Denali National Park

by Kathy White

Title

Denali National Park

Artist

Kathy White

Medium

Photograph - Photography--greeting Cards Or Notes Are Cheaper By The Dozen!

Description

My husband David took this photo in Alaska as we were touring Denali National Park. He wanted to show how narrow the road was that we were travelling on and the beauty of the landscape at the same time. What a beautiful place it was! Wild animals roamed, beautiful mountains loomed, weather changed as we rode along and we reached the higher points of the park.
The park was originally established to protect its large mammals, not because of majestic Mount McKinley. Charles Sheldon conceived the plan to conserve the region as a national park. Naturalist, hunter, and conservationist, Sheldon first traveled here in 1906 and again in 1907 with a packer and guide named Harry Karstens. (Karstens later made the first ascent of Mt. McKinley's south peak and would serve as the park's first superintendent.) Sheldon devoted much of his 1907 travels to studying boundaries for the proposed national park that would include territories suitable for a game refuge. When Sheldon returned to the East in 1908, the Game Committee of the Boone and Crockett Club, of which he was chairman, launched the campaign to establish a national park. Largely due to these efforts, Mount McKinley National Park was established in 1917. Its population of Dall sheep and other wildlife were now legislatively protected. However, Mount McKinley itself was not wholly included within the boundaries.
Sheldon wanted to call the park Denali, but his suggestion would not be followed until 1980. The changes in names and boundaries that have occurred over the years can be confusing, as they indicate the way various parts of the park and preserve may be used today. In 1917 Mount McKinley National Park was established as a wildlife refuge. The park and massif including North America's highest peak were named for a former senator - later President - William McKinley. In 1980, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) enlarged the boundary by 4 million acres and redesigned it as Denali National Park and Preserve. At 6 million acres or 7,370 square miles, the park is larger than Massachusetts. It exemplifies interior Alaska's character as one of the world's last great frontiers for wilderness adventure. It remains largely wild and unspoiled, as the Athabascans knew it. On 02 December 1980, President Jimmy Carter signed the bill establishing Denali National Park.
More then 650 species of flowering plants as well as many species of mosses, lichens, fungi, algae, and others grace the slops and valleys of Denali. Only plants adapted to long, bitterly cold winters can survive in this sub arctic wilderness. Deep beds of intermittent permafrost - ground frozen for thousands of years - underlie portions of the park and preserve. Only the thinnest layer of the topsoil thaws each summer to support life.
Tundra is a fascinating world of dwarfed shrubs and miniaturized wildflowers adapted to a short growing season. There are also two types, moist tundra and dry tundra, with myriad gradations in between.
The rivers are so young and so laden with pulverized rock, called rock flour, that they can wander across their broad, flat valleys to set new channels in a matter of days. The delicate beauty of the tundra points to the lofty, isolated, and often cloud-covered grandeur of the Mount McKinley massif.

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October 6th, 2013

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