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Tanana
is accessible by air and river
transportation. It is located about two
miles west of the junction of the Tanana
and Yukon Rivers, 130 air miles west of
Fairbanks. It was a traditional trading
settlement for Koyukon and Tanana
Athabascans long before European contact.
The City of Tanana (population:
approximately 345) was incorporated in
1961. It maintains 32 miles of local
roads, and operates the State-owned Ralph
M. Calhoun Memorial Airport. Cars,
trucks, snowmachines, ATVs and riverboats
are used for local transportation.
It's not easy for visitors to get to know
Tanana. Strangers stand out, the people
of Tanana stick to themselves. A room for
the night is hard to find. The sale of
alcohol is restricted.
No
one knows for sure when humans first
entered interior Alaska, but artifacts
discovered in the Tanana Valley at Dry
Creek and Healy Lake prove that people
have lived there for at least 10,000
years. About 8,000 years ago, early
caribou hunters began regularly visiting
the Tangle Lakes, at the head of the
Gulkana and Delta Rivers. As glacial ice
retreated and more land became available,
some of these proto-Athabaskan people
eventually descended into the Copper
River valley.
While
undoubtedly occupied much earlier,
archaeological evidence only establishes
a continuous human presence in the Copper
Basin for the past 1,000 or so years.
Some believe that the area was originally
settled by the Eyak people who now
inhabit the Copper Delta. Oral history
collected by noted anthropologist
Froelich Rainey in the 1930s suggests
that the Ahtna invaded this territory and
displaced its original occupants. If so,
it was very long ago. By the beginning of
the historic period, the Ahtna controlled
virtually all of the Copper Basin--roughly
23,000 square miles.
Game
in the region was never plentiful enough
to support a very large population; hence
a pattern developed of small villages of
twenty to thirty members of a familial
clan, usually located where a major
tributary entered the Copper River. At
some point, two larger villages developed:
Taral, near the mouth of the Chitina, and
Batzulnetas, at the start of the primary
trade route leading north across the
Alaska Range.
European
exploration of the Copper Basin began in
the early 1780s. During a period of
considerable expansion, Russian promyshlenniki
traveled from their bases on the
Aleutians Islands, Kodiak Island, and the
Kenai Peninsula along the southern coast
of Alaska in search of new sources of fur.
Not
surprisingly, the huge Copper River was
noticed relatively quickly. The first
written record of the drainage appears in
1783, when a small party under the
command of Leontii Nagaev reported seeing
the river's mouth.
The
Russians returned to the area in 1793,
and soon established a trading post on
Hinchinbrook Island, about twenty miles
southwest of the Copper Delta. This base,
known as Nuchek, served as the Russian's
regional headquarters, and it was here
that most of their forays into Copper
Basin began.
No
one is certain when the first Russian
ascended the Copper River, but Dmitri
Tarkhanov may have reached the mouth of
the Chitina River in 1796. Semyen
Potochkin soon reached that point as well.
In 1798 he conducted a census of local
inhabitants before wintering at the Ahtna
village of Taral.
Although
other explorers followed, attempts to
examine Alaska's eastern interior
abruptly ceased in 1805 when the Tlinget
successfully destroyed the Russian colony
at Yakutat. As a result, it was not until
the mid-teens that Russian interest in
the area returned.
In
1819 the Russians sent Afanasii
Klimovskii to explore the region.
Klimovskii progressed farther than any of
his predecessors, certainly reaching the
Gakona River and perhaps even the mouth
of the Chistochina. Of more lasting
importance, his party established a
trading post called Copper Fort near
Taral, which endured, off and on, for the
next forty years.
The
Russian American Company tried to examine
the rest of the Copper Basin in 1847-1848.
Assigned the task of traversing from the
Copper to the Yukon River, Ruf
Serebrennikov's party wintered at Taral
before continuing upriver in May 1848.
All were killed by the upper Ahtna later
that summer, probably at or near the
village of Batzulnetas. The Russians
appear to have made no further efforts to
explore the region.
When
the United States acquired Alaska from
Russia in 1867, neither party knew much
about the territory's eastern interior.
The Russians had focused their attention
on coastal areas and had only made a few
abbreviated attempts to explore the
region. Americans, in contrast, had never
visited the area at all.
Neglected
for the next fifteen years, the district
began attracting interest in the mid-1880s.
Gold strikes in northern British
Columbia's Cassiar region and near the
present site of Juneau lured prospectors
to the north. Many eventually entered the
interior, most by way of the Yukon River,
but some via Cook Inlet and Prince
William Sound.
George
Holt, the first American to ascend the
lower Copper River, reached the mouth of
the Chitina River in 1882. Holt, however,
was primarily interested in trading. The
area's first genuine prospecting occurred
in 1884, when John Bremner examined
several of the Copper's lower tributaries
before wintering in Taral.
The
American government worried about the
potential for conflict between the
undisciplined miners and Alaska's Native
population. Consequently, the U.S. Army
soon dispatched several expeditions to
reconnoiter the region. One such party,
led by Lt. Frederick Schwatka, charted
the Yukon River in 1883. Another, headed
by Lt. William R. Abercrombie, attempted
to examine the Copper Basin the following
year. Although stopped by rapids on the
lower river, Abercrombie reported finding
an alternative overland route to the
interior: across the Valdez Glacier
heading the Valdez Arm.
In
1885 the army sent Lt. Henry T. Allen to
finish Abercrombie's work. More
successful than his predecessor, Allen
ascended the Copper River and pioneered a
route across the Alaska Range and into
the Tanana Valley.
Northern
gold discoveries continued, climaxing
with an especially rich find along
northwestern Canada's Klondike River in
1896. Beginning the next year, many
stampeders attempted to reach the
Klondike via the Copper River. Few
succeeded. Some, however, did scour the
Copper Basin looking for similar deposits.
As a result, numerous local mineral
discoveries were eventually made,
including important gold placers along
Dan (1901), Chititu (1902), Rex (1902),
White (1902), Young (1902), and Golconda
(1901) Creeks (and later, across the
range in the Chisana (1913) district);
gold lodes near the Nabesna (1925) and
Bremner (1927) Rivers, and copper lodes
near the Kennicott (1900), Chitistone (1906),
Kuskulana (1899), and Kotsina (1899)
Rivers.
The
American military located two possible
routes into the Copper Basin in 1898.
Beginning in Valdez, Capt. William
Abercrombie blazed a path up the Lowe
River Valley, through Keystone Canyon,
and over Thompson Pass. Capt. Edwin Glenn
started at the head of Cook Inlet and
followed the Knik and Matanuska Rivers to
Tahneta Pass, Lake Louise, and eventually
across the mountains to the Tanana River.
Glenn's subordinate, Lt. Joseph Castner,
actually led most of the way and was the
first American to cross the central
Alaska Range.
Such
exploration encouraged the development of
transportation: Abercrombie began
constructing his Trans-Alaska Military
Road (soon called the Valdez Trail) from
Valdez to Eagle in 1899. Following a
Tanana Valley gold strike in 1902,
however, most traffic diverted to
Fairbanks, crossing the Alaska Range
through Castner's Delta (later named
Isabel) Pass.
The
Valdez Trail was responsible for the
location or expansion of many settlements
in the Copper Basin. Early entrepreneurs
built roadhouses approximately a day's
travel apart, often at or adjacent to
existing Ahtna villages or fish camps.
The cores from which the adjoining
hinterlands were supplied, many such
sites, including Copper Center, Gulkana,
Gakona, Chistochina, and Slana, became
substantial communities.
The
first real scientific exploration of the
Chitina Valley occurred in 1899, when
USGS geologist Oscar Rohn inspected the
middle Chitina and Nizina valleys, naming
McCarthy Creek for prospector James
McCarthy--John Barrett staked his
homestead at the mouth of McCarthy Creek
in 1906, but did not plat and name the
community of McCarthy until 1913--and the
Kennicott Glacier for the late
Smithsonian scientist Robert Kennicott.
Among other evidence of mineralization,
Rohn found pieces of copper float along
the Kennicott River, drawing attention to
that drainage.
Most
prospectors limited their efforts to
field investigations, but one group
employed a very different tack: the
Chittyna Exploration Company traded Taral
Chief Nicolai a desperately needed supply
of food for the location of his copper.
Nicolai, however, apparently got the
better of the deal. Although appearing
rich on the surface, the Nikolai lode
never produced any copper.
The
Nikolai find, however, was still
portentous. By prompting additional
investigation, it led associated
prospectors to make a far more
significant discovery about twelve miles
northwest. In 1900 Clarence Warner and
Jack Smith located the Bonanza lode, one
of the richest copper deposits ever found.
The
Kennecott Company, which eventually
gained possession of the property, mined
the Bonanza and other nearby deposits
from 1907-1938. Interested capitalists
soon built the Copper River and
Northwestern Railway to transport ore
from Kennecott to Cordova. The current
McCarthy Road follows its long abandoned
right-of-way from Chitina to McCarthy.
Following
completion of the railway in 1911, the
Alaska Road Commission built a road (now
known as the Edgerton Highway) connecting
the railroad at Chitina with the Valdez
Trail near Willow Creek, enhancing local
transportation and significantly aiding
in the settlement of the Copper Basin.
Tourism
soon developed. By 1925 companies
throughout the United States advertised
the Richardson Highway as the center
portion of the "Golden Belt Line."
Appealing to the more adventurous
traveler, this circular route stretched
from Cordova to Seward and utilized the
Copper River and Northwestern Railway
from Cordova to Chitina, the Richardson
Highway from Chitina to Fairbanks, and
the Alaska Railroad from Fairbanks to
Seward.
Japanese
threats to the territory early in the
Second World War caused the federal
government to authorize construction of
the Alcan (now Alaska) and Glenn Highways
(including the Tok cutoff). During the
same period the rails were removed from
parts of the now closed CR&NW to
provide metal for the war effort. The
military also significantly upgraded the
Richardson Highway.
Alaska
achieved statehood in 1959. This event
has little impact in the Copper Basin,
whose minuscule population received scant
attention from either the state or
federal government.
The
ongoing fight over Native land claims,
itself tributary to the widespread civil
rights struggles of the 1960s, culminated
in 1971 with enactment of the Alaska
Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA),
which returned much of the Copper Basin
to its original Ahtna occupants.
In
order to insure the support of the
environmental lobby, ANCSA also required
Congress to withdraw up to 80 million
acres of federal lands (the so-called d-2
lands) for further study as to their
suitability for permanent federal
protection. When Congress failed to actby its statutory deadline, PresidentJimmy Carter invoked the Antiquities Act,
ultimately forcing a reluctant Congress
to address the issue. The problem was
finally resolved, at least temporarily,
in 1980 with passage of the Alaska
National Interest Lands Conservation Act
(ANILCA), which, among other things,
established Wrangell-St. Elias National
Park and Preserve.
Unfortunately,
ANILCA created some difficulties as well.
Its definition of subsistence conflicted
with provisions included in Alaska's
Constitution. When the state refused to
enforce federal provisions, the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service assumed management
responsibility for wildlife on federal
lands. This jurisdictional struggle
continues.
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