Katmai National Park ⓘ

There are hundreds - probably even thousands - of archeological sites and historic places in Katmai National Park and Preserve. A few of these are so unique that they have been given special designations such as National Historic Landmark, Cultural Landscape, or National Register site.The National Park Service, as the nation's leading preservation agency, is responsible for keeping lists of these wonderful places. The National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 created the National Register of Historic Places . This is the nation's inventory of all historically important places. Most archeological and historic sites are eligible for the list. Dozens in Katmai National Park and Preserve have been listed or determined eligible for listing. National Historic Landmarks are designated under the Historic Sites Act of 1935 . These are the nation's most important and unique places. There are only 50 landmarks in the state of Alaska. Two of these - Brooks River National Historic Landmark and Amalik Bay National Historic Landmark - are in Katmai National Park and Preserve. In addition to laws and regulations, there are a number of National Park Service programs and policies that allow special places to be recognized. For example, the Historic American Buildings Survey recognizes important structures on NPS lands and the Cultural Landscapes program identifies and describes geographic areas with special cultural significance. There is one documented cultural landscape in Katmai, the Brooks Camp area. The many different ways to recognize historic places help us all stay connected to the places of our shared past.

Katmai National Park and Preserve is a haven for bears, moose, wolves, salmon and other wild creatures. You might think that this wild land is untouched by humans. But, if you visit the park, you'll be following in the footsteps of hundreds, even thousands of people before you. Imagine them stretching back through time in an unbroken line, all the way to the end of the last ice age. Let's take an imaginary walk through the park with those who went before us.

Look at the faces that walk with you - the people in the park area today. In the Applied Anthropology program, ethnographers, subsistence specialists, and linguists study the communities in the park and preserve area.

If you look back a little further, you'll see the Euro-American trappers, Native Alaskan Alutiiq people, Russian explorers, and American entrepreneurs who made the park their home in bygone times. Park historians sift through old letters, papers, photos, and tapes, learning the stories of these "old-timers."

As the line recedes into the distance, imagine that you can see the people who lived in the Katmai area before the first written records. Archeologists painstakingly search for clues about their lives and communities.

Now look around at the beautiful Katmai landscape. How do the people in that long line perceive the mountains, rivers, and sky? Do they see the same things you do? Cultural landscapes specialists tie places to the people who used them.

Finally, on your imaginary hike, sneak a look into the knapsacks, bundles, and sleds of your imaginary companions. You'll find the letters they wrote, the stone tools they used, the maps they made, and much more. These precious and irreplaceable objects are cared for in perpetuity by the park's Collections personnel.

As we continue to preserve and study the park and preserve's cultural resources, we bring the faces of Katmai's people into focus, and begin to understand how their stories are a part of human history. Click the links on the navigation bar above to learn more.

Fure's cabin, a beautifully constructed one-room house on Naknek Lake's Bay of Islands, is a public use cabin. Now a refuge for kayakers, canoers, and hikers, the cabin was once the home of trapper, miner, and famed Naknek local Roy Fure.

Fure was born in 1885 in Lithuania, and came to Alaska in the early 1900s seeking his fortune. He settled in the Naknek area, supplementing his trapping and mining income by working as a laborer. In 1919, he married Anna Johnson, a Native woman from Bethel. They had three sons and a daughter, but only two of the children, Alexander and Marian, survived childhood. After Anna's death in 1929, Fure married Fanny Olson, a Native Alaskan woman from Naknek. They had a daughter, Nola, in 1930. Fanny left some time after 1940 for Kodiak.

The Bay of Islands cabin was built in 1926. The roof, walls, and floor are made of hand-hewn spruce logs with dovetail notching reminscent of European craftsmanship. In 1931, the land on which the cabin stands was incorporated into the expanded Katmai National Monument.

Because he never became a U.S. citizen, Fure was not eligible for a homestead claim and was "trespassing" on Park land. In 1940, Fure was arrested for game violations and told to leave the Bay of Islands cabin. He and Fanny built a new cabin outside the Monument on American Creek, but continued to use the Bay of Islands cabin. Fure periodically stayed in the cabin until the 1950s. He died in 1962 in Portland, Oregon.

Fure's cabin was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. In the late 1980s, NPS maintenance staff restored the cabin.

Fure’s Cabin, in Bay of Islands on Naknek Lake, is $45 per night June 1 through September 17 and $22.50 per night outside of peak season. Guests at Fure’s cabin are limited to no more than four consecutive nights and seven nights per calendar year. Group size is limited to six. Discount passes are not valid for Fure’s Cabin reservations. Current year reservations for Fure’s Cabin can normally be made starting January 5 at 8 AM Alaska Time and operate on a 6-month rolling basis. Visit www.recreation.gov to make a reservation. Enjoy your stay in Fure's wonderful home. As a reminder, please practice Leave No Trace ettiquette.

The Brooks River area is an archeological marvel. Communities have used the rich resources available here for more than 5,000 years. When you walk along the river, you are following in the footsteps of hundreds, even thousands, of people before you. Although it seems like untouched wilderness now, the Brooks River has been a bustling hub of human activity for millennia.

Five thousand years ago, the water level in Naknek Lake was much higher (the Naknek River has gradually been cutting through the glacial morraine that dams the lake). Brooks Lake and Naknek Lake were one, and the Brooks area was a narrow spot in the lake, where caribou may have crossed. On the ancient lakeshore archeologists find the remains of campsites where craftsmen created tiny arrowheads by flickering firelight.

A thousand years later, people began building permanent houses in the area as the lake level fell. By 3,500 years ago, the water had lowered so much that the famous Brooks River falls were created. Salmon pooling below the obstacle could be easily harvested - by people or bears.

The Brooks area provided an abundance of resources, and communities became even more settled. By 2000 years ago, they were building larger, deeper houses and manufacturing pottery.

When Russian explorers reached the Katmai area in the 1700s, they described villages with snug multi-room houses dug partially into the ground. At Brooks Camp, the earliest of these "palaces" date to about 500 years ago.

Want to learn more about the rich history of this National Historic Landmark? Read the top six reasons that Brooks Camp is an archeological gem, check out the prehistory of Katmai National Park, or visit the Cultural Site exhibit if you visit Brooks Camp. You can also learn more about the 2002-2003 excavation of the Brooks River Cutbank.

Amalik Bay, on the Katmai coast, is both a National Historic Landmark and a Archeological District listed on the National Register of Historic Place. It's one of only five places in the state of Alaska to have both designations.

This beautiful, remote coastline has nurtured human communities for thousands of years. People who lived here hunted sea mammals, fished, and harvested the bounty of the intertidal zone. The oldest sites are more than 7,000 years old. Imagine, people were settled in this distant corner of the world more than two thousand years before the first boulders were rolled into place at Stonehenge and three thousand years before Egyptians built the largest of the Giza pyramids.

If you go... The Amalik Bay sites are fragile and threatened by erosion and other natural forces. You can help be a good steward of these precious and irreplaceable remains! If you find a site, please enjoy your discovery. Help keep it intact by staying well away from eroding areas. Resist the temptation to take artifacts - your souvenirs should be memories and pictures. Your stewardship today will ensure that these sites are available for future generations.

Who lives in the Katmai area today? Residents of communities around the park and preserve have hunted, fished and gathered berries and other materials from the land for many generations. Before the 1912 Mt. Katmai/Novarupta eruption, there were four year-round villages and many other seasonally used camps in what is now Katmai National Park and Preserve. Due to the heavy ash fall of the 1912 eruption, the inhabitants of Savonoski, Kaguyak (Douglas), Kukak, and Katmai villages left and resettled elsewhere along the Alaska Peninsula.

People with historic ties to Katmai, mostly of Alutiiq descent, now live around southwest Alaska and beyond, especially in the villages of South Naknek, Naknek, King Salmon, Kokhanok, Igiugig, Levelock, Egegik, Chignik and Perryville. Many Katmai descendants are actively involved in subsistence activities, and participate in the park management process through Alaska Native corporate and non-profit organizations.

Who studies modern cultures in the park? Cultural anthropologists in the Applied Anthropology program promote the identification, evaluation, documentation, and interpretation of ethnographic resources in the National Park System. Long term cultural associations to what are now park and preserve lands are recognized and honored through studies, reports, development of interpretive materials and more. Cultural Anthropologists provide leadership, coordination, and guidance for federal and other public programs consulting with park resource stakeholders.

Can people still practice traditional subsistence? The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), which was the enabling legislation for the expanded Katmai National Park and Preserve, stipulates that all rural people may continue their subsistence practices on preserve lands. Subsistence Advisory Councils are made up of local residents to help advise the National Park Service subsistence staff in policy development and implementation. The National Park Service coordinates with other federal agencies and Regional Advisory Councils from all over the state in overall subsistence management.

Archeologists study the material remains of the past. Their work at Katmai is fascinating, but it can also be frustrating. Many aspects of the complex technologies of prehistoric people, such as nets, clothing, footwear, and baskets are not preserved in the acidic soils here. More mysterious still are the equally complex spiritual, social and political practices of past communities. Some of these will remain ever shrouded in the past, but others can be revealed through careful, meticulous study and research.

The oldest sites in Katmai belong to the Paleoarctic tradition. The tradition is found across Alaska, mostly at sites that were not ice-bound during the last glacial period (26,000 to 14,000 years ago). Paleoarctic collections are similar to earlier collections from northeast Asia, meaning that Paleoarctic people probably originally crossed the land bridge by foot or the widening Bering Strait by boat.

Northern Archaic tradition artifact collections are similar to earlier collections from Canada, meaning that people who had originally developed forest-adapted lifeways further south were probably moving back up north as the forests spread during the warm period from 10,000 to 5,000 years ago (the hypsithermal).

They were still living in small, mobile camps following game and other resources. Northern Archaic sites are not numerous, but are geographically widespread, occurring across Alaska and northern Canada.

Arctic Small Tool Tradition sites are found across Alaska and the Canadian North. In Katmai, though, Arctic Small Tool communities in the Naknek drainage had neighbors on the coast with a different cultural pattern. As the name implies, the people of this time used small, finely chipped stone tools. They also lived in the earliest semi-subterranean houses (as opposed to campsite shelters) that archeologists have found in the Katmai area. Artifact collections from the coast are more similar to Kachemak phase collections from Kodiak Island.

Norton tradition sites are found across coastal Alaska, and in a few places in the interior. Ceramic manufacturing, a technology ancient Alaskans probably learned from their Asian neighbors across the Bering Strait, appears during the Norton tradition. This is the first time period in which the same people seem to be occupying the Katmai coast and the Naknek drainage.

Communities at this time were becoming more settled, although people still moved seasonally to camps. Permanent villages were not year-round. People built the labor-intensive houses, then returned to them seasonally every year (as opposed to making new temporary camps every year or few years). Norton people are the first to intensively harvest salmon runs.

Around 1,000 years ago, a major change in lifeways swept across Alaska and the Canadian arctic. This was the Thule migration, during which people brought a sea mammal-hunting culture from western Alaska eastward as far as Greenland. Some archeologists think that the success of Thule people was due to falling temperatures which increased the pack ice, from which sea mammals are typically hunted. From the coasts, they spread inland, bearing artifacts of ground slate and building large semi-subterranean houses. Thule sites are found across the Katmai region.

Remains more than 50 years old are eligible to be considered archeological sites. Cabins, camps, caches, military sites, and canneries are among the historic sites found in the Katmai area.

If you encounter an archeological or historic site, please enjoy exploring it! But resist the temptation to take anything with you. Not only is removing artifacts a violation of federal law, it prevents others from experiencing our shared history. You can help protect our heritage!

Katmai National Park and Preserve relies on specialists at the Alaska Regional Office's Cultural Resources Program to assist with historic architecture and cultural landscapes research. The Historic Architecture Program manages the region’s historic structures inventory and prepares Historic American Building Survey (HABS) and Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) projects.

The park is home to several historic structures, including Fure's cabin on Naknek Lake and the Fisheries Building at Brooks Camp.

A cultural landscape is a geographic area with special natural and cultural significance. Areas that are designated and managed as cultural landscapes are usually associated with an historic event, activity, or person, or have other extraordinary cultural or aesthetic values. Alaska Regional Office staff are currently documenting the cultural landscape of Brooks Camp.

Recognizing these special places in the Katmai area helps us preserve and share the region's history.

People have been living in Katmai for over 9,000 years. Cultural resources professionals help share their stories. These stories provide a direct link to the past that cannot be replaced by any object. We can hear, see, touch, and connect with them in such a way that we can know these things actually happened. Each generation can learn from the remnants of the past. These stories are the landmarks that link us over time and space, and give meaning and orientation to our lives. What was it like to experience the the largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century? Read about the fear and awe local residents felt as the skies darkened and ash rained from the sky in Witness , first hand accounts of the eruption. People used the rich resources available in the Brooks River area for nearly 5,000 years. In Story of a House , archaeologist Don Dumond illustrates this rich history by recounting the discovery, excavation, and reconstruction of a prehistoric home site along Brooks River. Find more stories here .