Traversing the Wilderness

The first people of interior Alaska arrived hundreds of generations ago, moving slowly across the low-lying land known as Beringia, or the Bering Land Bridge. On July 16, 1741, Russian officer Sven Waxell, serving under Captain-commander Vitus Bering, wrote of signing land made up of huge, high, snow-covered mountains when Alaska was sighted. In 1885, U.S. Army Lieutenant Henry T. Allen wrote from this pass that, surrounded by white and yellow buttercups with snow within a few feet, he sat proud of a grand sight that no visitor except an Ahtna or Tanana had ever seen. In 1899, Alfred Brooks wrote that Indians used cumbersome rafts for navigating the rivers, which they constructed very ingeniously.

Silver Springs, Alaska · United States