History

From volcanoes and oil tankers to the National Geographic Society, Katmai has a rich and fascinating history.

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History Details

In 1912, the volcano Novarupta erupted. It was the largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century, rivaled only by Greece's Santorini eruption in the late 1500s. More than three cubic miles of molten lava spewed from the volcano for three days, a volume so immense it actually caused the summit of nearby Mount Katmai to implode as magma drained from underneath it. Ash rained down from 100,000 feet in the air, darkening the skies for miles. When the event was over, what had once been a lush river valley took on the appearance of a foreign planet. Buried under hundreds of feet of scorching ash and pumice, the Ukak River and its surrounding tundra poured smoke and steam into the air. Four years later, when botanist Robert Griggs visited the area with the National Geographic Society, buried river water continued to evaporate from the heat of the ash, sending up steam from hundreds of “fumaroles” or natural vents. Because of this, he called the area the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. Moved by the stark and unique landscape, Griggs spearheaded an effort to turn the Katmai area into a National Monument, to protect the fragile post-eruption environment for research and exploration. His efforts prevailed and in 1918 Katmai National Monument was born. Over the next several decades, little was done with the area. It was of no great mineral value and tourism amounted to almost nothing. Not until the 1930s did the park service discover the impressive number of brown bears in the region. As a result, they petitioned to increase the perimeter of the monument. In 1931 President Herbert Hoover expanded the monument to more than two million acres, adding more bear habitat. Over the next 50 years, under several presidents, the protected lands increased as the park service discovered critical fish habitat in many of the nearby rivers. The expansion of poaching further drove the parks service to increase their protection and regulation of the land. In 1980, Katmai became a national park. Early on, tourism in the park centered around sport fishing. Today, bear watching is another main draw, as people come to observe the bears from Brooks Camp or head into the backcountry to experience them unfiltered. The 1989, the oil tanker, Exxon Valdez, hit a reef in Prince William Sound spilling millions of gallons of oil and damaging to Katmai's Pacific coastline. Many tons of oil residue were dredged from the shoreline; thousands of birds and other marine life died. As recently as 2005, oil residue was found in trace amounts in the coastal waters.

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