Brinnen Carter, chief of resources for Sitka National Historical Park, shows the site of an ongoing project to restore the Battle of 1804 site. (Photo, KCAW)
The last major battle between Alaska Natives and a European power happened in Sitka over 200 years ago, but you’d never realize it, strolling through modern-day Sitka National Historical Park.
Years of natural change and human activity have left the Battle of 1804 site beautiful, but overgrown. Now, the National Park Service is working to restore the site to more accurately reflect the conditions at the time when the Tlingit people fought the Russian Empire. KCAW’s Katherine Rose reports.
I’m walking through Sitka National Historical Park with chief of resources Brinnen Carter. We’re on a trail between the shoreline and the Tlingit fort site, Shis’gi Noow, where the Battle of 1804 took place.
“This is the area where we’re working on opening up the view and restoring the look of the, trying to get closer to what it looked like during the battle,” says Carter. “It was the last major battle, and when I say major I mean thousands of people in Alaska , and the defenses were really formidable.”
From here, we can just see through the trees to the shoreline, where the Russian gunship Neva anchored for her six day siege. But a few months ago, dense vegetation blocked any view of the water. And according to Carter, this not only short changes visibility, but history as well. – The 3 ½ acres were once marshland, not dense forest.
“It’s super clear when you look at the air photos, you can pinpoint within a 10 year period, sometimes within a five year period where the major changes in vegetation occurred,” Carter says.
Aerial photographs from the 1920’s on suggest somewhat dramatic changes in the landscape. With the retreat of glaciers, the land is rising and by the 1950’s, the marshland had given way to a dry beach covered with rye grass.
Then, in 1958 the mill opened. Bob Sam worked for the park, upgrading the trails, around the time mill logs started washing up on shore.
“Standing here right now. I would say this was more wide open, it was an open field. This was covered with all these logs and stuff, a lot more back then. We cut a lot of them up and used it as firewood, gave it away to elders, things like that.”
But the logs kept coming, breaking off of rafts on their way to the mill, and washing up on the beach. Carter says that the deposition of this organic debris provided a perfect nursery environment for trees. “All of a sudden it became an emergent forest and we’d lost the open appearance of the battlefield.”
Ultimately the trees and undergrowth grew so thick, there was no visual corridor from the fort site to the waterfront, a view necessary for proper interpretation of the Battle of 1804. It even covered up other cultural relics- canoe haul outs and clam gardens.
So this spring, Carter and his team presented their plan to clear out undergrowth and small trees from the area, and they were met with some community support and a few suggestions.
“The tribe and their representatives suggested that rather than take out Hemlock wait until spring and they would be willing to haul the hemlock off for us- We’ve left all the hemlock that are small or that have branches that are potentially usable for subsistence herring sets.”
Carter says that the Park Service wants to be responsive both to the past, and the interests of the Tribal community. The work of restoration has been easier because people have fond memories of the land before the emergent forest began to take hold.
Bob Sam says that there is also the potential to learn from a past that’s still hidden- clearings on the beach where canoes were hauled out. “To me, that’s very interesting history that we should take a look at and not just keep covered. The technology of canoe haul outs is fascinating. It’s a culture that goes back thousands of years, so let’s take a look at it.”
The National Park Service will move ahead with the removal of the mill logs over the next few months.
