Known simply as the Western Arctic National Parklands, four units of the National Park System stretch eastward from the Chukchi Sea for 290 miles to the upper Noatak River. Cape Krusenstern National Monument, Kobuk Valley National Park, Noatak National Preserve and Bering Land Bridge National Preserve together protect 12 million acres of subarctic and arctic wildlands. West to east, these parklands encompass the Brooks Range and the northernmost extension of the Rocky Mountain Range, and extend north of the Arctic Circle. They trace the treeline, or northern limit of tree growth, as the boreal forest gives way to the tundra that stretches northward to Point Barrow on the Beaufort Sea.

Linked to this expansive topography is the wide-ranging, nomadic Western Arctic Herd of barren ground caribou. The herds' aggregate numbers exceed 500,000 animals today. The tundra offers a thin veneer of life, across which caribou must move to forage for adequate food. The caribou has a strong presence in native stories of this region. Even the coastal peoples of Cape Krusenstern ranged inland to hunt caribou and to hunt and trap other land mammals when the sea mammals, so important to their lives, were scarce.

Throughout these parklands, local residents still pursue caribou hunting, fishing, trapping, and other subsistence activities. Special provisions of the legislation establishing these Alaskan parklands allow local people to continue these activities. Many residents rely significantly on locally harvested animals, fish, and plants to satisfy basic food needs. The Inupiat people traditionally valued the land so that, through wise use over thousands of years, its resources and productivity were carefully preserved for the benefit of future generations.

From the visitor center in Kotzebue it is difficult to imagine the extent of the Noatak River - whose name means "passage to the interior" - or the expanse of the annual caribou migrations throughout the immense area that these parks encompass.

Up to 1,500 feet wide, the placid Kobuk River falls a mere 2 to 3 inches per mile. Its valley provides important fall and winter ranges for the Western Arctic caribou herd. Bands of bulls and cows may be seen here from late August through October as they migrate across the Kobuk River on their extensive annual migrations.

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General Information

Visitation

Highest in June and July; lowest in January and February

Location

Kotzebue, Alaska

Address

Northwest Alaska Areas
National Park Service
PO Box 1029
Kotzebue, Alaska 99752

Telephone

(907) 442-8300 Headquarters
(907) 442-3760 Kotzebue Public Lands Information Center

Operating Hours & Seasons

The Information Center, located 80 miles from the park, is open daily during summer, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and only "occasionally" during winter, from 3 p.m. - 5 p.m. The park itself is open year-round, except for federal holidays.

Directions

Approximately 26 miles north of the Arctic Circle, Northwest Alaska; no road access.

Transportation

People generally reach the Northwest Alaska Areas by scheduled airlines from Fairbanks or Anchorage. Scheduled flights are available from Kotzebue to the villages of Noatak, Kivalina, Shungnak, Ambler, Kobuk, Kiana, and Noorvik. Air taxis or charter flights are available from Kotzebue, Ambler, Bettles, and Fairbanks. In summer access may be gained by motorized/non-motorized watercraft or aircraft, or by foot; in winter by snowmobiles, aircraft, or by foot.

Access & Information

Cape Krusenstern National Monument, Kobuk Valley National Park and Noatak National Preserve together are known as the Northwest Alaska Areas. The Visitor Information center in Kotzebue is open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Here you can buy aeronautical charts and books on the region, and get information on hunting and fishing regulations, the location of private lands within the park units, minimum impact camping, bear safety and other important topics. Kotzebue can be reached only by air. Its airport is served both by scheduled airlines and by many Alaska Package tour companies.

Fees & Rates

There are no entrance fees, but for hunting and fishing, Alaska hunting/fishing licenses are available in Anchorage or Kotzebue.

Golden Eagle Passport

The Golden Eagle Passport is an entrance pass to any national park, monument, historical site, recreation area, and national wildlife refuge that charges an entrance fee. It is a great convenience for those who plan on visiting several different areas that charge special fees. It is valid for one year from the purchase date. A Golden Eagle Passport may be purchased for $50 at any National Park Service entrance fee area or by mail. To order by mail, send check or money order (no cash, please) to:

National Park Service
1100 Ohio Drive, SW
Room 138
Washington, DC 20242
Attention: Golden Eagle Passport

Where entry is by private vehicle, the Golden Eagle Passport will admit the passholder as well as any passengers. Where entry by private vehicle is not possible, the pass will admit the passholder, spouse, children and parents.

The Golden Eagle Passport will not reduce use fees, such as those for camping, swimming, parking, boat launching, or cave tours. It covers entrance fees only.

Golden Age Passport

The Golden Age Passport is a lifetime entrance pass for those United States residents 62 years or older. These may be purchased at any National Park Service entrance fee area for a one-time processing fee of $10. The Golden Age Passport cannot be purchased by mail or telephone. Proof of age and citizenship or permanent residence must be shown at the time of purchase.

The Golden Age Passport will admit the passholder and any passengers in a private vehicle. When entrance is not via private vehicle, the pass will admit the passholder as well as children, spouse, and parents.

The Golden Age Pass grants a 50 percent discount to the holder on any federal use fees charged for things such as camping, swimming, parking, boat launching, or tours. It does not, however, reduce the price of special recreation permit fees or fees for concessions.

Golden Access Passport

The Golden Access Passport is a free entrance pass to any national park, monument, historic site, recreation area, and national wildlife refuge for those who are blind or permanently disabled. The Golden Access passport may be obtained at any National Park Service entrance fee area. Proof of a medically determined disability, and eligibility for receiving benefits under federal law, is necessary for acquisition.

The Golden Access Passport will admit the passholder and any passengers in a private vehicle. Where entrance is not by vehicle, the pass will admit the passholder, spouse, children and parents.

The Golden Access Passport also provides a 50 percent discount on any federal use fees charged for services and facilities. It does not cover special recreation permit fees or fees charged for concessions.

All passes described above are non-transferable.

Facilities & Opportunities

Visitor Center/Exhibits:

Located in Kotzebue; no visitor facilities or center within parklands.

Land Ownership

Kobuk Valley National Park has a gross area of about 1,750,700 acres, of which 1,660,000 acres is in federal ownership. Within the park, there are 182,767 acres of designated Wilderness lands. About 81,000 acres of non-federal lands lie within the park. The state of Alaska claims about 9,500 acres (mostly submerged lands), with the rest divided among several Native Alaskan interests, including NANA Regional Corporation, Ambler Village Corporation and Kiana Corporation. These include 61 Native allotments, and 94 acres in 141 cemetery and historical sites.

Programs & Activities

Throughout the year, programs offered at the Kotzebue Public Lands Information Center include camping, hiking, backpacking, wildlife observations and photography.

Lodging and Camping Facilities:

No food or supplies are available within the park. Stop in Kotzebue or nearby villages of Ambler, Kiana and Noatak.

Food & Supplies

Food and supplies are not available within parklands. They are available in Kotzebue and nearby villages of Ambler, Kiana, and Noatak.

Recommended Activities & Park Use

Visitors can take to Kobuk National Park in many different ways. Some recommended activities include motorboating, canoeing and rafting on the rivers, or kayaking along coast. Youll find primitive camping, backcountry hiking, beach walking, general wildlife observation, and photography opportunities available.

Visitor Impacts

More and more use of the Noatak River for floating; much hunting in the fall.

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History

Subsistence Lifestyle

Traveling through Alaska, a visitor quickly realizes what Alaskans have learned over the last two decades: that "subsistence" seems to mean many different things. The meaning of subsistence may be as varied as are the people of this huge state.

For the National Park Service in northwest Alaska, subsistence means that local residents - the majority of whom are Inupiaq Eskimos - are guaranteed the right to continue their customary uses of lands which are now national parks, monuments, and preserves. Local people can hunt, fish, and gather plants and berries on all parklands. This is unlike other United States national parks or monuments outside of Alaska, where hunting is not allowed, and resources are protected from many consumptive uses.

To understand why Alaskan parklands are different, it is necessary to know that Alaska itself has only been a state for 38 years. Two important federal acts, which have been passed since the Statehood Act of 1959, have had major effects on subsistence in Alaska. The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 created Alaskas Native Corporations and gave ownership of selected land to Alaska Natives. The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980 added millions of acres of federal lands to the National Park system.

Under these acts, Alaska Natives gave up their sovereign rights to land in Alaska - land that has been freely used by aboriginal people for thousands of years. In return, Alaska natives and other rural residents were guaranteed the right to continue subsistence use of the newly designated federal lands. They could hunt, fish, gather plant products and use resources of the land. In northwest Alaska, native people have hunted, fished and lived along the Kobuk River for at least 9,000 years.

Subsistence is a part of life for the Inupiaq Eskimo people who currently live in the villages and camps of Northwest Alaska. Their values for the land and their use of its resources are an identity of their culture, past and present. When certain animals are caught, many hunters still follow the instructions taught by elders, to show respect for the spirit of the animals, and to enhance their ability to catch them. Some rituals are still performed to ensure the return of the animal.

The National Park Service is dedicated to the preservation of natural and cultural resources of the United States. In the Western Arctic National Parklands, the park service is working with Native organizations and other interested groups for the protection of archeological, natural and cultural resources (including subsistence rights), of Kobuk Valley National Park, Cape Krusenstern National Monument, Noatak National Preserve, and Bering Land Bridge National Preserve.

Cultural Heritage

Two key sites in Northwest Alaska - Onion Portage and Cape Krusenstern - provide an outline of the cultural history applicable to much of the state. At Onion Portage, layered soils containing human occupational debris and tools extend to a depth of almost twenty feet; the deeper the layer, the older the debris. At Cape Krusenstern, successive occupations are horizontally, rather than vertically, stratified. The occupants of Cape Krusenstern were marine-oriented, and camped or built houses on the beach ridges closest to the shore of their time. As a result, increasingly older settlements are found farther inland.

The earliest people arrived in the region over 10,000 years ago. They came from northern Asia, and were nomadic hunters and gatherers who probably traveled in small groups.

Around 4,000 years ago, new people or ideas came into Alaska, possibly from Asia, and the distinctive tools that mark this influx can be traced eastward across the Canadian Arctic to Greenland. By at least this time, people were harvesting both marine and terrestrial mammals. Those living at Cape Krusenstern 3,000 years ago hunted large whales. Coastal settlements 2,500 years old attest to more permanent coastal living and increasing dependence on marine mammal resources. The use of pottery and gill nets for fishing is documented in the archeological record at this period. The lifestyle and technology (recognized and admired by outsiders as "Eskimo") for effectively using marine resources, such as seal, walrus and whale, as well as terrestrial resources such as caribou and musk oxen, was firmly established about 1,600 years ago. Since at least 1,200 years ago, but probably much earlier as well, extensive regional and intercontinental trade networks were maintained.

European goods, including tobacco, reached Northwest Alaska in the 18th century via Russian traders and Chukchi (a people of the Russian Northeast) middlemen. After 1850, significant changes resulted from increasing Euro-American contacts. A gold rush on the Kobuk River in 1898, and the establishment of permanent missions and trading posts at about the same time, established sustained contact with Euro-Americans. With this presence, the fur trade expanded in importance, and the use of large dog teams, providing greater mobility, allowed people to spread out over larger areas in winter. This trend was countered by the enticement of schools, post offices and trading posts, established after the turn of the century, that formed the nucleus of most of the regions modern villages.

Cultural Resources

Kobuk Valley National Park (KOVA) was created in 1980 under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA). This act states that KOVA is to be managed "for the following purposes, among others: to maintain the environmental integrity of the natural features of the Kobuk River Valley, including the Kobuk, Salmon, and other rivers, the boreal forest, and the Great Kobuk Sand Dunes, in an undeveloped state; to protect and interpret, in cooperation with Native Alaskans, archeological sites associated with Native cultures; to protect migration routes for the Arctic caribou herd; to protect habitat for, and populations of, fish and wildlife including but not limited to caribou, moose, black and grizzly bears, wolves, and waterfowl; and to protect the viability of subsistence resources." Archeological and ethnographic resources are also specifically addressed in the parks mission. Prehistoric resources within the park are extensive, and are of national and international significance.

The park is located in northwest Alaska. It consists of the valley of the Kobuk River, running along the southern edge of the western end of the Brooks Range. The boundary of KOVA runs along the ridgetops of a set of mountains: (the Baird Mountains to the north and the Waring Mountains to the south) that essentially form a circle, defining and enclosing the Kobuk Valley. The middle two-thirds of the Kobuk River, from just above Kiana to just below Ambler, is included in the park, as are several major tributaries (Salmon, Hunt and other rivers).

Archeological Resources

The Onion Portage site, on the Kobuk River in the eastern side of the park, is one of the most important archeological sites in Arctic America. It has more than 70 distinct stratified cultural layers that document a progression of human camps spanning about 12,500 years. Onion Portage is still in use as a major caribou-hunting site, as it has been for more than 100 centuries. Large portions of the site remain unexcavated. Onion Portage has been designated a National Historic Landmark, and the district has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is not owned by the park, but remains an inholding of the NANA Regional Corporation.

In the 1940s, J.L. Giddings made detailed archeological investigations of five sites in KOVA, including Ahteut, Ekseavik, and Ambler Island. He also did dendrochronological research, studying growth rings in trees to determine the dates of past events. Extensive excavations, begun by Giddings and completed by Anderson, were done in the 1960s at Onion Portage. Since the termination of work at Onion Portage, very little archeological work has been done in KOVA. Hickey excavated several sites within and near the park, and Stanford and Dixon conducted a reconnaissance survey of portions of the Great Sand Dunes and located several sites, some of which may be very early.

Inhabitants of the Valley

The earliest inhabitants of the valley lived in a treeless environment around 12,000 years ago. These people of the Paleoarctic cultural tradition are represented by the Akmak and Kobuk levels at Onion Portage, and seem to have been mostly hunters of caribou. Evidence of the Paleoarctic culture ended at Onion Portage about 8,000 years ago.

After a gap of almost 2,000 years, during which no people appear to have occupied the Onion Portage area, a different cultural group occupied the area: the Northern Archaic tradition or the Palisades and Portage cultures. Their traditions were derived from the spruce-forest or boreal forest regions to the south and east, and they could well have been native, from the interior regions. Their camps show some evidence of fishing as a major subsistence activity. The diagnostic artifact of this tradition is the side-notched projectile point. It is sometimes found with the microblades and cores that are the hallmark of the Paleoarctic and the Arctic Small Tool traditions.

About 4,000 years ago, peoples of the Arctic Small Tool tradition again moved into the Kobuk Valley. They developed ways of life that enabled this culture to spread over most of the Arctic, from Norton Sound to Greenland. Regional and local specialization was also present. The people in the Kobuk Valley undoubtedly used local resources such as caribou and fish, and they also maintained strong ties to the coast and its marine resources. They probably made seasonal journeys downriver to the coast, for trading and marine mammal hunting. From about 1,500 to 2,000 years ago, this coastal orientation became even more evident in the archeological record, as the Norton tradition became identifiable.

From about 1,000 to 1,500 years ago, the middle and upper portions of the Kobuk River were generally unoccupied, perhaps because of a decline in the caribou population (Anderson 1977). During this interval, native peoples of Indian descent (possibly Koyukon) used Onion Portage intermittently for caribou hunting.

By about 800 years ago (A.D. 1200), Arctic people once again occupied the valley. About 25 miles downriver from Onion Portage, Ahteut, a major archeological site with an extensive series of housepits, provides the definitive data and description for the Arctic Woodland culture (Giddings 1952). This culture appears to have been unique to the Kobuk River region, and shows the adaptation of coastal Eskimos to the forested and riparian environments of the Kobuk Valley. By 1400 A.D., the Arctic Woodland culture had developed a wide range of fishing techniques, and had begun to practice a seasonal round that was basically the same as that seen in late prehistoric times. Settlements appeared in the middle reaches of the valley. The earliest of the sites was located where both winter caribou hunting and summer salmon fishing were possible. Sites such as Ahteut, Onion Portage, and the confluence of the Salmon, Hunt and Ambler rivers all had winter houses located on or near sandbars along river bends, where seining for salmon was productive. The site at Ambler Island, dated at 1750 A.D., shows the long continuity of the lifestyle of the Arctic Woodland Culture.

The middle Kobuk Valley seems to have remained fairly stable during the early 19th century. Sometime after 1850, the caribou population declined (as happened periodically), and subsistence efforts shifted more to the seacoast. By then, the influences of western civilization were being strongly felt. Actual exploration of the Kobuk River by Euro-Americans, however, had been preceded by at least 150 years of trade and contact along the coast of northwest Alaska. Russian trade goods reached people of the Kobuk region through extensive trade ties across the Bering Strait that had existed for centuries, between the Native peoples of eastern Siberia and western Alaska.

Ethnographic Aspects

In the 19th century, two Inupiat societies, the Akunirmiut and the Kuuvaum Kangianirmiut, occupied the area now included in the park. Descendants of these people, referred to collectively as "Kuuvangmiit," still use the park and now live in the villages of Kiana, Ambler, Kobuk and Shungnak. The first U.S. Census of the region was conducted in 1900. At that time, the second largest village along the Kobuk River was at the mouth of the Hunt River (now within the park), near Camp Penelope. Grinnel, one of the Kobuk stampeders living at Camp Penelope, provides some accounts of the first substantial contact with Euro-Americans. Coordinated ethnographic, historical, and archaeological study of the village and Camp Penelope can open exciting and unique interpretive, historical and methodological vistas.

The site of Stonewall Jackson's (called Oolyak) cabin and camp, at the Kallarichuk ranger station, is being eroded by the Kobuk River. Oolyak, interviewed by Giddings, was one of the last Kobuk Inupiat to reach adulthood prior to sustained Euro-American contact. Archaeological investigation of the site and interviews with his descendants could provide a powerful illustration of Inupiat acculturation.

Historical Aspects

While there is much potential for locating historical sites in the park, almost no historical research or surveys have been completed. The remains of Cantwell's encampments and Stoney's winter camp, Fort Cosmos, dating to the mid 1880s, may be located through systematic fieldwork. Local residents have stories and potential leads about the location of Fort Cosmos. Camp Penelope and thirty-two other gold stampeders' camps established during the winter of 1899-1900 should also be locatable, if they have not been claimed by river erosion. As most of the camps were occupied for a single season only, they can provide valuable "snapshot" images of Kobuk miners' lives at the turn of the century. In 1992, National Park Service rangers found a log structure that may have been the church built by the Long Beach Mining and Trading company at Camp Penelope. Shungnak villagers report finds of boilers, propellers, and other old ship parts from along the river that may have been used and left by the Kobuk Stampeders or by later miners and traders.

Kiana, outside the western park boundary and established in 1908 or 1909 as "Squirrel City," supported the miners at Kleary Creek and grew up adjacent to the Inupiat village of Kutyak. Originally known as "Long Beach," the village of Kobuk, outside the eastern park boundary, supplied miners working the upper river, and had established regular winter mail service (by dog team) by 1905. In the early days, trading companies at Kiana and Kobuk issued "tokens" and credits in lieu of U.S. currency. The history of trade and traders' records and inventories will have significant bearing on the interpretation of historic sites and artifacts located on park lands.

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Reservation Information

Reservations are not required for Kobuk Valley National Park.

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