Chisana - Gold Hill Mining Landscape: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve
Region 11 Park Cultural Landscapes Program. 2006. Chisana - Gold Hill Mining Landscape: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. Cultural Landscapes Inventory Report. 100060. U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service. NPS Alaska Regional Office, Anchorage, Alaska / CRIS-CL Database
Inventory Unit Description: Chisana - Gold Hill is a historic vernacular landscape that exemplifies the development of placer mining in Alaska, advancing through a number of discrete stages and employing a broad range of technologies and equipment. Starting with little more than a shovel and a gold pan, miners subsequently ground-sluiced promising creek bottoms and hydraulic mined the adjoining benches. The period of significance for this landscape is 1913 to 1942. The Chisana - Gold Hill Historic Mining Landscape is situated in south-eastern Alaska, just south of the Nutzotin Mountains near the eastern headwaters of the Chisana River and on the north eastern edge of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. Vegetation in the area is mainly associated with various tundra communities, interspersed with low shrubs on the slopes and riparian areas along the creeks. The area is characterized topographically by rolling hills and narrow valleys, with elevations ranging from 5,815 feet at the summit of Gold Hill to 3,200 feet near the townsite of Chisana City. Its higher areas provide sweeping vistas of both the Wrangell and Nutzotin Mountains. While miners usually built seasonal residences near their claims, they eventually established several larger and more distant communities as well. They also developed and maintained an extensive local transportation system, joining their mines, homes, and communities to the regional network which connected with Dawson City in the Yukon Territory, and with McCarthy, Chitina, and Gulkana, in Alaska.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Region 11 Park Cultural Landscapes Program
- Date of Issue
- 2006-08-28
- Publisher
- U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service
- Units
- AKR , WRST
- Keywords
- Carl F Whitham. Nels P Nelson, Chisana City, exploration/settlement, extractive facility, gold rush, historic vernacular landscape, industry, mining camp, placer mining, Shushuanna Joe, transportation network, tundra, William E James