SITKA Administrative History

Chapter 3:
SITKA NATIONAL MONUMENT, EARLY YEARS (continued)

Steese proposes additional resources

At the end of the 1927 season, Steese proposed to Mather that abandoned totem poles at the site of the former Native village of Howkan be relocated to the Sitka National Monument. [174] A Haida community on the northwest coast of Long Island in the Alexander Archipelago, Howkan had gradually lost its population to the village of Kaigani and thence to Hydaburg. Howkan's post office, established in 1882, was transferred to Hydaburg in 1917. [175]

A flurry of correspondence ensued. It involved Steese, Mather, Parks, officials of the Bureau of Education, and the Smithsonian Institution. No government funds were available for a totem pole retrieval project. When an appeal for private funds failed the project was dropped. The exchange of letters, however, revealed that Mather had visited Alaska in 1927. [176] This event was otherwise unrecorded in records relating to Sitka National Monument.

Steese's retirement in 1928 marked the end of aggressive road commission interest in Sitka National Monument. Although his successors dutifully oversaw fulfillment of the "informal agreement" with the National Park Service, their correspondence and annual reports noted few attempts to enhance the monument's resources. Steese had been a fairly steady correspondent of Mather and Cammerer. Maj. Malcom Elliott, the succeeding road commission president, submitted brief annual reports and usually wrote only when additional money was needed for such things as emergency work on the Indian River bank.

New poles proposed for Sitka

The idea of adding resources to the monument came up once more in 1931. C.H. Flory, Alaska Regional Forester for the U.S. Forest Service, suggested retrieving abandoned totem poles from the defunct national monument at Old Kasaan and relocating them to Sitka. [177] This was an old idea, suggested as early as 1914 and considered again throughout the years. Old Kasaan, a former Haida village on Prince of Wales Island, had been abandoned in the 1890s. The village, with its name derived from an Indian word for "pretty town," was noted for its large number of ornate totem poles. [178]

Old Kasaan had been designated a national monument in 1916 after much documentation by the Forest Service and a campaign by the Alaska Cruise Club. Much to everyone's consternation, the designation came after a 1915 fire had destroyed many of the surviving traditional houses and damaged the totem poles at the site. With many of its resources destroyed, the Prince of Wales Island site was never actively managed as a national monument. After Flory took over as District Forester in the South Tongass National Forest in 1919, he recommended moving some of the surviving poles to Sitka National Monument. Flory became Alaska Regional Forester before the executive reorganization of 1933 transferred administration of all national monuments to the National Park Service. In his new capacity, he again proposed relocating the Old Kasaan totems, as well as totems at other abandoned village sites within Tongass National Forest boundaries, to Sitka National Monument. [179]

Flory resubmitted his proposal in 1934. M.L. Merritt of the Forest Service visited with National Park Service officials to follow up. He recommended retrieval of poles from Cat Island, Howkan, Old Kasaan, Klinkwan, Tongass Island, and Tuxekan; also salvage of enough good materials to reconstruct one traditional Native dwelling. [180] Like other such proposals for relocation of abandoned poles to Sitka, however, Flory's died without action.

Merrill plaque proposed

Sitka's citizens raised the idea of adding another resource to the monument in 1933. Elbridge Warren Merrill, the first albeit unofficial custodian of the monument, had become ill with influenza late in 1929. This turned into pneumonia which caused Merrill's death on October 27, 1929. The Sitka post of the American Legion raised money for a commemorative plaque which read:

Elbridge W. Merrill who dedicated his life and artistic attainments towards picturing the scenic beauties surrounding Sitka, Alaska, 1932. [181]

According to Eiler Hansen, who wrote as adjutant of the Sitka post to the National Park Service in 1933, the plaque was to be mounted on a natural granite monolith about 14 feet in height. Hansen asked permission to erect the plaque and its monolith within the monument. [182]

The answer was no. Cammerer replied for Albright: "Mr. Merrill never entered on duty as custodian of the monument . . . I regret that it would be against the policy of the National Park Service to permit its erection within the Sitka National Monument, even had he been officially connected with it." Cammerer asked if the memorial plaque could be placed on the approach to the monument outside it boundaries. It was placed outside the boundaries, where it remained into the 1980s, although it was removed temporarily during visitor center construction in 1964. [183]