History is about people, places, and their stories. While far from populated city centers, with very few current inhabitants within park borders, Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve is replete with history of brave (and perhaps greedy or desperate) people who made their way up and beyond the Arctic Circle to make a life for themselves.
Before those of European descent arrived within this broad, 8-million-acre landscape, Inupiaq and Athabascan people and their ancestors traveled long distances over rough terrain throughout the central Brooks Range for at least 11,000 years, sustained by the caribou.
The importance this relative to the dear represented to Alaskan Native survival cannot be underestimated. This one animal provided meat and broth to feed the people. Its skin and fur furnished materials for clothing, shelter, and warmth, sustaining and protecting the Native inhabitants while acting as a cultural symbol and a catalyst for stories.
Born in 1901, Rachel Sisoulik Riley, a Nunamiut living in Anaktuvuk Pass, a community located within the boundaries of Gates of the Arctic, says of the caribou “We used caribou skin for our clothes, caribou meat for our food, and caribou broth for our drink. I never get tired of caribou."
Gold!
It was all about gold when Europeans arrived. The Klondike Gold Rush of the late 1890s lured thousands of men and women (like Nellie Cashman) up far north into Canada to seek their fortunes. These The Klondike petered out and these “stampeders” began wending their way into the less-crowded Brooks Range to discover gold on the Koyakuk and Kobuk rivers. This discovery didn’t lead to much in the way of paying quantities, and eventually, the Nome Gold Rush of 1899 drew away most of these prospectors - but not before one Gordon Bettles made a name for himself (and a town).
Gordon Bettles
Gordon Bettles was a businessman extraordinaire: fur trader, shopkeeper, prospector, newspaperman, and friend to the down-on-his-luck placer miner. While mining for silver in Montana, Bettles heard about the discovery of gold in far north Canada and decided to try his luck there. After all, he was young (27 years old), in good health, and ready for adventure. While others gave up on their quest for gold during the long, arduous trek into Canada’s Northwest Territory, Bettles stuck with his quest.
Upon reaching Fortymile River country, Bettles earned about $50 per day washing gold from the streambed gravel before heading for prospects elsewhere. The continued search for gold panned out and this enterprising young man partnered with one Al Mayo start a trading station near the confluence of the Tanana River. Thus began Bettles’ business career as a shopkeeper and entrepreneur in some of Alaska's most remote gold fields.
Bettles opened another store along the Koyukuk River. To further his business career, he owned a couple of Yukon River steamboats and traded with Alaska Native trappers for the furs of marten, red and silver fox, beaver, and mink. During this time, Bettles earned a reputation generosity and honesty. He warned prospective miners of the time, labor, and hardship involved before they might realize any sort of profit at all from their endeavors.
In the late 1890s, Bettles established a couple of outposts, one of then named Bettles, the inhabitants of which would later move to a different area also named Bettles – now a ghost town.
The Military
Stampeders are not the first of European descent to have explored the distant reaches of what is now Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve. The United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867 and the U.S. Government felt this topography needed mapping – particularly the Brooks Range – and sent the military up north to begin this process.
According to park staff:
Between 1883 and 1886, officers of the U.S. Navy and the Revenue Marine Service (now the Coast Guard) began investigating the rivers emptying into the ocean at Kotzebue Sound in northwestern Alaska. Although cooperation between the military branches was the norm, a rivalry developed between Naval Lieutenant George Stoney and Captain Michael Healy of the Revenue Marine after both men gathered geographical information from coastal Natives about the extent of the Noatak and Kobuk Rivers.
Through high water, low water, low rations, rapids, capsizing, constant cold and wet, swarms of biting flies and mosquitoes, and endless hours waist deep in the freezing water with straps around their shoulders, pulling against the current or portaging over swampy land, the hardships experienced by each rival military branch ultimately opened the region to the outside world, while introducing the population to the lives of the Native communities.
According to park staff:
By 1886, most of the Eskimo groups had been severely affected by the combination of caribou decline and the diseases and trade goods of the whites – particularly the introduction of the rifle, which altered traditional hunting patterns. Starvation, death from disease, and a desperate kind of mobility as people fought for survival and access to addictive trade goods had already disrupted normal seasonal rounds and wreaked havoc on Eskimo lifeways.
Even with the information provided by the U.S. Military, the Brooks Range and areas now within the boundaries of Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve were still blank slates. Between 1899 and 1911, United States Geological Survey (USGS) reconnaissance expeditions braved the arduous terrain and harsh weather of all seasons to map the geology and geography north of the Yukon Basin. Using dog teams, pack horses, and canoes, these hardy teams of geologists surveyed the landscape, adding their own findings along with information and observations provided by resident miners and prospectors to present a more detailed picture of the Yukon River north to the Arctic Ocean, and from the Chandalar River west to Kotzebue Sound.
These detailed surveys led to the knowledge of possible petroleum reserves and other valuable minerals and metals.
According to park staff:
In late February 1924, a U.S. Geological Survey team left the Yukon River community of Tanana on dog sleds following a route that would take them through territory largely unknown to outsiders. Their goal was to advance up the Alatna River and establish a camp on the north side of the Arctic Mountains (today's Brooks Range) to wait for spring break-up. Then, they would unpack a crate of cedar canoes they carried on a specially built sled and paddle northward to the Arctic Ocean. Their goal was to explore the 36,000-acre Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 4, an enormous section of Arctic Alaska set aside by President Warren Harding to supply the U.S. Navy with petroleum in times of war.
The advent of airplanes and helicopters made obsolete the work of the “foot-slogging geology” that once took months by intrepid USGS survey members back in the day. Yet these early surveys drew a more detailed geologic picture of many people considered a barren, harsh landscape.
Bob Marshall
"I love the woods and solitude. I should hate to spend the greater part of my lifetime in a stuffy office or in a crowded city." - Bob Marshall
Born in New York City and degreed in forestry, Robert “Bob” Marshall developed a love of nature at an early age, spending many summers exploring the Adirondak Mountains and summiting all 46 of the high peaks of the area with his brother George. Marshall loved those “blank spaces on maps” and eventually made his way to the mining community of Wiseman, Alaska, which he made his homebase for a year while exploring the Central Brooks Range. There, he named Boreal Mountain and Frigid Crags the “Gates of the Arctic.”
According to park staff:
Bob Marshall returned to Wiseman and the Brooks Range three more times during the 1930s, further exploring different parts of the vast mountains, all the while writing and promoting Alaska as the last pristine wilderness left in the country. In 1934, Bob was one of four founders of The Wilderness Society, working for the creation and preservation of wilderness through the United States.
Though he seemed indefatigable, Bob’s strenuous pace took its toll, and he passed away unexpectedly in 1939 at only 38 years old. Bob Marshall’s explorations and writing promoted the Central Brooks Range as a place of special beauty and solitude and served as major inspiration to establish Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve 40 years after his death.
- By Rebecca Latson - July 14th, 2025 8:05am
