Wrangell-St Elias Oral Histories

Autumn along the road to McCarthy, Courtesy of the National Park Service

Wrangell-St. Elias Oral Histories
LISTEN to oral history interviews, view photos & maps (University of Alaska Fairbanks website)

This project contains oral history interviews and photographs from Native and non-Native people who live near or have been associated with Wrangell-St. Elias National Park in south-central Alaska. The region has a long history of human use including the Ahtna and Upper Tanana Athabascan people in the interior who lived a traditional subsistence lifestyle of moving with the seasons to hunt and fish, and the Eyak and Tlingit living in larger villages on the coast. Non-Natives entered the Copper Basin region beginning in the 1780s, expanding their activities from trapping and trading to mining in the Wrangell Mountains. The most notable mine is at Kennecott where copper was hauled out by railroad to the coastal community of Cordova from 1911 to 1938. Wrangell-St. Elias National Park was first established as a national monument in 1978, and gained full National Park status in 1980 with passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.

In the early 1990's, the National Park Service wanted to better document local history by recording stories from local residents about their lives and experiences related to the Park, its establishment, and subsistence living in the area. The Park Service funded the Oral History Program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks to conduct interviews with residents of Chitina, Copper Center, Gakona, Glennallen, Kennecott, Kenny Lake, Nabesna, Valdez, Yakutat, and with National Park Service employees.

Copper River salmon and roe drying on a fish rack, Courtesy of the National Park Service.

Additional interviews were conducted from 1998 to 2002 in Chisana, Chistochina, Chitina, Copper Center, Gulkana, Tazlina, and Yakutat. Finally, in 2013 and 2014 interviews were conducted in the Alaska Highway communities of Dot Lake, Healy Lake, Northway, Tanacross, Tetlin, and Tok, after the Park Service determined that they have customary and traditional ties to the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park area.

In 2012, the Wrangell St. Elias National Park Project Jukebox was upgraded from its original HTML format to Drupal. The information in this project reflects the context of the original creation date. Some information may now be out of date.