Brooks Camp Cultural Landscape, Katmai National Park and Preserve

The Brooks Camp Historic District cultural landscape. National Park Service, Alaska Regional Office.

Brooks Camp Historic District lies on the west shore of Naknek Lake in Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Its landscape tells the story of national park development and tourism in Alaska in the 1950s and 1960s — on ground where fish have drawn people for at least 6,000 years.

Opening the monument

The National Park Service's history in the area began in 1918, when Katmai National Monument was designated; its boundaries expanded in 1931 to take in the Brooks River. The Park Service first hoped to spread visitor destinations across the monument, but its remoteness made planning impossible, and from 1919 to 1949 it stayed closed to the public, with minimal management and no services.

In 1950 the Park Service signed a contract with Petersen's Northern Consolidated Airlines — the first time an airline provided the main access to a park site, and the first Park Service concession lease to an airline. The opening coincided with the rise of ecotourism, mostly among sport fishermen, and the airline opened five fishing camps that year. To regulate the new activity, the Park Service stationed a single seasonal ranger at the campground before building a permanent ranger station.

Building a hub

Visitors poured in during the 1950s and 1960s seeking a "Last Frontier" experience, and Brooks Camp grew into Katmai's center of activity, with concession cabins, a lodge, the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes Road and an interpretation program. In the 1960s the Park Service and the airline built a series of milled cedar cabins called Pan Abodes, after the company that made them; they became the park's most recognizable style and a key part of its rustic character. By 1967 most of the camps, buildings, trails and roads of early tourism and park development were in place. Bears began appearing around camp in larger numbers in 1966, drawing visitors who came specifically to watch them.

Brooks Camp from the air, looking over the Brooks River toward Naknek Lake. Photo by Russ Taylor, National Park Service.

Brooks River Camp from the air in 1965. National Park Service, Katmai National Park and Preserve Archives.

Significance and condition

The condition is fair: carrying out the 1996 Development Concept Plan as written would remove eligible structures, and a maintenance backlog, nesting and gnawing rodents, non-historic facades and additions, and heavy concession and visitor use all wear on the landscape's integrity without proactive management.

What gives the landscape its character

Natural systems. Brooks Lake, the Brooks River and its falls, and Naknek Lake form a dynamic watershed. Millions of anadromous salmon migrate up the river each year to spawn, feeding brown bears and drawing anglers, along with wolves, lynx, foxes, moose, beavers, birds and small mammals.

Bears and people have fished at the mouth of the Brooks River for thousands of years. Photo by L. Law, National Park Service.

Land use. From ancestral times to today, people have come here mainly to harvest salmon and other fish, with Indigenous fish camps and seasonal homes in the historic era, then sport fishing, "Last Frontier" tourism and bear viewing.

Vera Angasan holding a trout, 1950. Photo by Ranger Bill Nancarrow, NPS Archives.

Buildings. Two construction styles define the district:

• Pan Abode cabins: prefabricated, milled western red cedar planks, 3 by 6 inches, joined by single tongue and groove like log construction; low-pitched metal roofs with deep eaves; overlapping corner notches with a "bear bar"; original multi-light wood picture windows; recessed, round-cornered entrances.
• Park Service log buildings — the Brooks River Ranger Station, boat storage house and elevated ranger cache — from the early years of tourism and park management: alternating large and small spruce logs, peeled saddle-notched walls, quartered split-log chinking, rock pier foundations, gable roofs on purlins with exposed rafters, and corrugated metal roofing.

Drawings of the Pan Abode design used at Brooks Camp. National Park Service.

One of the Pan Abode cabin styles at Brooks Camp. Photo by C. Chapman, National Park Service.

Brooks Camp Ranger Station, 2011. National Park Service photo.

Views and paths. Key views look over the Brooks River from the concession area, from the beach across Naknek Lake, and toward Dumpling Mountain. Important trails run from the lodge to the ranger station, to the campground, and from the concession office down to the river. Smaller features include the flagpole on Naknek Lake Beach and possibly the timber steps to the ranger station.

Naknek Lake from the shore at Brooks Camp. Photo by C. Bell, National Park Service.

The historic district, with the features that contribute to its historic character. National Park Service, Alaska Regional Office.

Sources

• National Park Service, Cultural Landscapes of Katmai National Park and Preserve: "Brooks Camp Cultural Landscape." Some of the source's captions spell Pan Abode as "Pan Adobe"; the company's name is used here.