Too Much to Lose: Alaska's Park Museums Prepare for Fire and a Warming Climate

Smokejumpers arrive at Denali National Park and Preserve for the Riley Fire, which began near the park entrance on June 30, 2024. NPS / Bradley Hagstrom.

Irreplaceable things

In a historic building among the spruce, Denali National Park's museum storage room holds trace fossils, mammoth bones, projectile points and stone tools, historical photographs, and the parka Barbara Washburn wore when she became the first woman to summit Mount McKinley. Curator Kimberly Arthur looks after their care, storage and records, guarding each item against temperature, humidity and light. "All of these items are significant and would be terrible to lose," she said.

The Riley Fire

On June 30, 2024, after weeks of warm, dry weather, black spruce caught fire by the railroad along the park's eastern edge, just a mile north of the entrance. Flames climbed the Mount Healy hillside, smoke filled the Nenana River Canyon, and the fire grew to more than 300 acres in a few hours.

In the evacuation zone, downstairs at the Denali Visitor Center, stood a Dene (Athabascan) bear spear, more than 100 years old and on loan from the Starr family of Tanana, who lived and subsisted on the land before it was a park. Its birch shaft, wrapped in moose sinew with a steel blade, is angled up to show how hunters braced it so a charging bear ran onto the point.

The Starr family bear spear, on display at the Denali Visitor Center since August 2022. NPS photo.

• The plan fell short: the park's Museum Collections Emergency Operations Plan, awaiting revision, listed outdated contacts for temporary storage.
• Local ties filled the gap: Arthur called community contacts and found a safe place about 30 miles south for the spear, Adolph Murie's camera and the pen President Woodrow Wilson used to create the park — worried most about smoke and firefighting water. "I just had to make decisions, and I'm glad that I knew people in the community," she said. She also lined up the Alaska Regional Curatorial Center and fire supervisors to move more to Anchorage if needed.
• The outcome: cool, rainy weather and many crews contained the fire; nothing had to move.

It was good practice. Arthur plans to share a list of priority items with staff and local first responders, and has marked filing cabinets with reflective tape so rescuers can find the records.

Better plans, with new funding

With Inflation Reduction Act money, Denali and other Alaska parks will revise their emergency plans: fix gaps, prioritize collection items, arrange secure emergency storage, and write clear steps for wildfires, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions and other disasters.

The slow threat

Gradual change can harm collections as surely as disaster: warmer temperatures, wetter summers, shifting humidity and harsher freeze-thaw cycles. Alaska is warming nearly four times faster than the rest of the world.

At Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, curator Martin Hobmeier keeps the first specimen of Coccotrema hahriae, a lichen new to science, found near the Chilkoot Trail in 2008 — one of five new species from that survey. The park is one of the world's richest places for lichens — 757 species in 53 km² — and its 2,223-specimen collection documents it. Too humid and lichens mold; too dry and they crack. Southeast Alaska's mild climate once let the park store collections without heating or cooling — "a thing of the past," Hobmeier said. Now an air conditioner goes in each summer, and the park will assess its buildings for HVAC, insulation or stronger roofs for heavier snow. Warmer weather could also let pests that chew collections take hold in Alaska.

The new lichen Coccotrema hahriae on a hemlock twig near the Chilkoot Trail. NPS photo.

The people's collections

"National park collections are held in the public trust and are property of the people of the United States," said Molly Conley, curator at the Alaska Regional Curatorial Center. At Sitka National Historical Park, many items are on long-term loan from Native and local groups, and Tlingit and Russian Orthodox communities use them in ceremonies. Researchers worldwide ask to borrow Klondike's lichens, which could one day yield DNA or heavy-metal data — "and probably ways that we can't even conceive at this point!" Hobmeier said. A digital copy can't replace the original.

A replica sculpin hat, replacing a damaged original more than 100 years old, dedicated as at.óow (sacred ceremonial property) of the Tlingit Kiks.ádi clan, who still use it in ceremonies. NPS photo.

Ready in advance

Park collections are kept forever, so disasters are certain over their lifetime. "It's not a matter of 'if' there will be a natural disaster, it's a matter of 'when'," Conley said. The new funding gives Alaska's parks time to plan ahead. Asked what she'd do if fire cut the Denali park road, Arthur had ideas ready: "We can find a way."

Sources

Based on "Too Much to Lose: Preparing National Park Museum Collections for Climate Change," by Laura Vachula, writing partner with the National Park Service's Natural Resource Stewardship & Science Directorate, August 2024, National Park Service; published by the National Park Service and in the public domain; rewritten in hubnx's own words. The author's portrait is not reproduced.