Denali Historic Resource Study

As World War II wound down, plans and promotions for Alaska's postwar development wound up. Completion of the Alcan Highway during the war—with roadside recreation plans already drafted by U.S. and Canadian park services—called for beefing up Alaska's inadequate internal road system to meet the expected flood of auto tourists from the States. Tourism—seen as Alaska's long-term steady industry, the counter to extractive industry boom and bust cycles—called for new recreation and camping sites, and full development of existing National Parks and Monuments in Alaska.

Mixed in with the large doses of profit motive in these schemes were altruistic and common-welfare concerns. The Nation had gotten used to public-works projects during the Depression. Now, with 16 million servicemen and women about to be demobilized into the job market, which would be further flooded by war workers displaced during the transition to peacetime production, public works would again come to the fore. Both public and private interests scrambled to get plans and drawings prepared so they could be first in line when projects were passed out. [100]

The NPS submitted initial-development plans for Glacier Bay and Katmai National Monuments and looked to McKinley as the flagship of its Alaska parklands. The park hotel would be expanded and the long-sought Wonder Lake Lodge would be built by the Alaska Railroad, based on plans and specifications provided by the NPS. [101]

As it turned out neither the Alaska Railroad nor the NPS could come up with funds for these developments, though budget requests were sent to Congress each year. Without specific appropriations from Congress, the Service was helpless to proceed. When Governor Gruening said sacrifice something else and give Alaska a break, Director Drury was forced to respond that the patched and tattered prewar facilities in stateside parks—by now flooded with real, rather than Alaska's potential, visitors—demanded every dime of the minuscule NPS construction funds. Despite these stresses, Gruening and Drury maintained close contact and collaborated in efforts to get NPS funds for Alaska.

These efforts proved futile. The NPS reality in Alaska, to 1950, was no progress: Glacier Bay and Katmai remained unmanned and undeveloped; McKinley limped along at a custodial-maintenance pace. The park's biggest problem in the immediate postwar years was the deteriorated park road. Lacking basic maintenance during the war years it had suffered from both the elements—especially spring thaws and eroding runoffs—and the heavy traffic of the Army recreation camp. To this fundamental necessity the park devoted nearly all of the minimal funds left over from operations, salaries, and headquarters upkeep. [102]

Then came the Korean Conflict. Interior Secretary Oscar Chapman clamped the lid on Alaska park developments—in an August 1950 response to another Governor Gruening plea—with these words: "In calling for a review of our programs, the President has directed that all civil public work projects be screened with the objective of deferring projects which do not directly contribute to national defense . . . ." [103] At the same time, internal budget documents froze NPS expenditures to a level that allowed only minimal operations and maintenance—no new construction. [104]

As earlier noted, Governor Gruening, ceaselessly laboring for Alaska's development and settlement, and—by virtue of the financial and political power these would bring—its statehood, became ever more cynical of Washington's statements of good intentions. Granted that the Korean Conflict had snarled progress in the parks, why was the chief safety engineer of the National Park Service coming to Alaska? Gruening directed his latest salvo at Joseph T. Flakne of Interior's Office of Territories. What were the functions of a chief safety engineer, the governor asked, and was he bringing money for park improvements? [105] The sympathetic Flakne responded that his office lacked the research capabilities to determine the duties of such an officer, but wryly assured the governor that doubtless his mission would "help save the Alaskans." Moreover, had the governor changed his stripes; was he not in favor of tourism, even at the taxpayers' expense? Getting serious, Flakne joined the governor in wanting more action and fewer survey-and-report junkets. [106]

These letters got circulated in the department and prompted a memorandum from the NPS director to the secretary's office. The director cited the Service's good-faith intentions in Alaska and its repeated frustration at the hands of Congress. The Service had coordinated the U.S. phase of the Alcan Highway recreation studies. Since the war it had annually proposed multimillion dollar development programs for Alaska parklands, only to have them killed in Congress, then deferred by the Korean affair. At present (1951) the Service was conducting the Alaska Recreation Survey under the direction of NPS planner George Collins—a direct response to the governor's plugging of tourism as Alaska's long-term salvation. The criticized "junkets" by NPS scientists and planners gave on-site substance to NPS requests for programs and money aimed at developing Alaska's tourism business. The funds spent for such necessary field work did not come from construction accounts (so shrunken as to be useless anyway) and could not have been used for construction in any event. Such studies and reports gave the Service its only means to focus Congressional attention on Alaska's needs. [107]

Mount McKinley National Park, 1953. NPS, in DENA archives.

With accession of Conrad L. Wirth to the NPS directorship, Governor Gruening turned a new leaf in his campaign to get McKinley Park caught up with the expectations and demands long placed upon it by Alaskans and the tourism industry. His correspondence with Wirth is quoted and paraphrased below, for it sets the scene for the policy disputes that have racked the park's recent history. First, Gruening's opening letter:

As you know for many years there has been almost no new construction in Alaska's National Parks and Monuments. Within a year or two the highway connecting the continental highway system with Mt. McKinley Park will be completed and we can certainly expect a tremendous influx of automobiles bearing tourists. It seems to me essential that we make some plans to meet this situation.

At present there is only one stretch of road extending from the entrance of the Park to Wonder Lake, approximately ninety miles. The most important project, it seems to me, in the Park would be to start building a road from somewhere near the western terminus of this highway toward Mt. McKinley. It is a project that has been long urged by so enthusiastic an Alaskan rooter and mountaineer as Bradford Washburn. Certainly a beginning should be made of this road in the coming budget. It would involve a trestle bridge across the McKinley River, and beyond that point the road could be extended for the time being at a reasonably low standard and at a reasonable cost. It would open up, for the tourists and others, a region of incomparable interest and beauty, dotted by many small ponds and a great abundance of game. It would heighten the recreational value of the Park.

Please recall that no new mileage has been built in the Park for at least fifteen years. I strongly urge that the Park Service make every effort to get some sort of appropriation for this project for fiscal year 1954. I am confident that the Alaska Road Commission will get the greatest value for the money appropriated for that purpose. If this is not begun now we shall lose much of the benefit of the road which will connect the entire continental highway system to the Park. Could you not find it possible to squeeze out $150,000, or at least $100,000, for this very desirable undertaking? [108]

In his response Wirth acknowledged the coming influence of the Denali Highway. This 170-mile-long graveled road—coming west from Paxson on the Richardson Highway to Cantwell and McKinley—would open in 1957. It gave private motorists their first direct access to McKinley Park. Because of the length and primitive condition of this road it produced more a flow than a flood of auto traffic at the park. Thus it was a relatively gentle prelude—both in numbers and modified park operations—to the exponential onslaught that came in 1972 with the paved Parks Highway between Anchorage and Fairbanks. But the Denali Highway served as an omen of what was to come. So this Gruening-Wirth correspondence of 1951 previews the modern condition.

After agreeing with Gruening that the park must prepare for motoring tourists, Wirth stated that improvement of the existing park road must take precedence over any new mileage. The temporary bridges inherited from ARC-construction days had to be replaced with permanent structures or the park road itself would have to be closed. Instead of a new road to the base of the mountain—with an expensive 600-to-800-foot-long bridge across McKinley River—Wirth advocated a trail from Wonder Lake to McGonagall Pass, a project already on the park's list. This trail would complement the proposed Wonder Lake Lodge development. [109]

Gruening replied in haste, citing Henry David Thoreau's injunction to "aim high":

I insist that the Park Service should be out fighting for something more all the time. It should not be content merely to maintain or "improve" the negligible facilities it has long had. . . . I regret to see from your letter that the situation under your leadership, which I for one and many others hoped would presage a change in attitude, appears not to be altered. . . . I think it is not too late for you to raise your sights. [110]

Wirth, too, responded with alacrity. He forwarded his 1954 budget estimates, which contained nearly $1.5 million for roads and trails in Glacier Bay and Mount McKinley, and more than $700,000 for other physical improvements. [111] These amounts were chopped by the Bureau of the Budget, and further pared by Congress. [112] So grim reality set in again. Incremental replacement of park-road bridges—a matter of life and safety—continued to define new construction work at the park.

Despite these delays and deferrals, here was beginning to play out the scenario foreseen by Tom Vint in 1929. McKinley Park, "the big note in Alaska," could not escape the spotlight. From here on out, to the present day, the themes defined in the Gruening Wirth correspondence would frame the political and policy debates over the park's future.

In the frustrated atmosphere of 1951—with the insulations of distance, deficient transportation, and chronic lack of funds still in force—neither man saw any threat to the park's basic integrity. Both men did see the park's inevitable linkage to the continental highway system as a turning point in the park's history and as a rationale for its further development. But only the passage of years could reveal the full implications of that linkage—which would break the park's protective isolation and, with gathering momentum, indeed threaten its integrity.

Within a decade a countering force would begin to gather. Both locally and nationally the conservation community began defining a question of a different order: Did the intrinsic values of the park command its fate, as mandated by Congress, or was the park to be sacrificed to the demands of private motorists and the tourism industry which viewed the park as its central economic asset in Alaska?

The Service's MISSION 66 program to upgrade park facilities across the land brought the first phase of McKinley Park's preservation versus development debate to a head. This program—laudable and undeniably necessary in its broad objectives—produced many conflicts over specific projects in the National Parks. During the 25 years of Depression and wars since 1930, park construction had been limited to bare, rustic necessities. During this period the concept of wilderness preservation had gained force and public recognition through the efforts of such national organizations as the Wilderness Society, the Sierra Club, the National Parks Association and, locally, the Alaska Conservation Society. Their select and politically potent members had become used to the parks in their rustic and relatively undeveloped condition. The paucity of development funds had coincided with the evolution of a wilderness preservation movement.

In 1948, NPS Director Newton B. Drury—himself a California preservation leader before coming to the Park Service—applied the wilderness idea to the great parklands of America and the world:

Phrases like "nature protection," "recreation," "wilderness values," "the unity of nature," "sanctuaries for native animals and plants," imply the recognition, by those concerned with the good earth and the fullness thereof, of the fact that land is used to minister not only to man's physical well-being, but also to his mind and spirit—that man "does not live by bread alone"; that some lands, in the Americas and throughout the world, should be preserved for what they are, as well as for what they will produce; preserved with all their wealth of flora and fauna and geological formations, with all their beauty and wonder and significance, in the perfection that nature gave them, unchanged by man. [113]

Drury introduced the new wave within the Service. He was the first director not of the Mather generation of parkmen—and the first one to face the qualitatively different world of the postwar era with its infinite demands upon the National Park System driven by popular possession of the automobile. Drury's second successor, Conrad L. Wirth—creator of the MISSION 66 program—came from the old school, whose Mather-Albright philosophy emphasized more the "pleasuring ground" concept embedded in the original Yellowstone legislation than the fragile-wilderness one now emerging. As translated into criteria for park development, these different emphases were perceptible enough to cause tensions both within the Service and in the larger world.

The park and surrounding area, 1957. H.M. Goushá, Co. "Chevron Road Map of Southern Alaska".

As applied to McKinley Park, beginning in the late Fifties, the MISSION 66 program resulted in three major categories of construction: the interpretive center at the site of the phased-out Camp Bielson; campground and headquarters-area improvements—including some employee quarters to replace the deteriorated health hazards that park people had been living in; and, most important, upgrading of the park road to meet the increase in auto traffic and assure visitor safety. It was the road project that ignited controversy.

In the midst of this controversy, in 1963, the NPS chief of design and construction, Clark Stratton, issued a "party line" memorandum to guide park people in their responses to the mounting criticism of road reconstruction. In summary the road improvements would produce "telescoping standards" as follows:

1. The first 30 miles would have a 20-foot paved driving surface with 3-foot shoulders.

2. The middle section, about 40 miles in length, would have a 20-foot driving surface with minimal shoulders, oiled and possibly paved later.

3. The last 18-mile-long section from Eielson to Wonder Lake would remain a primitive gravel road with sufficient base to support the thinned out traffic at that end.

Whenever possible, the reconstructed road would follow the original alignment. [114]

Stratton's memorandum responded generally to the mounting criticism over the road and other MISSION 66 projects, and specifically to publication of an article by Olaus Murie, now president of the Wilderness Society. Murie had long believed that the machine was ruling our civilization, that science and society had become victims of the technologists. [115] He remembered the pristine days when he had studied Denali's caribou, when—by dog-team and shank's mare—he had wandered through a land entirely natural. For him, the road as built in the early years had already crossed the threshold of the acceptable. It allowed the sanctuary to be invaded by noisy machines. To compound this desecration by "improving" the road would give free rein to speed and numbers, with attendant scarification of the landscape and destruction of the silence that once had been punctuated only by distant calls of wild creatures and rustling winds. [116]

McKinley Park station, 1963. Alaska Railroad Collection, AMHA.

The National Parks Magazine became the forum for a running symposium on MISSION 66 projects at McKinley Park. In a May 1963 article, the authors traced the planning history of the park and the mounting pressures for its development. They implied that the NPS response to the opening of the Denali Highway in 1957, and its MISSION 66 preparations for the opening of the Parks Highway—already in 1963 in the initial construction phase—smacked of a simple numbers game: expand park facilities to meet whatever visitor numbers the statisticians estimate. Campgrounds and cabins at Wonder Lake; expansion of the hotel at McKinley Station; the trail to McGonagall Pass with its McKinley River bridge and shelter cabins in the hills—and above all the straightened park-road speedway now abuilding—seemed to be exercises in quantification without philosophy or thought of the park's deeper purposes. The road reconstruction would take $14 million of a total $20 million park-construction budget over the period 1957-73. Thus the road became the focus of the preservationists' attention. It was the umbilical that would feed all other growth. If the road-improvement program could be stopped, much of the other in-park development would remain on the drawing boards, and needed facilities—responding to real visitors, not anticipating them—could be developed outside the park. [117]

In the introduction to a September 1963 symposium of preservationists' views, the editors of National Parks Magazine called for reassurance from the Park Service that it ". . . is not selling its soul to the public demand for easy comfort and amusement." They called for high aesthetic standards at McKinley, where uplifting education and the continuing right of people to participate in the park's natural wonders should define management objectives—which must match in taste and judgment the park's scenic beauty and natural harmony. [118]

One biologist in this symposium, after urging the park's expansion based on scientific determination of wildlife ranges, advocated screening by naturalists of all development projects to control their ecological impacts. The engineering mentality should not prevail. He concluded:

The really important thing to keep foremost in consideration of developmental activities in Mount McKinley National Park is that the plant and animal communities are exceedingly delicate and that traditional temperate-zone construction and management techniques are frequently not applicable. If those who administer this park can acquire an appreciation of the delicacy of these plant and animal communities then most of the problems will not occur. [119]

These thoughts echoed an earlier critique of McKinley's MISSION 66 program by Adolph Murie. His 14-page analysis covered every facet of the development schedule, judging them all against the values that Murie believed should guide planning at the park:

It is difficult to properly express the human values in McKinley Park. But we can say that in McKinley we have the highest, most majestic, and impressive mountain in North America. There are other snowclad mountains in the Park, and many extensive but lesser spur ranges, any one of which can vie with the Tetons or similar spectacular ranges elsewhere. The charming sheep ridges, the myriads of tundra ponds, the glacial streams and river bars, the immense glaciers, make this northern area a veritable fairy land. And in this varied scenery is a flora and fauna characteristic of the north.

It would perhaps not tax our ingenuity to save the above physical features. However, in all of them there is a wilderness spirit that concerns us. I am sure that many of those who are planning recognize that our big task is to preserve this wilderness spirit. But there will be wide difference in planning nevertheless. Some will seek ends that are destructive to the wilderness feeling, believing that their ends justify the additional intrusion. Some will think that the highway should be intensively labeled like a museum, even though each label will detract from the wilderness. Some will want to bring accommodations into the midst of the scenery, instead of a simple and delicate approach from the edge of things. Some will want to have structures on a prominence, rather than tucked away unobtrusively.

These differences will have to be worked out in discussions. I recognize that my point of view will stress intruding and injuring the spirit of wilderness as little as possible, with sometimes a little inconvenience resulting. I would rather err in that direction. But I hasten to add that I am not alone in this point of view.

I am stating my opinions with, I hope, proper humility, but forthright, and in an effort to get the best possible planning. For fear of being considered too captious in this report, I wish to point out that the wilderness standards in McKinley must be maintained on a higher level than anything we have attempted in the States. Because McKinley is a wilderness within a vast northern wilderness, the ill effect of any intrusion will here be proportionately greater; and any "dressing up" will be more incongruous, will clash more with the wilderness spirit, than would be true in any of our areas in the States. And since wilderness is recognized as one of the foremost values in the Park, it must be given special consideration in order to maintain its purity. Fortunately the visitation is far below what outside parks are subjected to, hence we are able to strive for and maintain a high standard of quality in Denali. I would urge all planners to strive for quality in this Alaska wilderness. The people expect it. [120]

Following this lead, Adolph Murie called for minimalist intrusion on all counts. The road should remain primitive, a wilderness adventure in its own right for those visitors bound to their cars; only tucked-away campgrounds in the park—no lodges or cabins; Charles Sheldon's Toklat cabin should not be preserved (to do so would violate Charles Sheldon's own love of the pristine); airplane touring, with its uniquely intrusive and noisy probing into the wild corners reached only with difficulty by trekkers, should be banned; and the park should be expanded north of Wonder Lake, both to provide protected range for wildlife and to prevent helter-skelter private development in the critical Kantishna sector.

Adolph Murie's park expansion proposal, 1965. File L1417 (Boundary Adjustments, MOMC, 1965-66), ARO.

Another noted conservationist, Sigurd F. Olson, later wrote to Murie saying that he agreed on almost everything in Murie's MISSION 66 critique. He was disappointed in the architectural esthetics of the new Eielson Visitor Center and commented generally on in-park developments:

The reason McKinley is such a wonderful game sanctuary is because there are no interior developments beyond those at Denali and Headquarters. Start developing elsewhere and the charm and wildness will be gone.

Here then is a great opportunity to do the very thing that should have been done in other parks, keeping all developments outside. That is the ultimate goal of the park service, something that will take a long time to realize in the parks that have been built up, but in McKinley this is paramount and if there must be new developments they should stay outside the park boundaries. [121]

For a few more years the Service's official position continued to stress the park-road improvements as a necessity, based on increasing private-car access and visitor safety. But by 1966 road reconstruction had been effectively halted. Widening and paving had been completed to Savage River, and widening with gravel surface had reached Teklanika, 30 miles into the park. Beyond that point, bridge replacement and maintenance-level upgrading would prevail. [122]

In a February 1972 letter to Alaska Congressman Nick Begich, NPS Assistant Director Lawrence Hadley stated the Service's evolved policy on the park road:

As you are aware, the new State Highway 3 [Parks Highway] will provide much greater access to Mount McKinley than has been the case in the past. In order to properly plan for this increase in travel and to fulfill our responsibilities for the management of the national park, it has been necessary for us to concern ourselves with the proper management technique involving the 87-mile-long park road. As you know, the road is narrow and winding for the last 57 miles. The first 30 miles to the Teklanika River were realigned and constructed to two-lane road standards during the decade of the 1960's. Fourteen miles of the road from the McKinley Park Hotel to the Savage River were paved a few years ago.

Further improvement of the road has been somewhat controversial, because of the nature of the resources of the park, the appeal of the old road, the abundance of wildlife, the generally high-quality experience received by visitors, and the potential intrusion on the aesthetic and primitive scene likely to result from further road reconstruction.

Planning for visitor use in a national park always constitutes consideration of balance between the manner and means of use and enjoyment and conserving the resources unimpaired for future generations. Mount McKinley National Park was established to preserve an outstanding display of wildlife in a setting of scenic and geologic splendor, including the highest mountain in North America.

The maintaining of opportunities for the viewing of wildlife in its natural setting appears to be paramount if a visit to the park is to retain its high quality. There are doubts that this can be done if the remainder of the road is improved and unlimited automobile use permitted in the future.

Unlimited automobile use cannot be permitted without road improvement, because of safety involving the narrowness of the road, sharp curves, rough or slippery surface, and frequent clouds of dust.

The suggestion has been made that a flexible, free public transportation system be implemented to provide for the various types of park users. Such a system would mean that persons arriving in their automobiles or recreation vehicles would camp or stay in public accommodations at or near the east side of the park. Private vehicles would be parked at this end of the park while their owners were conveyed by public vehicles to various destinations in the park for day trips, or to get to the small existing campgrounds with tent camping equipment, if desired. Variations on this theme are being studied.

Development of such a system would have several advantages:

1. Road improvement would be minimal and less expensive with no additional scarring of the natural scene.

2. Disturbance of wildlife will be lessened, and good opportunities for viewing wildlife maintained.

3. Opportunities for development of campgrounds and other accommodations by private individuals outside but near the park would be stimulated.

4. Traffic congestion on the road would generally be reduced.

5. A visit to the park would be something out of the ordinary, and a quality experience more likely maintained.

Our planning, however, does not envision the restricting of reasonable access to privately owned facilities.

Hadley went on to say that the Service had "finally learned" from experience in Lower 48 parks that "the solution is not to provide more and more roads for more and more automobiles." The first step to ease pressure on the park's sensitive interior would be the bus transportation system on the park road. The second step would be the proposed southerly expansion that would join McKinley Park with the new Denali State Park. In this area, where the two parks flanked the route of the new State Highway, both public and private developments could accommodate the exploding recreation demands in the Denali region. Thus, McKinley Park would be able to zone and manage for both recreation development and wilderness. Heretofore, the single-option park—that option defined by the park road—had been unable to balance its two obligations to the public: preservation and use. With controlled access and no further development in the wilderness interior, and cooperative development and management for expanded recreation uses along the Parks Highway, appropriate balances in both zones could be achieved. [123]

By the 1930s, the concessioner was relying on large tour busess.

This statement of policy, the upshot of years of controversy and in-Service soul searching, effectively set the planning and management framework for the park through the 1978-80 expansion and into the present. It established the principle of a bus transportation system to limit road traffic, with the objective of maintaining the viewability of wildlife for park visitors. The inauguration of this bus system in 1972 was a critical turning point that established the operational precedent of finite limits, most recently reaffirmed in the park's 1986 General Management Plan (which significantly strengthened restrictions on buses and cars). On a broader front, the Hadley policy statement recognized the "two-park" concept of the undeveloped interior wildlife wilderness preserve and the southside scenic borderland where more conventional park development and recreation activity could occur. Until that dual-park concept achieves reality—at this writing the southside project is still blocked by funding and planning delays—the preservation-development politics of the park will continue to focus on its single option, the park road, and threaten its integrity.