THE EASTERN PORTION of MOUNT Mckinley NATIONAL PARK By
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THE EASTERN PORTION OF MOUNT McKINLEY NATIONAL PARK By STEPHEN R. CAPPS ABSTRACT The eastern portion of Mount McKinley National Park includes areas that have been studied by a number of geologists during the last 30 years, and several reports on portions of it have already been published. The heretofore unpublished results of two seasons of field work by S. R. Capps, together with all other available information, are here compiled into a single report covering that portion of the park that lies east of Muldrow Glacier. Geologic forma tions ranging in age from pre-Cambrian to Recent and including Paleozoic, Mesozoic, Tertiary, and Quaternary deposits are described, and their character, thickness, age, and stratigraphic and structural relations are discussed. The eastern portion of Mount McKinley Park is not generally well mineral ized, only a small amount of placer gold has been recovered from it, and metallic lodes of promise have been found at only a few localities. Those of the Mount Eielson district are described by Moffit in an accompanying paper. In the basin of the West Fork of the Chulitua River lodes containing gold, copper, antimony, and arsenic have been prospected from time to time, but most of them have now been abandoned. A few groups of claims on gold lodes are still held and show promise of eventual development. Lignite or subbituminous coal occurs at many localities but is at present of value only for local uses. INTRODUCTION The region here considered includes the portion of Mount Mc Kinley National Park that lies east of meridian 151° 30' and a nar row belt of country contiguous to the park boundary. It extends from longitude 147° 30' to 151° 30' west and from latitude 62° 59' to 64° 14' north, although certain portions along the borders of the area so defined have not yet been mapped or are not included in the present report. (See fig. 6.) This portion of Mount McKinley National Park is now (1931) rapidly becoming accessible to visitors as the result of road construction and is approached at its eastern edge by way of the Alaska Railroad, built a,nd operated by the Federal Government. The park here covers a complete section' across the Alaska Range and offers a great variety of scenery, from the rugged, snow-capped mountains and glacier-filled valleys of 219 220 MINERAL BESOtmOES OF ALASKA, 1930 the main divide to the open valleys and gentler slopes of the foothill ranges, with their great herds of mountain sheep and caribou. Constantly increasing numbers of visitors are each year coming to this northernmost of our national playgrounds, and it is believed that an understanding of the salient features of its geology will add to the appreciation and enjoyment of its remarkable scenery. PREVIOUS SURVEYS So far as is known, no white man had penetrated to this rather inaccessible portion of Alaska up to the end of the Russian occupa- PIGURE 6. Index map showing location of the eastern portion of Mount McKinley National Park tion, in 1867, although Russian trading posts had been established on the lower Kuskokwim and Yukon Rivers and on Cook Inlet. These trading posts controlled the fur trade in the basins of the rivers that drain this part of the Alaska Range, and inasmuch as the interest of the traders was in the fur rather than in the exploration of this remote portion of the Russian Empire, no serious efforts were made by them to explore and map the headward portions of these great river basins. Almost as great apathy prevailed for many years on the part of the United States Government, after the transfer of Alaska from MOUNT McKINLEY NATIONAL PARK 221 Russia. A few hardy pioneers, lured by the search for mineral wealth, came into the Territory from the east about 1872, and in 1878 two of them, Arthur Harper and A. Mayo, ascended the Tan- ana about to the present site of Fairbanks. In 1889 a number of white men made their way from the lower Tanana across to the Kuskokwim, probably by way of the Kantishna River and Lake Minchumina, not far to the northwest of the region here described, but all these earlier explorers of necessity followed those rivers on which they could navigate their small boats and shunned the rapid glacial streams that poured down from the rugged range to the south. They saw the snow-capped peaks of the Alaska Range in the distance, but there is no record that any of them actually set foot upon those mountains. The first general realization that this great northern territory had possibilities of profit for the prospector and pioneer came with the discovery of rich placer gold diggings in the Canadian Klondike in 1897 and 1898 and with the historic stampede of gold seekers to the Yukon that followed. As a consequence of this awakened interest there arose a great demand for authentic information about Alaska, particularly with regard to routes by which the interior could be reached without crossing Canadian territory, as was necessary in following the route to the Klondike. In response to that demand several expeditions were sent out in 1898 by the United States Geological Survey and by the War Department, several of which carried explorations toward this region. Of the Geological Survey parties, G. H. Eldridge 1 and Robert Muldrow ascended the Susitna River by boat and crossed over to the headwaters of the Nenana River, just touching the region here considered along its southeast edge. In 1898 also Sergt. William Yanert, a member of an expedi tion sent out by the War Department in charge of Capt. E. F. Glenn, made a traverse up the Susitna River and into the upper basin of the Nenana River. That same year J. E. Spurr 2 and W. S. Post, of the Geological Survey, ascended the Skwentna River, portaged across to the Kuskokwim Basin, and descended that stream to its mouth. They thus explored a section directly across the Alaska Range, though well south of the Mount McKinley Park region. By these and other expeditions in 1898 and 1899 much knowledge was ac cumulated about the general geography of this part of Alaska, but the entire region here considered remained almost completely un explored. The first accurate survey to be carried to it was made in 1902 by a Geological Survey party that included A. H. Brooks, D. L. Reaburti, and L. M. Prindle. This expedition left Cook Inlet in 1 Eldridge, G. H., A reconnaissance in the Susitna Basin and adjacent territory, Alaska, in 1898: U. S. Geol. Survey Twentieth Ann. Kept., pt. 7, pp. 1-29, 1900. 3 Spurr, J. E., A reconnaissance in southwestern Alaska in 1898: Idem, pp. 31-264. 222 MINERAL RESOURCES OF ALASKA, 1930 early spring with pack horses, ascended the Skwentna and Kichatna Rivers, discovered and crossed Rainy Pass, and thence followed the northwest flank of the Alaska Range to the Nenana River, down which they made their way to the Tanana River and thence to the Yukon. Throughout this journey through previously unexplored country topographic and geologic mapping was carried on con tinuously and a first knowledge was gained about the geography and geology of this great range. Beginning about 1903 and 1904 a large number of prospectors, attracted to the Tanana Valley by the dis covery of rich placer deposits near Fairbanks, began to spread throughout the surrounding territory in the hope of discovering still other rich diggings. In 1905 promising ground was discovered in the Kantishna district independently by two separate parties, and, the news having reached Fairbanks, several thousand persons stam peded to this new camp. It soon became evident that paying ground was confined to a few creeks and that its extent was not large, so most of the stampeders left, but the gold mines of the Kantishna for many years served as the base of supplies for prospecting the coun try to the south and southeast until its geography became fairly well known to a number of these men. In 1906 L. M. Prindle made a hurried trip into the then newly discovered Kantishna placer district and published a brief description of its geology and placer deposits.3 In 1910 topographic and geologic surveys were carried out by J. W. Bagley and S. R. Capps 4 along the north side of the Alaska Range between the Nenana and Delta Rivers, which border the area here discussed to the northeast, and in 1913 F. H. Moffit,5 J. W. Bagley, and J. E. Pogue similarly surveyed an area on the south slope of the range and east of the Nenana River. Between the years 1903 and 1913 a number of expeditions, or ganized to climb Mount McKinley, made more or less successful as saults on that mountain. Most of these have left records in book form,6 but in many ways the most spectacular was that of Thomas Lloyd, William Taylor, Peter Anderson, and Charles McGonogill, Alaskan prospectors and miners, who with little preparation or finan cial backing set out to climb the mountain in February, 1910, and within a few weeks from the conception of their enterprise succeeded in planting a flag pole on the north peak of the mountain. Brief newspaper dispatches, largely discredited at the time, were the only 8 Prindle, L. M., The Bonnifield and Kantishna regions: TJ. S. Geol. Survey Bull. 314, pp. 205-226, 1907. 4 Capps, S. R., The Bonnifield region, Alaska: U. S. Geol. Survey Bull. 501, p. 64, 1912. 6 Moffit, P. H., The Broad Pass region, Alaska: U.