Brooks Camp Cultural Site

This reconstruction is built in the footprint of an actual house excavated in the 1960s.

Photo courtesy L. Law

Quick Facts

Location:

Katmai National Park and Preserve

Amenities

1 listed

Historical/Interpretive Information/Exhibits

The Cultural Site exhibit, a reconstructed prehistoric house with interpretive displays, is a short walk from the Brooks Camp visitor center. The current structure is built in the footprint of an actual prehistoric house excavated in the 1960s. 

In order to better understand what life was like for people of the past, in 1968 Dr. Dumond led a team of archaeologists tasked with reconstructing an ancient home from one of the 700-year-old housing sites near Brooks River. Their excavations revealed that dwellings from this time period had some unique characteristics: these homes were semi-subterranean, meaning they were built partially underground, and most had an entrance passage with a floor that dipped below the level of the main house, forming a “cold trap.” This allowed the house to more easily retain the warmth of a fire inside. The presence of the cold trap entrance suggests that these homes were used in the winter, as they would have flooded during spring thaws and the rain-heavy months of July and August.

These semi-subterranean homes were called ciqlluat by the Alutiiq people, or barabaras by the Russians. They were likely built out of cottonwood, because spruce trees didn’t grow in the area at the time. Cottonwood logs also split straighter than spruce, and oral histories from descendants of Katmai’s first peoples report that cottonwood would have been the preferred building material among the local trees. Cottonwood logs were split in half, and then placed over a wooden frame to create the domed walls and ceiling of the home. On top of this, people used sod and sphagnum moss to insulate and protect their homes in the winter. The reconstructed home at Brooks Camp has been left partially open so the inside can be viewed more easily.

What happened to the people who lived here?

Alutiiq people lived around Brooks River until the early 1800s. By this point, Russian fur hunters had been in the Aleutian Islands for nearly 60 years, and their influence was beginning to be felt by people living in the upper Alaska Peninsula. Local Native villages began to see the signs of new trading posts, imported diseases, Russian Orthodoxy, and other effects of Russian contact. In addition, Yup’ik communities from the north were moving southward into the upper Alaska Peninsula, possibly causing some social conflict. The last villages along Brooks River were abandoned around 1300 AD, possibly from a nearby volcanic eruption. By the time Novarupta erupted in 1912, there were no more inhabited sites along Brooks River.

Although few people have lived in what is now Katmai National Park over the last two centuries, the Alutiiq descendants of Katmai’s first peoples live on today in the local area outside the park and more broadly across the state. Oral histories, cultural practices, materials, and traditions help connect today’s Indigenous people to their ancestors, and help all of us better understand the human stories of this region, past and present.