SITKA Administrative History

Chapter 4:
SITKA NATIONAL MONUMENT, MIDDLE YEARS (continued)

Miller shapes custodian's duties

As the planning went on, Miller began to establish himself in Sitka and his control over Sitka National Monument. After his first full month, February 1940, on the job, he believed that the monument required an additional staff member who could devote his or her full time to researching totem poles and Alaska history. [206] In March of 1940 he plunged into the complex negotiations for acquisition of private property on the park's boundary and recommended acquisitions near the park entrance. [207] Miller also reported the first of many problems with gravel dredging at the mouth of Indian River. Although Miller felt that he had handled the matter badly because the structures for storing accumulated gravel were on park land, Been advised his superiors that Miller had done all that was possible in the circumstances. [208]

In April of 1940 Miller and Deputy U.S. Marshal Henry Bardht apprehended Sitkans Roy Corp and Eva Meinsenzhal for being drunk and disorderly in the monument. Corp and Meinsenzhal were sentenced to 30 days in jail. [209]

Miller also began delving into the history of the monument's resources. He soon felt expert enough to venture corrections for Merle Colby's A Guide to Alaska--last American frontier. Where Colby reported 16 totem poles, there were actually 189 and none were Tlingit poles. Colby was misinformed regarding the block house replica. It contained no logs from any of the original blockhouses. [210]

The new custodian's first few months at Sitka set the pattern for his administrative activities over the next few years, although his administrative duties decreased rather than increased. Miller was extremely active, documenting his monthly reports with photographs that remain of interest. In addition to pictures of monument resources such as the totem poles, discarded poles, the lyre tree, and newly-constructed toilets, he recorded activities such as a May 1941 Kiksadi picnic held "in honor of descendants of warriors killed in battle of 1802 at Old Sitka," women and children picnicking on the seashore, and sailors looking over the grounds. [211]

The annual report for Sitka National Monument for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1941, recorded that CCC workers had moved several trees from the shoulders of the monument road, erected a large rustic sign at the monument entrance, widened the monument road, and resurveyed the monument boundaries. Other projects had not been started because wages paid at the navy construction site limited CCC enrollees. A minor administrative problem was solved when the Bureau of Public Roads agreed to maintain the road in the monument for about $100 annually. Tourist ships were already down to half the number that had visited Sitka in the previous year, and when the army and navy took over large portions of the monument after Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7, 1941, visitation to the park dropped to nothing. [212]