47 Fun Facts About Gates of the Arctic National Park

Which line of latitude runs closest to the park's southern boundary?

The Arctic Circle, at about 66°33′ N, passes a short way south of the park; the whole park lies north of it, making it the northernmost national park in the United States.

How many recreation visitors did the park record in 2021?

The park recorded 7,362 recreation visits in 2021, the fewest of any US national park that year; by comparison Great Smoky Mountains, the busiest, drew more than 14 million.

Roughly how long is the Brooks Range, which the park protects the centre of?

The Brooks Range runs about 700 miles (1,100 km) from the Chukchi Sea coast east across northern Alaska into Canada's Yukon; the park protects its central section.

In which year did Bob Marshall name the two peaks the 'Gates of the Arctic'?

Bob Marshall coined the name in 1929, on his first trip up the North Fork of the Koyukuk, for the pair of peaks he saw framing the valley like a portal to the Arctic.

What is the name of the two mountains that form the 'Gates'?

Boreal Mountain stands 6,375 feet and Frigid Crags 5,501 feet, facing each other across the North Fork of the Koyukuk.

Bob Marshall's bestselling 1933 book about the tiny Koyukuk settlement where he lived was called what?

Arctic Village (1933) became a bestseller; it describes the Koyukuk gold-mining settlement where Marshall lived for about a year in 1930–31, and he shared the royalties with its residents.

Which conservation organisation did Bob Marshall spearhead and largely bankroll from 1935?

Marshall co-founded The Wilderness Society in 1935 and paid most of its early bills; he died at 38 in 1939, and in 1964 the society helped pass the Wilderness Act.

Which president proclaimed Gates of the Arctic National Monument under the Antiquities Act?

Jimmy Carter proclaimed the monument on 1 December 1978, using the Antiquities Act to protect some 56 million acres of Alaska while the Alaska lands bill was stalled in Congress.

Which 1980 law turned the monument into today's park and preserve?

The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), signed 2 December 1980, made the monument a national park and preserve; the 1971 Native Claims Settlement Act had triggered the federal land review behind it.

How large are the park and preserve combined?

The park and preserve together cover about 8.5 million acres (8,472,506 acres), an area larger than Belgium; roughly 85 percent of it is designated wilderness.

Together with the adjoining Noatak backcountry, the park's protected core forms what?

The Gates of the Arctic and Noatak wilderness areas adjoin to form the largest contiguous wilderness in the United States, close to 13 million acres; the Noatak basin is also the country's largest intact mountain-ringed river watershed.

How many roads, trails, campgrounds and visitor centres are inside the park?

Visitors arrive by bush plane or hike in from the highway to the east; a few informal ATV tracks lead out of the one settlement, but that is all.

Which road passes within about five miles of the park's eastern boundary?

The Dalton Highway, built in 1974 as the haul road for the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, runs 414 mostly unpaved miles north from Livengood; reaching the park from it means fording a river on foot.

Which Iñupiat settlement sits in the middle of the park, outside the wilderness designation?

Anaktuvuk Pass, the Nunamiut Iñupiat village on the divide between the John and Anaktuvuk rivers, is the only settlement inside the park boundary; its land was left out of the wilderness designation.

What does 'Nunamiut' mean?

Nunamiut means 'people of the land': nuna is the Iñupiaq word for land and -miut means 'people of'. Unlike coastal Iñupiat who hunted whales and seals, they lived inland on caribou.

What does the name of the park's Nunamiut village mean in Iñupiaq?

The village's name means 'place of caribou droppings' in Iñupiaq, from anaq, 'dung'; the pass it sits in is a funnel for the caribou herds that cross the Brooks Range each spring and autumn.

The two peaks called the 'Gates' rise in which subrange of the Brooks Range?

The Gates peaks stand in the Endicott Mountains, the central section of the Brooks Range; the same subrange holds Mount Doonerak and the John River valley.

The pipeline haul road crosses the Brooks Range east of the park at which pass?

The haul road crosses the Brooks Range at Atigun Pass, which at 4,739 feet is the highest highway pass in Alaska; the Trans-Alaska Pipeline crosses beside it.

The park is the northernmost range limit for which animal?

Dall sheep, the white mountain sheep of Alaska and Yukon, reach the northern limit of their range in the Brooks Range; rams carry the curling amber horns prized by hunters.

Which sport fish is found in nearly every clear stream in the park?

Arctic grayling, with their tall, sail-like dorsal fin, live in almost every clear stream and lake in the park, feeding on insects in the brief Arctic summer.

What is the largest lake in the park?

Walker Lake, about 14 miles long and a mile wide on the south slope of the range near the Kobuk headwaters, is the park's largest lake and a National Natural Landmark.

How many Wild and Scenic Rivers does the park contain?

Six: the Alatna, John, Kobuk, Tinayguk and North Fork Koyukuk wild rivers, plus the upper Noatak, were all designated in 1980 by the same act that created the park.

The Noatak River rises in the park's Schwatka Mountains and flows how far to the Chukchi Sea?

The Noatak runs about 425 miles west from the Schwatka Mountains to Kotzebue Sound on the Chukchi Sea, most of that distance through Noatak National Preserve, and is a designated wild river.

What is the tallest mountain in the park?

Mount Igikpak, in the Schwatka Mountains at the head of the Noatak, is the park's highest point at 8,276 feet (2,523 m); it was first climbed in 1968.

What does 'Arrigetch', the name of the park's famous cluster of granite spires, mean in Iñupiaq?

Arrigetch means 'fingers of the outstretched hand' in Iñupiaq, a fitting name for this cluster of sheer granite spires west of the Alatna River, designated a National Natural Landmark in 1968.

The park straddles a continental divide separating the drainages of which two oceans?

The Pacific and the Arctic: rivers on the south slope feed the Koyukuk, Yukon and Bering Sea, an arm of the Pacific, while those north of the crest drain to the Beaufort Sea in the Arctic Ocean.

For how long have nomadic peoples lived in the Brooks Range?

Nomadic hunters have used the Brooks Range for as many as 12,500 years, since the end of the last ice age; the Arctic small tool tradition appears in the record about 4,500 years ago.

Which Northern Athabaskan people fought the Iñupiat in a great 19th-century battle and retreated south of the range?

They had lived in the area for the previous thousand years; the Gwich'in name for the Brooks Range is Gwazhał.

Where is the park's headquarters?

The park's headquarters is in Fairbanks, on the Geist Road campus it shares with Yukon–Charley Rivers National Preserve; from there staff fly north to the park's gateway villages.

Who is allowed to hunt inside the national park portion (as opposed to the preserve)?

Only local rural residents may hunt in the park, for subsistence, a right written into the 1980 Alaska lands act; sport hunters are confined to the preserve units.

The Ambler Road, proposed in the 2010s across 26 miles of the preserve, would reach what?

The 211-mile road would reach planned copper mines in the Ambler mining district, chiefly the Arctic copper–zinc deposit, crossing some 26 miles of the preserve on its way west from the pipeline haul road.

What is the name of the most recent major glaciation of the Brooks Range?

The Itkillik glaciation, named for the Itkillik River on the north side of the range, was the Brooks Range counterpart of the late Wisconsin ice advance that peaked about 24,000 years ago.

Which institution in the park's Nunamiut settlement tells the story of the Nunamiut and the Brooks Range?

The Simon Paneak Memorial Museum, named for a Nunamiut elder who recorded his people's knowledge with visiting scientists, holds Nunamiut tools, clothing and oral histories; it sits on village land inside the park.

How big a park did the National Park Service survey team recommend in 1968?

The 1968 Park Service survey recommended a park of about 4.1 million acres; the 1980 act that created the park and preserve enlarged that proposal greatly.

Which large predatory whitefish spawns in the upper Kobuk River each autumn?

Sheefish, or inconnu, are big fish-eating whitefish that can top 50 pounds; each autumn they spawn in the upper Kobuk, then winter downstream in the brackish waters of Kotzebue Sound.

How did Bob Marshall become wealthy enough to fund his Alaska expeditions and conservation work?

Marshall inherited part of the estate of his father Louis Marshall, a wealthy New York lawyer and Jewish community leader; the money funded his Alaska trips and conservation work while he kept his government forestry jobs.

Which three towns are the only settlements along the 414-mile road that parallels the pipeline?

Coldfoot, Wiseman and Deadhorse are the only settlements on the haul road: Coldfoot at mile 175, Wiseman at mile 188, and Deadhorse at the road's end near Prudhoe Bay at mile 414.

The Bateman Site in the park documents which late phase of the Arctic small tool tradition?

The Bateman Site records the Ipiutak phase; Ipiutak people, first identified at Point Hope, were a late offshoot of the Arctic small tool tradition flourishing roughly from 100 BC to AD 800.

The Brooks Range is usually counted as the northernmost part of which mountain system?

In US usage the Brooks Range is the northernmost section of the Rocky Mountains; it runs across northern Alaska into the Yukon and is thought to be about 126 million years old.

Which Alaskan park is the only US national park larger than Gates of the Arctic?

Wrangell–St. Elias, at more than 13 million acres with its preserve, is the largest US national park; Gates of the Arctic ranks second.

Which protected area's western edge lies about 10 miles east of the park's boundary?

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge begins about 10 miles east of the park, across the pipeline corridor; Kanuti refuge lies near the southeast corner, and Noatak National Preserve adjoins the west side.

Which Interior Secretary first urged a presidential proclamation of a Brooks Range monument?

Stewart Udall, Interior Secretary from 1961 to 1969, pressed the White House to proclaim a Brooks Range monument under the Antiquities Act; the idea was turned down, and the monument came a decade later.

Park Service operations are run from a ranger station in which tiny town south of the park?

Bettles, a village of a few dozen people on the Koyukuk River south of the park, hosts the Bettles Ranger Station and an airstrip used by bush flights into the park.

What is the highest peak in the entire Brooks Range, at 8,976 feet?

Mount Isto, in the Romanzof Mountains east of the park, is the Brooks Range's highest summit at 8,976 feet; a 2014 survey confirmed it edges out Mount Hubley and Mount Chamberlin.

The Iñupiat city in the middle of the park had what population at the 2020 census?

The 2020 census counted 425 people in the village, up from 324 in 2010; the community formed in 1949 when the last two nomadic Nunamiut bands settled together at the pass.

Bob Marshall began his government career in 1925 with which agency?

He later ran forestry for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and recreation management for the Forest Service under Franklin D. Roosevelt, dying at just 38.

The Mesa site at Iteriak Creek shows human occupation from roughly how long ago?

The Mesa site, a Paleoindian hunting lookout on a rock mesa above Iteriak Creek, was used from about 11,500 years ago; its projectile points resemble those of Paleoindian hunters far to the south.