Bears, Fish, Archeology, and Deferred Maintenance at Brooks Camp, Katmai National Park and Preserve

• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Petersen; Sockeye; Tundra
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.537.7354; http://www.georgewright.org/0709vinson.pdf

by active volcanoes; and lakes filling glacial troughs that extend from the mountains to the terminal moraines in the Bristol Bay tundra lowland. In the 1950s, Ray Petersen established five lodges in what is now Katmai National Park and Preserve. Four of the lodges are near short rivers connecting large lakes because Peterson recognized that the large sockeye salmon runs on these streams produced world-class rain-bow trout fishing. Brooks Camp, now the most visited area of Katmai National Park and Pre-serve, occupies the downstream end of the mile-long Brooks River which flows from Brooks Lake to Naknek Lake (Figure 1). The salmon runs on Brooks River also attracted many other species, including brown bears and people (Figure 2). In 1950, archeologists noted the presence of three archeological sites in the Brooks Camp vicinity. The fish camp by the river mouth started as a group of World War II surplus tents, but soon new facilities were built on XMK-044, an important archeological site on the terrace next to the fish camp. The National Park Service (NPS) began to establish a presence, building a cabin and a boat house a little way down the shore of Naknek Lake. Researchers from the University of Oregon, directed by Don Dumond, conducted