Uninhabited and free from work: an environmental and federal land-use policy history of Glacial Lake Atna wilderness, Alaska Item Type Thesis Authors McLaughlin, Marley M. Download date 04/10/2021 09:15:29 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/11122/11283 UNINHABITED AND FREE FROM WORK: AN ENVIRONMENTAL AND FEDERAL LAND-USE POLICY HISTORY OF GLACIAL LAKE ATNA WILDERNESS, ALASKA By Marley M. McLaughlin, B.A. A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Arctic and Northern Studies University of Alaska Fairbanks May 2020 © Marley M. McLaughlin APPROVED: Ross Coen, M.A., Committee Co-Chair Chanda Meek, Ph.D., Committee Co-Chair Mary F. Ehrlander, Ph.D., Committee Member Brandon M. Boylan, Ph.D., Co-Director Arctic and Northern Studies Program Mary F. Ehrlander, Ph.D., Co-Director Arctic and Northern Studies Program Todd Sherman, M.F.A., Dean College of Liberal Arts Michael Castellini, Ph.D., Dean of the Graduate School Abstract The Glacial Lake Atna area, a valley between the southern Alaska and Wrangell mountain ranges in Southcentral Alaska, despite its appearance today as remote, thickly forested, and seemingly “wild” in character, has a 10,000-year history of human habitation. The first peoples in Alaska made encampments and harvested subsistence resources on the shores of the glacial lake and its margins, while today residents and visitors to the region continue to inhabit, hunt, fish, gather berries, cut firewood, and generally subsist from the land in ways remarkably similar to their prehistoric forebears. Humans and nature have a long, shared history in the thirteen million-acre Glacial Lake Atna region, and yet, since the mid-1980s, amid the modern- day conservation movement to protect so-called wild places, the region has been bordered and patrolled in ways that separate humans from nature. Wilderness policies under the National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management suggest that wilderness areas are inherently pristine, devoid of human inhabitation, and without the imprint of human work. Alaska lands acts, most specifically the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, while allowing for subsistence, did not adequately address work and inhabitation. This thesis questions such policies and, through archaeological, historical, and policy analyses of humans and nature in the region, argues wilderness has never been truly uninhabited and free from work. The idea of “wilderness” lacks introspection as these areas contain quite a lot of human history, and indeed wilderness is a construct of romanticism and post-frontier ideologies. i ii Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................................ i Table of Contents .......................................................................................................................... iii List of Figures ................................................................................................................................. v Acknowledgements.......................................................................................................................vii Introduction..................................................................................................................................... 1 Research Questions .................................................................................................................... 6 Literature Review....................................................................................................................... 7 Methodology ............................................................................................................................ 16 1. Uninhabited Wilderness and the Prehistoric Period ............................................................... 19 1.1. Geology............................................................................................................................. 19 1.2. Archaeology ...................................................................................................................... 25 1.3. The First Peoples and Work.............................................................................................. 32 1.4. Conclusions....................................................................................................................... 44 2. Work and Wilderness and the Frontier Period........................................................................ 47 2.1. The Idea of Wilderness ..................................................................................................... 47 2.2. Alaskan Exploration and Work......................................................................................... 49 2.3. The Last Frontier............................................................................................................... 56 2.4. Early Conservation Efforts ............................................................................................... 65 2.5 Conclusions........................................................................................................................ 74 3. The Federal Lands Period ....................................................................................................... 77 3.1. The Campaign for Wilderness .......................................................................................... 77 3.2. Drawing Boundaries ......................................................................................................... 91 3.3. ANILCA Title VIII and Work .......................................................................................... 99 iii 3.4. Wilderness Access .......................................................................................................... 102 3.5. Conclusions..................................................................................................................... 111 Conclusions................................................................................................................................. 115 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 121 iv List of Figures Figure 1.1 “Ancient Lake Atna” Map........................................................................................... 23 Figure 1.2 Ahtna Hunting Camp...................................................................................................43 Figure 3.1 Topographic Area Map................................................................................................78 Figure 3.2 Administered Land Status Map ................................................................................... 80 Figure 3.3 Wilderness Preservation Systems Boundary and Federal Subsistence Areas Map... 103 v vi Acknowledgements I would like to expresses my deepest thanks to my committee co-chair, Professor Ross Coen, who guided my graduate work in more ways than one: as a professor who taught me much about the substance, breadth, and adventure of environmental history and the history of the American West, as an advisor over my time as a graduate teaching assistant (during which my many hours at a microfilm reader proved valuable), and as my committee chair providing guidance during my comprehensive examinations in the Arctic and Northern Studies Program. My many thanks to Dr. Mary Ehrlander, who offered her enthusiastic support from my first conversation with her expressing my interest in auditing a class at UAF in 2016 and who's guidance has since has not wavered. Thank you, Dr. Chanda Meek, for all your time, considerable effort, and dynamic conservation regarding environmental policy and subsistence measures in Alaska. I would also like to thank the experts who willingly gave comments on my literature review processes and education including Dr. Mark Feige, Wallace Stegner Chair in Western American Studies at Montana State University. Many thanks to my supervisor, mentor, and friend at the Bureau of Land Management in Glennallen, Archaeologist John Jangala who provided both professional and academic guidance. Thank you for your considerable help with my research regarding Glacial Lake Atna. Finally, many thanks to Archaeologist Caroline Ketron without who this thesis would never have been completed. In the middle of south-central Alaska in the middle of winter, her little cabin wifi connection was always open. vii viii Introduction This paper explores the history of one wilderness, legally designated, but also straightforwardly so: thickly forested, vast, and inhospitable, of topographic prominence and of geographic isolation. The central character in the following chapters is not a single person, nor peoples, nor is it a government, an idea, or a political process (although these things contribute to the history). Instead, this paper focuses on the Glacial Lake Atna valley, a wilderness of the northern boreal forest which is situated in between Alaska's interior Wrangell Mountains and the high mountain passes near Landmark Gap in the Alaska Range. Here, a proglacial lake formed over fifty-eight thousand years ago and while the lake has long since drained, it defined the hydrology and geomorphology of the valley for millennia. It is an area the size of Lake Ontario, perhaps larger during glacial maxima. Today, the area maps as a wide, beautiful, yet little-heard