49 Fun Facts About Lake Clark National Park

Which national park, also famed for its brown bears, lies directly south of Lake Clark?

Katmai. Lake Clark sits directly to its north, and each July Katmai's bears crowd Brooks Falls to catch salmon as they leap upstream.

Lake Clark's two active volcanoes are part of which volcanic zone?

The Ring of Fire. Ash from Alaska's stretch of it blows straight across some of the world's busiest air routes, so scientists keep watch on these volcanoes and warn pilots when one stirs.

What carved the basins of Lake Clark and the other long lakes on the national park's western side?

Glaciers. Rivers of ice gouged the valleys and, as they melted back about 12,000 years ago, left ridges of rubble that dam the lakes and hollows that filled with meltwater.

What happened to KLM Flight 867 when it flew into Redoubt Volcano's ash cloud in December 1989?

All four engines failed. The jumbo jet fell more than two miles before the crew restarted them and landed at Anchorage; nobody was hurt, but repairs cost $80 million.

Lake Clark is named after John W. Clark, who was what?

A trader at Nushagak. In 1891 a journalist on a winter expedition reached the lake and named it for his travelling companion, who had lived in western Alaska for a quarter of a century.

What threatened the Drift River oil terminal during Redoubt Volcano's 2009 eruption?

Lahars from melting ice. Hot avalanches of gas and rock stripped snow and ice off the summit, and the biggest mudflow ran 20 miles down the Drift River, up to two miles wide.

Which range of jagged granite peaks holds both of Lake Clark National Park's volcanoes?

Chigmit Mountains. They rose as great masses of granite pushed up from below, leaving what one naturalist called 'a sea of rock' thrown up by colliding mountain waves.

The language of Lake Clark's Native people belongs to the same family as which Southwestern nation's tongue?

Navajo. Both are Athabaskan languages, carried far apart by an ancient migration south; in the northern one Lake Clark is Qizhjeh Vena, roughly 'the lake where people gather'.

What is Libby's No. 23, a relic displayed beside Lake Clark National Park's visitor center?

A sailing fishing boat. Built in 1914, she worked the salmon fishery under sail for a cannery until about 1951, and the Park Service later spent seven years restoring her.

Which species of salmon was Lake Clark National Park created partly to protect?

Sockeye, also called red salmon. An average of 372,000 swim into the park each summer to spawn and die; without them, says the Park Service, it 'would be like a house with an empty pantry'.

Lake Clark's coastal bears are called brown bears; what are the same species usually called inland?

Grizzlies. They are one species: the name simply follows the menu, and inland bears with little or no seafood to eat are the ones called grizzlies.

Which bay on Lake Clark National Park's coast is one of Alaska's best-known bear-viewing spots?

Chinitna Bay. As many as twenty brown bears can be watched from one spot there, and since nobody feeds or hunts them they find people about as interesting as a gull.

Why do Lake Clark's bears flock to its small coastal salt marshes?

Early-summer food before the fish run. Bears leave their dens thin and hungry, and the marshes' young sedges are rich in protein; once the salmon arrive later in summer, the bears switch.

Why are Lake Clark's black bears so rarely seen, though they live across the park?

They avoid their bigger brown rivals. Outnumbered here, black bears pick quieter ground; the few that risk the prime feeding spots are mostly big males that stay near the trees, ready to bolt for cover.

The ammonites and other sea fossils at Fossil Point on Lake Clark's coast date from which geological period?

Jurassic. The Park Service dubs this coast 'Alaska's Jurassic Park', though its stars swam rather than stomped: shellfish from warm seas and the bones of ichthyosaurs, sea reptiles of the dinosaur age.

What is the title of the 2003 documentary about Richard Proenneke's solitary life in what is now Lake Clark National Park?

Alone in the Wilderness. It became a public-television favourite, and so much unused footage came to light afterwards that a second part followed in 2011.

What is the title of the 1973 book that Sam Keith shaped from Richard Proenneke's journals?

One Man's Wilderness. Keith knew Proenneke from the Kodiak naval base; a 1999 reissue won a National Outdoor Book Award, though Proenneke complained that his friend had 'changed some things'.

What became of Richard Proenneke's cabin after he left it for the last time?

The Park Service preserves it. Proenneke left the cabin to the nation, it joined the National Register of Historic Places in 2007, and a stone still sits on the chimney, as he kept it, to keep animals out.

In which Midwestern state was Richard Proenneke born and raised?

Iowa. He came from the farm village of Primrose, and at about 50 he went back to see his family once more before settling in the Alaskan wilderness for good.

Who held the camera as Richard Proenneke built his remote Alaskan cabin in 1968?

He did it himself. Proenneke set up his own camera to record the whole build and went on shooting for years, and that footage became the heart of the films later made about him.

What is the main settlement inside the park, home to the visitor center and several lodges?

Founded in 1950 by missionary bush pilot Babe Alsworth and his wife Mary, it sits on private land on Lake Clark and had 186 people in 2020.

Which church took root among Lake Clark's Native people in the 1800s?

Russian Orthodox. Russians came to the region for furs in the late 1700s, and their church outlasted their rule: elders say one was built beside the lake around 1889.

Settlers on Lake Clark kept radio contact in the 1930s with Anchorage's Star Airlines, the forerunner of which carrier?

Alaska Airlines. Star was one of several small Anchorage outfits of the day; it bought out a rival, McGee Airways, in 1934, and a string of further mergers produced the airline known today.

What does the 'redoubt' in the name of Lake Clark's Redoubt Volcano mean?

A fortified place. A redoubt is a small enclosed fort; the peak's older Native name is said to carry the same meaning, and at 10,197 feet it is the highest point in the park.

Which Athabaskan people's ancestral homeland includes Lake Clark?

Dena'ina. They have lived around the lake for more than a thousand years, and summer fish camps, where families net and put up salmon, remain at the heart of village life.

What is Kijik, Lake Clark's main archaeological site?

A Native village abandoned in the early 1900s. People had lived there for some 900 years; after flu and measles struck in 1902 the survivors moved down the lake, and by 1909 it stood empty.

Which British captain surveyed the inlet on Lake Clark National Park's eastern shore in 1778, leaving his name on it?

James Cook. He sailed up it on his last voyage hoping it was the Northwest Passage and found a dead end; George Vancouver, who had served under him, later named the inlet in his honour.

Which president proclaimed Lake Clark a national monument on December 1, 1978?

Jimmy Carter. He acted on his own under the Antiquities Act, which lets a president protect land by proclamation, and Congress upgraded Lake Clark to a national park and preserve two years later.

At about 4 million acres, Lake Clark National Park and Preserve is nearly the size of which US state?

Hawaii. The park and preserve cover 4.03 million acres against the islands' 4.11 million, yet not a single road leads into any of it: visitors arrive by small plane or by boat.

What may visitors do in Lake Clark National Preserve that is banned in the national park itself?

Sport hunting. Inside the park only local rural residents may hunt, to feed their households; in the preserve, visiting hunters need Alaska licences and, for some big game, a licensed guide.

Lake Clark National Park's vast designated wilderness is named for which former Alaska governor, once a local bush pilot?

Jay Hammond. The self-styled 'bush rat governor' flew, guided and homesteaded on Lake Clark before politics, then set up the Alaska Permanent Fund, which pays residents a yearly dividend.

Which proposed open-pit project near Lake Clark did the EPA effectively block in January 2023 to protect the region's salmon?

Pebble Mine. Its copper and gold lie under salmon headwaters just outside the park, and the agency used a rarely invoked Clean Water Act power to rule out dumping mine waste there.

What has turned the surface of Lake Clark orange in some summers?

Spruce needle rust spores. In 2012 so many washed off infected trees that orange plumes spread across the lake; the fungus needs a cool, wet May to take hold and rarely kills the spruce.

What roughly 460-year-old artefact did Park Service staff find in the shallows of a Lake Clark lake in 2021?

A hunting bow. The 54-inch bow, probably spruce, dates from between 1506 and 1660, and its style points to peoples farther west rather than the lake's own, a sign of how widely they traded.

By which river does Lake Clark's water leave the national park on its way to Iliamna Lake?

Newhalen. Park scientists count the salmon swimming up it every summer, carrying on a tally that university researchers began in the 1950s so that long swings in the run can be tracked.

What on Mount Iliamna, Lake Clark's quieter volcano, have pilots repeatedly mistaken for an eruption?

Steam from its fumaroles. Vents near the summit send up plumes almost constantly, vigorous enough to set off false eruption reports, while the mountain itself has stayed quiet for more than a century.

Redoubt Volcano in Lake Clark National Park is the highest peak of which long volcanic mountain chain?

The Aleutian Range. Redoubt towers more than 9,000 feet over the pass that carries the main air route west from Anchorage, and its 2009 eruption cancelled or diverted more than 385 flights.

On the shore of which Lake Clark National Park lake did Richard Proenneke build his famous cabin?

Upper Twin Lake. He first came in 1962 as the guest of friends from Kodiak who had a cabin there, kept returning, and in 1967 chose a site 200 yards from theirs.

What did Richard Proenneke rely on to build his log cabin in the Alaskan bush?

Only hand tools. He carried in the steel heads and carved the handles on site from local wood, and when a tool broke he mended it rather than send for a new one.

Lake Clark's coast lies about 65 air miles northwest of which Kenai Peninsula town, known for its long spit?

Homer. Air taxis from there reach the park's bear beaches in under an hour and land on the sand, while a boat from the harbour on the spit can take four or five hours.

What was Richard Proenneke's trade before he retired to the Alaskan wilderness?

Diesel mechanic. The man now remembered as a naturalist spent his working life fixing heavy machinery, and was so sought after that he could afford to stop work at about 50.

Which Lake Clark predators, tracked with GPS collars, turned out to eat large amounts of salmon when the fish run?

Wolves. They usually hunt anything from snowshoe hares to moose, yet biologists found several of the park's packs feeding heavily on salmon in season, and one pack by the lake is said to depend on the fish.

Which 1980 act of Congress made Lake Clark a national park and preserve?

ANILCA. The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act also promised that local rural residents could go on living off the land inside the new park, as families there had for generations.

Which insects have been killing mature conifers in and around Lake Clark, in outbreaks tied to warm, dry spells?

Bark beetles. They breed faster in warm years, and tree rings show that their big outbreaks in this part of Alaska have followed runs of warm, dry weather for at least two centuries.

The collision of which two tectonic plates built Lake Clark's mountains and volcanoes?

Pacific and North American. One plate slides under the other here at about 2.6 inches a year, roughly as fast as fingernails grow, and rock melted deep below feeds the volcanoes.

What do Lake Clark's coastal brown bears dig out of the tidal flats at low tide?

Clams. They dig razor clams and other shellfish from the mud when the tide is out, and the biggest coastal males weigh more than 1,000 pounds by the time they den for winter.

Lake Clark's rivers drain to which bay, home of the world's largest red-salmon fishery?

Bristol Bay. The park was created partly to keep the headwaters of that fishery untouched, and in 2023 the EPA cited the same salmon runs when it blocked a giant mine upstream.

The Chilikadrotna, Mulchatna and Tlikakila rivers in Lake Clark National Park all carry which federal river classification?

Wild. The label measures development, not scenery: it is the least developed of the three classes in the national system, kept for rivers with no dams that can generally be reached only by trail.

Which volcano, visible from Anchorage on a clear day, stands just outside Lake Clark National Park's eastern edge?

Mount Spurr. Its Crater Peak vent dropped ash on Anchorage in both 1953 and 1992, and scientists warn that another eruption would badly disrupt the city.