Denali National Park and Preserve

Denali, the "High One," is the name Athabascan native people gave the massive peak that crowns the 600-mile-long Alaska Range. Denali is also the name of an immense national park and preserve created from the former Mount McKinley National Park. The changes in names and boundaries that have occurred over the years can be confusing, as they indicate the way various parts of the park and preserve may be used today. In 1917 Mount McKinley National Park was established as a game refuge. The park and the massif including North America’s highest peak were named for former senator – later President – William McKinley. In 1980, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) enlarged the boundary by 4 million acres and redesignated it as Denali National Park and Preserve. At 6 million acres, the park is larger than Massachusetts. It exemplifies interior Alaska’s character as one of the world’s last great frontiers for wilderness adventure. It remains largely wild and unspoiled, as the Athabascans knew it. Denali National Park and Preserve is managed as three distinct units. Denali Wilderness, most of the former Mount McKinley National Park, is managed to maintain the undeveloped wilderness parkland character. Backcountry use is regulated and most traditional national park regulations apply here. Denali Wilderness is closed to sport and subsistence hunting and trapping activities. Denali National Park additions, established by ANILCA in 1980 (excluding Denali Wilderness), allow customary and traditional subsistence uses by local rural residents. This recognized the longstanding dependence on wildlife, fish, and plant materials for subsistence in rural Alaska. Denali National Preserve allows sport hunting, trapping, and fishing under Alaska Fish and Game regulations. There are two such preserve areas.

Paradoxically this expansive landscape, habitat of large caribou, moose, and grizzly bears, lies adorned with miniaturized plants. Their diminutive size contrasts with their large importance as food to the animals that live or migrate through here. These plants and animals have long been adapted to survive northern life, but there is newness in the landscape too. The rivers are so young and so laden with pulverized rock, called rock flour, that they can wander across their broad, flat valleys to set new channels in a matter of days. The delicate beauty of the tundra plants and the youthful wanderings of the rivers are striking counterpoints to the lofty, isolated, and often cloud-covered grandeur of the Mount McKinley massif.

Euro-Americans making their way to interior Alaska in the 1800s found native Athabascans living here. Five Athabascan language groups have traditional-use territories surrounding and extending into Denali National Park and Preserve; Ahtna to the Dena-ina (or Tanaina) to the south, Upper Kuskokwim to the west, Koyukon to the north, and Lower Tanana to the northeast. For thousands of years Athabascans adapted to this country as small, semi-nomadic bands using areas along major river drainages reaching into the Alaska Range. Spring through fall they hunted the lowland hills and mountains for caribou, sheep, moose, bear, and small mammals. They preserved berries, gathered edible plants, and harvested fish. As snows began to fall, they moved to lower river valleys for better protection from severe weather. Winter and summer trails linked groups and settlements and led through major passes of the Alaska Range. Legislation expanding Denali National Park and Preserve in 1980 recognized the importance of the connection between native peoples and the land, and the need to provide an opportunity for those engaged in traditional subsistence activities to continue to do so. For many local rural residents the use of natural resources ensures more than survival. It sustains a significant subsistence way of life. Athabascan people and their ancestors, bound to a strict code of respect towards nature, have been the land’s stewards and caretakers. Much of Denali’s legacy exists today largely because they have nurtured it so well. Denali’s National Park System legacy exists largely because Charles Sheldon, a naturalist, hunter, and conservationist, determined to establish a park after he traveled here between 1906 and 1908 with packer and guide Harry Karstens. Karstens later made the first ascent of Mt. McKinley and would be the first superintendent of Mt. McKinley National Park. Sheldon’s efforts largely saw Mt. McKinley National Park established in 1917. From the start, scientific investigation played an important role in park history. In 1980, Congress more than tripled the size of the park and renamed the area Denali National Park and Preserve. Denali has also been designated an International Biosphere Reserve significant for research into subarctic ecosystems. As access and visitation increased along the narrow, graveled park road, the National Park Service put in a bus system in 1972 to protect visitors and reduce threats to wildlife while maximizing opportunities to view wildlife. By using this system today you help preserve the park’s wilderness character still so little changed since Sheldon’s day.

Mount McKinley

Mount McKinley has been called the Alaskan landscape’s most impressive feature. While you may not see this great peak during your stay here, it is there! Mount McKinley is the highest mountain on the North American continent. Measured from the 2,000-foot lowlands near Wonder Lake to its snowy summit at 20,320 feet, the mountain’s vertical relief of some 18,000 feet is greater than that of Mount Everest. Temperatures at the summit are severe even in summer. Winter lows at just 14,500 feet can plummet below –95 degrees F! During storms, winds can gust to more than 150 mph. Permanent snowfields cover more than 75 percent of the mountain and feed the many glaciers that surround its base. The mountain’s granite and slate core is, in fact, overlain by ice that is hundreds of feet thick in places.

Mount McKinley reigns in lofty isolation over the Alaska Range, that magnificent 600-mile arc of mountains that divides south-central Alaska from the interior plateau. A noticeable landform resulting from this tectonic squeeze of Alaska is the Denali Fault. This large crustal break stretches 1,300 miles from the Yukon border down to the Aleutian peninsula and is the subject of much controversy among geoscientists. The fault traces through Alaska and Aleutian ranges in a mad jumble of peaks that includes active volcanoes. Earthquake tremors both mild and moderate are frequent occurrences in the park and preserve. Numerous glaciers still radiate from the high peaks of the Alaska Range. Some of the glaciers are visible from the park road. The debris-laden snout of the 35-mile-long Muldrow Glacier lies within a half mile of the park road. The park and preserve owes its beautiful landscape contrasts – wide, low plains and dark, somber mountains; brightly colored peaks and sheer granite domes – to restless collision of tectonic plates. Mount McKinley may become even more spectacular as the range continues to rise about one millimeter a year.

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