers ' affection for and dependence on these often unruly and frustrating animals. Dog-team work can be the hardest imaginable for both man and beast. Breaking trail in deep snow with snowshoes, pulling the dogs as they wallow through it, holding the sled on line while floundering across sidehill slopes or sliding in a gale on glare ice, pushing and yelling encouragement as the dogs drag a loaded freight sled up a cut bank—all these standard problems of dog driving leave little time for leisurely sledding through the scenery. Straightening out tangled dogs and lines, deicing sled runners after traversing overflow, and breaking up dog fights that can maim or kill one's only transport in lethal weather and terrain do little to relieve the normal stresses.

Yet, for those who accept these travails to explore the crystalline landscapes of winter the dogs are a constant amazement. No matter how hard the previous day, they greet the morning with eager anticipation—another great day of bone-tiring labor lies ahead. When a good team responds to a good driver the power and energy they display in overcoming the most difficult conditions wrings the heart. For one alone on distant patrol, the dogs are the only companions. They become as family.

Functionally, particularly in the early days (and yet today in specialized tasks) the dogs alone gave access to the park's winter remoteness. Even after the advent of airplanes and snow-cats the dogs proved their worth. Temporarily banished from the park after World War II, they were brought back as dependable complements to the various machines powered by internal combustion engines, which proved fickle in deep cold and bad storm, and dysfunctional in many terrains.

Anyway, the training, driving, and upkeep of dogs has been too integral a part of McKinley-Denali rangering to be valued solely in practical terms. The sled dogs of Denali are both symbol and substance of that tradition that encourages rangers to actually range in the Alaskan wild. Their continuing use for specialized patrol and freighting of supplies, and their unfailing appeal to visitors through scheduled dog-sledding demonstrations, is recognized as one of the park's historic themes, represented structurally by the historic kennels complex and patrol cabins. [45]

In those pioneer years, getting the park going and giving it protection, along with public missionary work, took most of the park staff's time. But emergencies and new duties kept intervening. In July 1924 a major fire surrounded McKinley Station and the park's Riley Creek base camp. Strong winds fanned it along the first mile of the new park road toward the park proper. Summer camps around the station were abandoned. Park families left their quarters to huddle on a Riley Creek gravel bar. Night-and-day work and vigilance, and a change in the weather, ended the danger after 4 days. But the park entrance was a charred wasteland [46]—a contributing reason for Director Albright's veto of Landscape Architect Vint's 1929 recommendation to move the park headquarters back to McKinley Station.

As a result of the Prohibition Amendment and an earlier law prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcoholic liquors in the Territory of Alaska, park rangers were drafted into the enforcement apparatus to destroy moonshine stills and close down dispensaries. [47] This thankless task exacerbated the park's relations with private landholders around McKinley Station. Both Morino's Roadhouse and Duke Stubb's store had become drinking hangouts for wintering miners, whose squatter cabins had proliferated on the unwithdrawn lands between the park boundary and the Nenana River. Prohibition actions against these two dispensers, and neighboring moonshiners who supplied them, complicated an already strained situation. Particularly grating was Morino, whose strategically located homestead surrounded McKinley Station and the park-entrance corridor. The bitterness sown by these episodes would contribute to Karstens' downfall and create long-term problems when these people and their allies became inholders after the boundary extension of 1932. [48]

Morino's Roadhouse and McKinley post office, 1938. Alaska Railroad Collection, AMHA.

Morino's Roadhouse from Riley Creek bridge, showing ruins remaining after World War II. Alaska Railroad Collection, AMHA.

Nor would tourists and special visitors wait until everything was nicely organized. The NPS itself—at first to justify establishment of the park, then to get money for its protection and development—had constantly touted the park's potential for the territory's economy and development. The connection between park tourism and profitable operation of the Alaska Railroad had been exploited continuously since the first public announcement of the park idea in 1915. Little wonder, then, that the sequence of protection first and visitors later telescoped together.

By 1922 the Rand McNally Guide to Alaska and Yukon featured a detailed map of the park showing an established trail from McKinley Station to Wonder Lake and beyond to the very foot of the mountain. [49] At the time of this guide's printing the trail was not even marked.

About the same time a consortium of steamship lines, railroads, and other tourism interests formed an organization called Alaska Vacation Land. Its advertisements in prominent magazines such as The New Yorker and Sunset highlighted McKinley Park on a tour called The Golden Belt Line, which began at the port of Cordova, proceeded to Chitina on the Copper River and Northwestern Railroad, then up the Richardson Highway to Fairbanks, and back to the coast past the park on the Alaska Railroad. [50]

In a circular of July 1924, the Alaska Railroad reminded its agents "that here in Alaska is situated one of America's most wondrous playgrounds." They were exhorted to "boost Mt. McKinley Park whenever and wherever possible." [51] At the time this circular went out the first full-time ARC construction crew of about 90 men had just established their camps and grubbed out the first 4 miles of the road. [52]

A couple of months earlier Karstens had advised Dr. Frank Oastler of New York City that "All transportation, after leaving the railroad, must be by saddle and pack train." He should be prepared for a 2-week outing if he planned a round trip to the foot of the mountain. [53]

Colonel Steese, temporarily heading both the Alaska Railroad and the ARC, warned Assistant Director Cammerer in July 1924 that "we shall do our best to hold people off this year," but unless the NPS could coax more substantial road funds from Congress, the park faced a deluge of disappointed visitors. For every trekker who enjoyed the "very meager and rough camping facilities" and transportation currently available, there would be a crowd at the station to whom "the National Park Service will have to do a lot of explaining." [54]

Karstens, viewing with alarm the visitors' force-fed expectations versus the park's actual state of staffing and development, had earlier written this plaint to the Director:

The establishing of transportation to the park will add to the many other duties of the superintendent and his one ranger. We will do our best, and are eager to cope with any situation that may develop, but is it fair to the Park? [55]

Opening of the railroad from Seward to Fairbanks in 1923 brought a series of VIP tours past the park. Their ceremonial stops at McKinley Station publicized the park's grandeur and beauty. Their frustration at being unable to enter a National Park effectively blockaded by lack of roads and accommodations spurred public clamor. These events helped move Congress to the first significant appropriations for road construction.

On June 7 a Congressional party numbering 65 persons spent an hour and a half at the station. Superintendent Karstens addressed the group, citing the park's urgent need for a road and increased appropriations. [56] Chairman Steese of the Alaska Railroad and ARC wrote to Karstens a few days later to relay "the many pleasant comments we have received concerning your address . . ., I believe we may safely count upon receiving increased consideration at the hands of Congress next winter." [57]

Next, on July 8-9 came the Brooklyn Eagle Party of 70 persons. For several years the Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspaper had sponsored western park tours with the cooperation of the Interior Department and the NPS. Each year they officially dedicated a National Park. This year it would be Mount McKinley.

As originally planned, the 40 or 50 hardier members of the party would be transported over the rough trail to partake of a caribou barbecue at concessioner Dan Kennedy's Savage River camp. But tight train schedules and Kennedy's inability to set up for such a throng at the opening of his first season cancelled that event. Karstens had worked like a dervish to pull this off and, as usual, he would not be defeated. He dragooned everyone in sight to transport and set up the barbecue at McKinley Station. He called in the Biological Survey's caribou man, Olaus Murie, to hunt sheep for barbecue meat. Except for the usual disappointment at being unable to get into the park, the barbecue and dedication came off splendidly. [58]

The Brooklyn Eagle party at the park's dedication ceremony, June 1923. Fanny Quigley Collection, UAF.

By now Karstens' plaint about extra duties when the railroad brought visitors to the park had the ring of understatement. And it was not over. But cope he did.

Less than a week later, on July 15, President Warren G. Harding's party of 70 persons showed up. After an overnight layover at Broad Pass (the train simply pulled into a siding because the Curry Hotel, the later overnight stop, was under construction), the Presidential Special steamed into McKinley Station. For about 20 minutes the President mingled and shared refreshments with the crowd that greeted him there. Superintendent Karstens accepted the invitation to join the President's party for the Golden Spike driving at the north end of the newly completed Tanana River bridge—the symbolic signal of the railroad's completion. During the train ride to Fairbanks Karstens worked the President's men with stories of the park and a catalogue of its needs. [59]

Shortly after his visit the President authored an encomium to Mount McKinley that concluded with these words: "Somehow Mount McKinley is distinctly typical of Alaska, so mighty, measureless and magnificent, resourceful and remote, with some great purpose yet unrevealed to challenge human genius." [60]

While in San Francisco on his return from Alaska, President Harding died of an embolism. Interior Secretary Work would state in his 1923 Annual Report to new President Calvin Coolidge that "The official visit of the President and his Cabinet has unquestionably done more to direct attention to Alaska than any previous event."

Not all special visits were so pleasant. Famous outdoors writer and film-maker William N. Beach set up a visit to the park in 1922, writing ahead to Karstens and getting his enthusiastic response and offer of help. Beach said he wanted to shoot McKinley's sheep with a camera, but, unstated to Karstens, he wanted to shoot them with a rifle, too. Using his connections he tried to get a special permit for sheep hunting. The Biological Survey helped the territory to manage Alaska game, so Beach approached its chief, Dr. E.W. Nelson. Beach started with a statement to him by Alaska Governor Riggs that he saw no reason why Beach couldn't get a special permit for hunting in the park. Beach then urged Nelson to intervene with the Park Service in his behalf. Nelson refused.

In a letter to Charles Sheldon, Nelson recounted this episode and said that he had written to Karstens to the effect that such special permits for famous people would wreck the park and enrage Alaskans. He went on to say that Karstens' careful enforcement of the park hunting ban would be for nought if any exceptions were allowed. He urged Sheldon to help him head Beach off from further pleas to the Interior Secretary by alerting Mather and Albright. [61]

In the upshot Beach did secretly shoot a sheep near his camp at Igloo Creek. On his return to New York he sent a new Mauser rifle to Karstens as a token of appreciation for courtesies extended. Shortly thereafter Beach attended a society dinner and told the gentlemen next to him that he had killed a sheep in Mount McKinley National Park. The man happened to the assistant field director for the National Park Service.

The Service then moved against Beach, obtaining a signed statement from him acknowledging the illegal kill. When informed of this by the Service, Karstens returned the rifle, which he never had a chance to fire.

Beach had also sent a Mauser to an Alaska Game Warden who had seen the sheep at the Igloo Camp when passing through. The warden kept quiet about the incident, but later admitted to Karstens that perhaps he had seen a sheep head at the camp. Beach was prosecuted before the U.S. District Attorney in Fairbanks in September 1923. He finally pled guilty, after citing a hungry camp as his excuse. He paid a $10 fine and court costs, assessed by a sympathetic U.S. Commissioner. But as Karstens remarked, any conviction for illegal hunting in Alaska was "quite a feat."

The positive results of this unsavory affair were public statements and articles supporting McKinley as a wildlife sanctuary from the new governor, Scott Bone, and Delegate to Congress Dan Sutherland. [62]

Some "just plain folks" came into the park in those early days. One woman who had seen the mountain many times from a distance wrote an account of her 1927 back-pack trip, a few lines of which follow:

But it is only after one has seen Mt. McKinley from the nearer reaches and in such evident cool superiority to its rugged surroundings that he can realize its true fitness as the nucleus for one of the greatest and most attractively wild of all the national parks.

We had drunk some husky tea at noon in rusty tin cans at the desolate Road Commission tent above timber line on Stony Creek and were resting for a few minutes before the ascent into Thoroughfare Pass. Here, deep within the Park (we had traveled forty-one miles, always in the general direction of McKinley, with packs on our backs since we left the comfortable tent camp of the transportation company at Savage River) we felt that the mountain must be very near and knew that it might reveal itself suddenly over some hill like a sheep or a caribou which would appear from time to time along the trail without warning of its proximity.

Quaffing a last can of ice-cold water from the rill near by and piling enough small twisted brush sticks beside the Yukon stove to answer the trail requirement, even whittling some shavings from a gnarled willow stump, we lifted packs on sore shoulders and began to follow the faintly outlined trail which we could see at intervals for several hundred feet up the steep slope. Stopping for a moment in the steepest part of the ascent, we looked back at the landmarks of the trail behind us . . . .

The sky was clear except for a few fluffy clouds floating in the direction of the range. Perhaps we would not see McKinley at all that day. But after a few more labored steps we reached the summit of the pass, and peeking out from the side of the hill on the left was what at first looked like a white cloud, the rugged top of the mountain. The clear outline of the two peaks, the sharpness of ridges on its surface, the unmarred purity of whiteness on perpendicular walls, the wind swept smoothness of depressions all gave the impression of exultant height and aloofness.

This was my first near view of Mount McKinley, the white wonder of the range, the top of the continent. I was destined to see it much nearer in the days that followed and from several different angles, but never was it more impressive than when framed on the left by Copper Mountain and on the right by the hills flanking Thoroughfare Pass. [63]