Welcome to the Site of the Old Gulkana Village

The old Gulkana village was a thriving established community, but in the 20th century government construction projects forced villagers to move and divided the village from its ancestral cemetery; the Gulkana Village Council later lost ownership of the old townsite and cemetery, then after almost fifty years successfully recovered ownership of the land, family burial grounds, and old village site. The Ahtna are an Alaska Native Athabascan people who have lived in harmony with the environment in the Copper River Basin for untold centuries, with customary and traditional activities and beliefs playing a vital role in daily life. Historically, the Ahtna were semi-nomadic and extensive travelers, living in small groups of 20 to 40 people and following food sources according to the seasons, with summer fish camps and winter villages serving as base camps. This seasonal cycle of summer salmon fishing, fall plant gathering and meat hunts, winter hunting and trapping, and spring fishing and trapping is the cornerstone of Ahtna life and remains crucial to customary practice, survival, and prosperity. Archaeological evidence shows that the Ahtna have occupied the area around the mouth of the Gulkana River for at least a thousand years, and Ahtna oral tradition holds that a large village along ridges above Bear Creek near the river's mouth was the home of Cuuy, a famous chief who provided for his family by making and trading copper implements. Gulkana Village began when Chief Ewan and his family settled on the south side of the Gulkana River in the early 1900s; around the same time a trail for miners traveling between Valdez and Eagle was built, a U.S. Army Signal Corps telegraph station was established, and Gulkana became a stop where the Ahtna used long-established salmon harvesting camps to trade with travelers on the Valdez-Eagle Trail. Today Gulkana is primarily an Alaska Native community whose residents depend on subsistence hunting, fishing, trapping, and gathering, while also having modern amenities such as paved roads, a wood pellet mill, and streetlights.

Gulkana, Alaska · United States