164 Alaskan Science Conference 



shocks generated in cutting firewood in the nearby forest. The 

 solution was simple and direct; the commandant permitted no 

 more woodchopping on observing days. 



With the transfer to United States sovereignty in 1867, there 

 began in Alaska a steady accumulation of field observations by 

 the Coast and Geodetic Survey, which has continued to this day. 

 Significant of the early phases of this activity were the cam- 

 paigns on the Yukon and Porcupine Rivers in 1889-91, in- 

 cluding an entire winter devoted to the accumulation of data 

 at two stations near the Canadian boundary (12). As part of 

 this program, repeat stations were occupied every few years, to 

 develop the secular-change characteristics at various points on 

 the south coast and notably at Sitka. This work has been con- 

 tinued and expanded, so that Alaska now has a distribution of 

 repeat stations almost as good as the United States proper (3). 

 The same cannot be said of the nonrepeat stations which serve 

 to fill in the permanent field patterns. For Alaska the non- 

 repeat stations are largely confined to clusters along the acces- 

 sible shores, with the natural result that we have had scant 

 knowledge of the detailed interior distribution, although a 

 general pattern has emerged that cannot be far wrong. 



The prospects are now bright for rectifying and adjusting 

 this general design, as well as for outlining the coarser features 

 of the local patterns, by means of airborne surveys. In fact, the 

 first large-scale survey of relative total intensity to be accom- 

 plished with the new saturable-core airborne magnetometer 

 was devoted to an area of some 18,000 square miles in Northern 

 Alaska (1). The local patterns hold great interest for their 

 possible clues to the depth to basement rock and other features 

 bearing directly on the development of natural resources in 

 a relatively new region like Alaska. 



Alaska occupies a strategic area in the attack on one of the 

 perennial riddles of Arctic magnetism, the vexing question of 

 the magnetic pole or poles. The magnetic pole found by 

 James C. Ross on the Boothia Peninsula seems to have migrated 

 somewhat to the north and west (9), but it still falls in an un- 

 symmetrical position with respect to the general distribution 



