While I was pleased to discuss my job as park historian for Lake Clark National Park and Preserve with reporter Douglas Wright I wanted to clarify the article that appeared in the Lakes Region Suburban Weekly on Nov. 4.

Port Alsworth is not really a port, but it does lie on 45 mile long Lake Clark. When I spoke of “off the beaten track” I was referring to the Bristol Bay region of southwest Alaska in general, not just Port Alsworth. Port Alsworth is not known for the “world’s greatest salmon fisheries,” rather the entire Bristol Bay region is, with the Bering Sea coastal towns of Naknek and Dillingham being the center of salmon processing. There are no salmon canneries on Lake Clark. All commercial fishing and processing occurs on the Bristol Bay coast of the Bering Sea, however, there are a number of fly-out sport fishing lodges on Lake Clark.

Lake Clark is known as one of the major red salmon spawning areas in the entire Bristol Bay ecosystem, indeed, in the world. Red salmon spawn along the lake shore and in clear water and cloudy glacial water tributaries of Lake Clark. Lake Clark National Park and Preserve was created by Congress in 1980 to preserve Bristol Bay red salmon spawning habitat.

Mr. Wright misspelled the word Kijik, as in the Kijik National Historic Landmark, which is a 2,500 acre archeological district that spans about 1,000 years of Dena’ina Athabascan Indian occupancy around Lake Clark. Most geographical features in the park have no official name, but most of the more prominent features have Dena’ina names. I did not mean to give Mr. Wright the impression that Paleoindians lived at Kijik 11,000 years ago because that area was probably covered by a huge glacier up to about 6,000 years ago. However, there is an area north of Kijik that preliminary radio carbon analysis of hearth remains indicates the presence of Paleoindians about 11,000 years before present.

I did not say the first plane landed in Anchorage in 1930, that would have been 1925. Rather I said the first plane landed at Lake Clark in 1930. I also did not say there were few Euroamericans in Alaska prior to 1930.

I am editing the journals of Richard “Dick” Proenneke. He donated about 100 pounds of journals covering the years 1967 to about 1993 to Lake Clark National Park and Preserve. A book of Proenneke’s journals is now at press covering the years 1974 through 1980, and for that book I read about 1.6 million words he wrote during that span, and I have condensed it to about 250,000 words.

John Branson

Port Alsworth, Alaska