Denali National Park and Preserve
Denali National Park and Preserve is an American national park and preserve located in Interior Alaska, centered on Denali, the highest mountain in North America. The park and contiguous preserve encompass 6,045,153 acres, larger than the state of New Hampshire. On December 2, 1980, 2,146,580-acre Denali Wilderness was established within the park. Denali's landscape is a mix of forest at the lowest elevations, including deciduous taiga, with tundra at middle elevations, glaciers and bare rock at the highest elevations; the longest glacier is the Kahiltna Glacier. Wintertime activities include dog sledding, cross-country skiing, snowmobiling; the park received 594,660 recreational visitors in 2018. Human habitation in the Denali Region extends to more than 11,000 years before the present, with documented sites just outside park boundaries dated to more than 8,000 years before present; however few archaeological sites have been documented within the park boundaries, owing to the region's high elevation, with harsh winter conditions and scarce resources compared to lower elevations in the area.
The oldest site within park boundaries is the Teklanika River site, dated to about 7130 BC. More than 84 archaeological sites have been documented within the park; the sites are characterized as hunting camps rather than settlements, provide little cultural context. The presence of Athabaskan peoples in the region is dated to 1,500 - 1,000 years before present on linguistic and archaeological evidence, while researchers have proposed that Athabaskans may have inhabited the area for thousands of years before then; the principal groups in the park area in the last 500 years include the Koyukon and Dena'ina people. Other prehistoric finds include Mesozoic fossils from the Denali Region. Studies of fossil plants from the same formation indicate the area was wet, with marshes and ponds throughout the region. In 1906, conservationist Charles Alexander Sheldon conceived the idea of preserving the Denali region as a national park, he presented the plan to his co-members of the Crockett Club. They decided that the political climate at the time was unfavorable for congressional action, that the best hope of success rested on the approval and support from the Alaskans themselves.
Sheldon wrote, "The first step was to secure the approval and cooperation of the delegate who represented Alaska in Congress."In October 1915, Sheldon took up the matter with Dr. E. W. Nelson of the Biological Survey at Washington, D. C. and with George Bird Grinnell, with a purpose to introduce a suitable bill in the coming session of Congress. The matter was taken to the Game Committee of the Boone and Crockett Club and, after a full discussion, it received the committee's full endorsement. On December 3, 1915, the plan was presented to Alaska's delegate, James Wickersham, who after some deliberation gave his approval; the plan went to the Executive Committee of the Boone and Crockett Club and, on December 15, 1915, it was unanimously accepted. The plan was thereupon endorsed by the Club and presented to Stephen Mather, Assistant Secretary of the Interior in Washington, D. C. who approved it. The bill was introduced in April, 1916, by Delegate Wickersham in the House and by Senator Key Pittman of Nevada in the Senate.
Much lobbying took place over the following year, on February 19, 1917, the bill passed. On February 26, 1917, 11 years from its conception, the bill was signed in legislation by the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, thereby creating Mount McKinley National Park. A portion of Denali, excluding the summit, was included the original park boundary. On Thanksgiving Day in 1921, the Mount McKinley Park Hotel opened. In July 1923, President Warren Harding stopped at the hotel, on a tour of the length of the Alaska Railroad, during which he drove a golden spike signaling its completion at Nenana; the hotel was the first thing. The flat-roofed, two-story log building featured exposed balconies, glass windows, electric lights. Inside were two dozen guest rooms, a shop, lunch counter and storeroom. By the 1930s, there were reports of lice, dirty linen, drafty rooms, marginal food, which led to the hotel's closing. In 1947, the park boundaries expanded to include the area of the railroad. After being abandoned for many years, the hotel was destroyed in 1950 by a fire.
There was no road access to the park entrance until 1957. Now with a highway connection to Anchorage and Fairbanks, park attendance expanded: there were 5,000 visitors in 1956 and 25,000 visitors by 1958; the park was designated an international biosphere reserve in 1976. A separate Denali National Monument was proclaimed by President Jimmy Carter on December 1, 1978; the name of Mount McKinley National Park was subject to local criticism from the beginning of the park. The word Denali means "the high one" in the native Athabaskan language and refers to the mountain itself; the mountain was named after newly elected US president William McKinley in 1897 by local prospector William A. Dickey; the United States government formally adopted the name Mount McKinley after President Wilson signed the bill creating Mount McKinley National Park into effect in 1917. In 1980, Mount McKinley National Park was combined with Denali National Monument, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act named the combined unit the Denali National Park and Preserve.
At that time the Alaska state Board of Geographic Names changed
Nenana, Alaska
Nenana is a Home Rule City in the Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area of the Unorganized Borough in the Interior of the U. S. state of Alaska. Nenana developed as a Lower Tanana community at the confluence where the tributary Nenana River enters the Tanana; the population was 378 at the 2010 census, down from 402 in 2000. Completed in 1923, the 700-foot-long Mears Memorial Bridge was built over the Tanana River as part of the territory's railroad project connecting Anchorage and Fairbanks. Nenana is in the westernmost portion of Tanana territory; the town was first known by European Americans as Tortella, a transliteration of the Indian word Toghotthele, which means "mountain that parallels the river." It was named for the river and the Nenana people who live nearby. The Nenana people became accustomed to contact with Europeans, due to trading journeys to the Village of Tanana, where Russians bartered Western goods for furs from 1838; the United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867. Early American explorers and traders, such as Henry Tureman Allen, Arthur Harper and Bates, first entered the Tanana Valley in 1874 and 1885.
In 1902 the discovery of gold in Fairbanks brought intense activity to the region. The next year, Jim Duke built a trading post/roadhouse to supply river travelers and trade with the Nenana community. In 1905 the Episcopal Church, which had missionaries in Alaska, built the St. Mark's Episcopal mission and Tortella School a short distance upriver; the boarding school taught about 28 children of various ages at a time. Hudson Stuck, the Archdeacon of the Yukon visited the settlement, part of the 250,000 square-acre territory of the Interior he administered. Native children from other communities, such as Minto attended school in Nenana. A post office opened in 1908. In 1915, construction of the Alaska Railroad brought new settlers; the railroad connected Nenana to the southern port city of Anchorage. The community incorporated as a city in 1921; the Railroad Depot was completed in 1923. That year, United States President Warren Harding arrived to drive the final, golden spike at the north end of the 700-foot-long Mears Memorial Bridge built over the Tanana River as part of the state's railroad project.
This railroad truss bridge, the longest in the United States and its territories when completed, gave Nenana a rail transportation link north to Fairbanks and Seward, Alaska. The bridge still ranks as the longest span in Alaska and the third-longest truss bridge in the United States; the construction had encouraged businesses and settlement in town. According to local records, 5,000 residents lived in Nenana by the early 1920s. After the railroad was completed, however and construction workers left the area; the city suffered an economic slump, most of the residents migrated to seek work in other places. By 1930, the population had dropped to 291. Nenana was the starting point for the 1925 serum run to Nome, after diphtheria antitoxin had been transported by rail from Anchorage, it was carried by dog sled to Nome to treat people in an epidemic. In 1961, Clear Air Force Station was constructed 21 miles southwest. During this construction, many civilian contractors commuted from Nenana. A road was constructed south to Clear, but northbound vehicles had to be ferried across the Tanana River.
In 1967 the community was devastated by one of the largest floods recorded in the valley. In 1968 a $6 million bridge for vehicles was completed across the Tanana River, which gave the town a modern road link to Fairbanks and replaced the river ferry; the George Parks Highway was completed in 1971. The federally recognized tribe in the community is the Nenana Native Association, who traditionally spoke the Lower Tanana language. Under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971, they have rights of self-government and managing some of their traditional territory. According to the 2000 Census, 41% of the city residents were Native American. Residents of Nenana sponsor a nature-based lottery. Entrants buy a ticket and pick a date in April or May and a time, to the closest minute, when they think the winter ice on the Tanana River will break up; this lottery began in 1917 among a group of surveyors working for the Alaska Railroad. They formed a betting pool as they waited for the river to open and boats to arrive with needed supplies.
The competition is run as follows: a large striped tripod is placed on the frozen Tanana River and connected to a clock. The winner is whoever comes closest to guessing the precise time when the ice beneath weakens to the point that the tripod moves and stops the clock. Interest in the pool attracts bettors statewide; this lottery has paid out nearly $10 million in prize money, with the winning pool in recent years being near $300,000. In the summer of 2008, Nenana suffered heavy damage due to flooding; the Tanana River reached its second-highest level since written record keeping began. Nenana is located at 64°33′50″N 149°5′35″W, in the Nenana Recording District. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 6.1 square miles, of which, 6.0 square miles of it is land and 0.1 square miles of it is water. Nenana is located 55 road miles southwest of Fairbanks on the George Parks Highway and 304 road miles north of Anchorage, it is at mile 412 of the Alaska Railroad. The river is ice-free from early May to late October.
Nenana has a continental subarctic climate. Nenana first reported on the 1910 U. S. Census as a
Nenana River
The Nenana River is a tributary of the Tanana River 140 miles long, in central Alaska in the United States. It drains an area on the north slope of the Alaska Range on the south edge of the Tanana Valley southwest of Fairbanks, it issues from the Nenana Glacier in the northern Alaska Range, southwest of Mount Deborah 100 mi south of Fairbanks. It flows southwest west north, forming the eastern boundary of Denali National Park and Preserve, it emerges from the mountains onto the broad marshy Tanana Valley, joining the Tanana River from the south at Nenana, Alaska 35 miles southwest of Fairbanks. The Tanana River continues to its confluence with the Yukon River; the upper valley of the river furnishes 100 mi of the northern route of both the Alaska Railroad and the Parks Highway connecting Fairbanks and Anchorage. The Nenana supports populations of Alaska blackfish, Arctic grayling, Arctic lamprey, broad whitefish, chum salmon, humpback whitefish, king salmon, lake chubs, least cisco, longnose suckers, northern pike, round whitefish, silver salmon, slimy sculpins.
Major archaeological sites located in the valley include Broken Mammoth and Swan Point, of late Pleistocene age. Lieutenant Henry Allen of the U. S. Army explored the river in 1887, he named it the Cantwell River after Lieutenant John C. Cantwell, of the Revenue Cutter Service, who had explored the Kobuk River region in 1884–85. In 1898, members of the United States Geological Survey reported that people living along the river called it Tutlut. However, the local Tanana name was spelled Nenana on a map. A century linguist William Bright wrote that the river's name derived from the Lower Tanana word, neenano', meaning the "stopping-while-migrating stream"; the river is one of the most popular destinations for whitewater rafting in Alaska. Thousands of users, some on commercial cruises and others on private trips, travel on the river each year; the proximity of the Denali Highway, which runs parallel to the upper river for about 15 miles, the Parks Highway, which follows the river for 80 miles, makes the river accessible at many places.
The river begins as a Class I rafting stream on the International Scale of River Difficulty. Jetboats and other craft ply the waters along the Denali Highway. Below this, the flow rate increases, the Nenana becomes a Class I to II stream for the 38 miles between Windy Station and McKinley Village Lodge; the most difficult whitewater, for experts only, occurs over the next 23 miles, in Nenana Gorge between McKinley Village and Healy, is rated Class IV. Below this, the river is Class II all the way to Nenana. Dangers include cold swift water, Class IV rapids in the gorge, overhanging trees along the upper river, overhangs and braids on the lower river. An additional danger at the river mouth involves following the wrong braid, missing the take-out at Nenana, being swept into the Tanana River, from which it may not be possible to exit until reaching Manley Hot Springs, 90 miles further downstream. List of rivers of Alaska Nenana Wildwater Festival Fairbanks Paddlers
Alaska
Alaska is a U. S. state in the northwest extremity of North America, just across the Bering Strait from Asia. The Canadian province of British Columbia and territory of Yukon border the state to the east and southeast, its most extreme western part is Attu Island, it has a maritime border with Russia to the west across the Bering Strait. To the north are the Chukchi and Beaufort seas—southern parts of the Arctic Ocean; the Pacific Ocean lies to southwest. It is the largest U. S. state by the seventh largest subnational division in the world. In addition, it is the most sparsely populated of the 50 United States. Half of Alaska's residents live within the Anchorage metropolitan area. Alaska's economy is dominated by the fishing, natural gas, oil industries, resources which it has in abundance. Military bases and tourism are a significant part of the economy; the United States purchased Alaska from the Russian Empire on March 30, 1867, for 7.2 million U. S. dollars at two cents per acre. The area went through several administrative changes before becoming organized as a territory on May 11, 1912.
It was admitted as the 49th state of the U. S. on January 3, 1959. The name "Alaska" was introduced in the Russian colonial period when it was used to refer to the Alaska Peninsula, it was derived from an Aleut-language idiom. It means object to which the action of the sea is directed. Alaska is the northernmost and westernmost state in the United States and has the most easterly longitude in the United States because the Aleutian Islands extend into the Eastern Hemisphere. Alaska is the only non-contiguous U. S. state on continental North America. It is technically part of the continental U. S. but is sometimes not included in colloquial use. S. called "the Lower 48". The capital city, Juneau, is situated on the mainland of the North American continent but is not connected by road to the rest of the North American highway system; the state is bordered by Yukon and British Columbia in Canada, to the east, the Gulf of Alaska and the Pacific Ocean to the south and southwest, the Bering Sea, Bering Strait, Chukchi Sea to the west and the Arctic Ocean to the north.
Alaska's territorial waters touch Russia's territorial waters in the Bering Strait, as the Russian Big Diomede Island and Alaskan Little Diomede Island are only 3 miles apart. Alaska has a longer coastline than all the other U. S. states combined. Alaska is the largest state in the United States by total area at 663,268 square miles, over twice the size of Texas, the next largest state. Alaska is larger than all but 18 sovereign countries. Counting territorial waters, Alaska is larger than the combined area of the next three largest states: Texas and Montana, it is larger than the combined area of the 22 smallest U. S. states. There are no defined borders demarcating the various regions of Alaska, but there are six accepted regions: The most populous region of Alaska, containing Anchorage, the Matanuska-Susitna Valley and the Kenai Peninsula. Rural unpopulated areas south of the Alaska Range and west of the Wrangell Mountains fall within the definition of South Central, as do the Prince William Sound area and the communities of Cordova and Valdez.
Referred to as the Panhandle or Inside Passage, this is the region of Alaska closest to the rest of the United States. As such, this was where most of the initial non-indigenous settlement occurred in the years following the Alaska Purchase; the region is dominated by the Alexander Archipelago as well as the Tongass National Forest, the largest national forest in the United States. It contains the state capital Juneau, the former capital Sitka, Ketchikan, at one time Alaska's largest city; the Alaska Marine Highway provides a vital surface transportation link throughout the area, as only three communities enjoy direct connections to the contiguous North American road system. Designated in 1963; the Interior is the largest region of Alaska. Fairbanks is the only large city in the region. Denali National Park and Preserve is located here. Denali is the highest mountain in North America. Southwest Alaska is a sparsely inhabited region stretching some 500 miles inland from the Bering Sea. Most of the population lives along the coast.
Kodiak Island is located in Southwest. The massive Yukon–Kuskokwim Delta, one of the largest river deltas in the world, is here. Portions of the Alaska Peninsula are considered part of Southwest, with the remaining portions included with the Aleutian Islands; the North Slope is tundra peppered with small villages. The area is known for its massive reserves of crude oil, contains both the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska and the Prudhoe Bay Oil Field; the city of Utqiagvik known as Barrow, is the northernmost city in the United States and is located here. The Northwest Arctic area, anchored by Kotzebue and containing the Kobuk River valley, is regarded as being part of this region. However, the respective Inupiat of the No
Braided river
A braided river, or braided channel, consists of a network of river channels separated by small temporary, islands called braid bars or, in British usage, aits or eyots. Braided streams occur in rivers with low slope, and/or large sediment load. Braided channels are typical of environments that decrease channel depth, channel velocity, such as river deltas, alluvial fans, peneplains. Braided rivers, as distinct from meandering rivers, occur when a threshold level of sediment load or slope is reached while a steep gradient is maintained. Geologically speaking, an increase in sediment load over time will increase the slope of the river, so these two conditions may be considered synonymous. A threshold slope was experimentally determined to be 0.016 for a 0.15 cu ft/s stream with poorly sorted coarse sand. Any slope over this threshold created a braided stream, while any slope under the threshold created a meandering stream or – for low slopes – a straight channel. So the main controlling factor on river development is the amount of sediment that the river carries.
Important to channel development is the proportion of suspended load sediment to bed load. An increase in suspended sediment allowed for the deposition of fine erosion-resistant material on the inside of a curve, which accentuated the curve and in some instances, caused a river to shift from a braided to a meandering profile; the channels and braid bars are highly mobile, with the river layout changing during flood events. Channels move sideways via differential velocity: On the outside of a curve, swift water picks up sediment, re-deposited in slow-moving water on the inside of a bend; the braided channels may flow within an area defined by stable banks or may occupy an entire valley floor. The Rakaia River in Canterbury, New Zealand has cut a channel 100 metres wide into the surrounding plains. Conditions associated with braided channel formation include: an abundant supply of sediment high stream gradient rapid and frequent variations in water discharge erodible banks a steep channel gradientHowever, the critical factor that determines whether a stream will meander or braid is bank erodibility.
A stream with cohesive banks that are resistant to erosion will form narrow, meandering channels, whereas a stream with erodible banks will form wide, shallow channels, sustaining helical flow and resulting in the formation of braided channels. Extensive braided river systems are found in Alaska, New Zealand's South Island, the Himalayas, which all contain young eroding mountains; the enormous Brahmaputra-Jamuna River in Asia is a classic example of a braided river. Braided river systems are present in Africa, for example in the Touat Valley. A notable example of a large braided stream in the contiguous United States is the Platte River in central and western Nebraska; the sediment of the arid Great Plains is augmented by the presence of the nearby Sandhills region north of the river. A portion of the lower Yellow River takes a braided form; the Sewanee Conglomerate, a Pennsylvanian coarse sandstone and conglomerate unit present on the Cumberland Plateau near the University of the South, may have been deposited by an ancient braided and meandering river that once existed in the eastern United States.
Others have interpreted the depositional environment for this unit as a tidal delta. Notable braided rivers in Europe: Italy Tagliamento Piave Brenta Cellina Meduna Fella Magra Poland and Belarus Narew Anastomosing rivers or streams are similar to braided rivers in that they consist of multiple interweaving channels. However, anastomosing rivers consist of a network of low-gradient, deep channels with stable banks, in contrast to braided rivers, which form on steeper gradients and display less bank stability. Ait – Islands found on the River Thames and its tributaries in England Anabranch – A section of a river or stream that diverts from the main channel and rejoins it downstream. Lagoon – A shallow body of water separated from a larger body of water by barrier islands or reefs Shoal – A natural landform that rises from the bed of a body of water to near the surface and is covered by unconsolidated material Hibbert, Barry. Braided River Field Guide. Christchurch, N. Z.: Deptartment of Conservation.
ISBN 9780478221213. Media related to Braided rivers at Wikimedia Commons
Google Earth
Google Earth is a computer program that renders a 3D representation of Earth based on satellite imagery. The program maps the Earth by superimposing satellite images, aerial photography, GIS data onto a 3D globe, allowing users to see cities and landscapes from various angles. Users can explore the globe by using a keyboard or mouse; the program can be downloaded on a smartphone or tablet, using a touch screen or stylus to navigate. Users may use the program to add their own data using Keyhole Markup Language and upload them through various sources, such as forums or blogs. Google Earth is able to show various kinds of images overlaid on the surface of the earth and is a Web Map Service client. In addition to Earth navigation, Google Earth provides a series of other tools through the desktop application. Additional globes for the Moon and Mars are available, as well as a tool for viewing the night sky. A flight simulator game is included. Other features allow users to view photos from various places uploaded to Panoramio, information provided by Wikipedia on some locations, Street View imagery.
The web-based version of Google Earth includes Voyager, a feature that periodically adds in-program tours presented by scientists and documentarians. Google Earth has been viewed by some as a threat to privacy and national security, leading to the program being banned in multiple countries; some countries have requested that certain areas be obscured in Google's satellite images areas containing military facilities. The core technology behind Google Earth was developed at Intrinsic Graphics in the late 1990s. At the time, the company was developing 3D gaming software libraries; as a demo of their 3D software, they created a spinning globe that could be zoomed into, similar to the Powers of Ten film. The demo was popular, but the board of Intrinsic wanted to remain focused on gaming, so in 1999, they created Keyhole, Inc. headed by John Hanke. Keyhole developed a way to stream large databases of mapping data over the internet to client software, a key part of the technology, acquired patchworks of mapping data from governments and other sources.
The product, called "Keyhole EarthViewer", was sold on CDs for use in fields such as real estate, urban planning and intelligence. Despite making a number of capital deals with Nvidia and Sony, the small company was struggling to make payroll, employees were leaving. Fortunes for the company changed in early 2003 when CNN received a discount for the software in exchange for placing the Keyhole logo on-air whenever the map was used. Keyhole did not expect it would amount to more than brief 5 or 10 second prerecorded animation clips, but it was used extensively by Miles O'Brien live during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, allowing CNN and millions of viewers to follow the progress of the war in a way that had never been seen before. Public interest in the software exploded and Keyhole servers were not able to keep up with demand. Keyhole was soon contacted by the Central Intelligence Agency's venture capital firm, In-Q-Tel, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, for use with defense mapping databases, which gave Keyhole a much-needed cash infusion.
Intrinsic Graphics was sold in 2003 to Vicarious Visions after its gaming libraries did not sell well, its core group of engineers and management transitioned to Keyhole with Hanke remaining at the head. At the time, Google was finding that over 25% of its searches were of a geospatial character, including searches for maps and directions. In October 2004, Google acquired Keyhole as part of a strategy to better serve its users. Google Earth's imagery is displayed on a digital globe, which displays the planet's surface using a single composited image from a far distance. After zooming in far enough, the imagery transitions into different imagery of the same area with finer detail, which varies in date and time from one area to the next; the imagery is retrieved from satellites or aircraft. Before the launch of NASA and the USGS's Landsat 8 satellite, Google relied on imagery from Landsat 7, which suffered from a hardware malfunction that left diagonal gaps in images. In 2013, Google used datamining to remedy the issue, providing what was described as a successor to the Blue Marble image of Earth, with a single large image of the entire planet.
This was achieved by combining multiple sets of imagery taken from Landsat 7 to eliminate clouds and diagonal gaps, creating a single "mosaic" image. Google now uses Landsat 8 to provide imagery with greater frequency. Imagery is hosted on Google's servers, which are contacted by the application when opened, requiring an Internet connection. Imagery resolution ranges from 15 meters of resolution to 15 centimeters. For much of the Earth, Google Earth uses digital elevation model data collected by NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission; this creates the impression of three-dimensional terrain where the imagery is only two-dimensional. Every image created from Google Earth using satellite data provided by Google Earth is a copyrighted map. Any derivative from Google Earth is made from copyrighted data which, under United States Copyright Law, may not be used except under the licenses Google provides. Google allows non-commercial personal use of the images as long as copyrights and attributions are preserved.
By contrast, images created with NASA's globe software World Wind use The Blue Marble, Landsat, or USGS imagery, each of, in the public domain. In version 5.0, Google introduced Historical Imagery. Clicking the clock icon in the toolbar opens a time slider, which marks the tim
Yukon River
The Yukon River is a major watercourse of northwestern North America. The river's source is in British Columbia, from which it flows through the Canadian Yukon Territory; the lower half of the river lies in the U. S. state of Alaska. The river empties into the Bering Sea at the Yukon -- Kuskokwim Delta; the average flow is 6,430 m3/s. The total drainage area is 832,700 km2; the total area is more than 25 % larger than Alberta. The longest river in Alaska and Yukon, it was one of the principal means of transportation during the 1896–1903 Klondike Gold Rush. A portion of the river in Yukon—"The Thirty Mile" section, from Lake Laberge to the Teslin River—is a national heritage river and a unit of Klondike Gold Rush International Historical Park. Paddle-wheel riverboats continued to ply the river until the 1950s, when the Klondike Highway was completed. After the purchase of Alaska by the United States in 1867, the Alaska Commercial Company acquired the assets of the Russian-American Company and constructed several posts at various locations on the Yukon River.
The Yukon River has had a history of pollution from military installations, dumps and other sources. However, the Environmental Protection Agency does not list the Yukon River among its impaired watersheds, water quality data from the U. S. Geological Survey shows good levels of turbidity and dissolved oxygen; the Yukon and Mackenzie rivers have much higher suspended sediment concentrations than the great Siberian Arctic rivers. The Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council, a cooperative effort of 70 First Nations and tribes in Alaska and Canada, has the goal of making the river and its tributaries safe to drink from again by supplementing and scrutinizing government data; the name Yukon, or ųųg han, is a contraction of the words in the Gwich'in phrase chųų gąįį han, which means white water river and refers to "the pale colour" of glacial runoff in the Yukon River. The contraction is Ųųg Han, if the /ųų/ remains nasalized, or Yuk Han, if there is no vowel nasalization. In 1843, the Holikachuks had told the Russian-American Company that their name for the river was Yukkhana and that this name meant big river.
However, Yukkhana does not correspond to a Holikachuk phrase that means big river. Two years the Gwich'ins told the Hudson's Bay Company that their name for the river was Yukon and that the name meant white water river. White water river in fact corresponds to Gwich ` in words; because the Holikachuks had been trading with both the Gwich'ins and the Yup'iks, the Holikachuks had been in a position to borrow the Gwich'in contraction and to conflate its meaning with the meaning of Kuigpak, the Yup'ik name for the same river. For that reason, the documentary evidence reflects that the Holikachuks had borrowed the contraction Ųųg Han from Gwich'in, erroneously assumed that this contraction had the same literal meaning as the corresponding Yup'ik name Kuigpak; the Lewes River is the former name of the upper course of the Yukon, from Marsh Lake to the confluence of the Pelly River at Fort Selkirk. The accepted source of the Yukon River is the Llewellyn Glacier at the southern end of Atlin Lake in British Columbia.
Others suggest. Either way, Atlin Lake flows into Tagish Lake, as does Lake Lindeman after flowing into Bennett Lake. Tagish Lake flows into Marsh Lake; the Yukon River proper starts at the northern end of Marsh Lake, just south of Whitehorse. Some argue that the source of the Yukon River should be Teslin Lake and the Teslin River, which has a larger flow when it reaches the Yukon at Hootalinqua; the upper end of the Yukon River was known as the Lewes River until it was established that it was the Yukon. North of Whitehorse, the Yukon River widens into Lake Laberge, made famous by Robert W. Service's "The Cremation of Sam McGee". Other large lakes that are part of the Yukon River system include Kluane Lake; the river passes through the communities of Whitehorse and Dawson City in Yukon, crossing Alaska into Eagle, Fort Yukon, Stevens Village, Tanana, Galena, Grayling, Holy Cross, Russian Mission, Pilot Station, St. Marys, Mountain Village. After Mountain Village, the main Yukon channel frays into many channels.
There are a number of communities after the "head of passes," as the channel division is called locally: Nunum Iqua, Alakanuk and Kotlik. Of those delta communities, Emmonak is the largest with 760 people in the 2000 census. Emmonak's gravel airstrip is the regional hub for flights. Navigational obstacles on the Yukon River are the Five Finger Rapids and Rink Rapids downstream from Carmacks. Despite its length, there are only four vehicle-carrying bridges across the river: The Lewes Bridge, north of Marsh Lake on the Alaska Highway. A car ferry crosses the river at Dawson City in the summer. Plans to build a permanent bridge were announced in March 2004, alth
