de Laguna] ARCHEOLOGY, YAKUTAT BAY AREA, ALASKA 19 



axis of tilting ran directly through the village site of Old Town on 

 Knight Island, but fortunately the main portion of the site was not 

 damaged. The effects of the earthquake are described by Tarr and 

 Martin (1906). 



Tarr and Martin (1906, pp. 52 ff.) believe that there had been 

 previous changes of sea level, and they cite raised beaches now covered 

 with forests on Krutoi and Otmeloi Islands, and an elevated beach 

 south of Point Latouche (and Tlaxata) with trees only 75 years old in 

 1906. We observed similar old beach lines on the south point of 

 Knight Island. In fact, according to Don J. Miller (letter of October 

 9, 1957), there is evidence of very recent emergence of land areas, 

 from beneath both the sea and the ice, all the way from Copper River 

 to Icy Point beyond Lituya Bay. 



The earthquake of 1899 is credited with shaking down so much 

 snow on the glaciers in the Yakutat area that the latter were stimu- 

 lated to renewed activit}^ between 1905 and 1910 (Tarr and Martin, 

 1914, p. 37). Since then most of them have been in retreat, except 

 that we observed that Turner Glacier in Disenchantment Bay had 

 recently advanced farther south and east of the position shown on the 

 U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey chart No. 8455 (1945, 5th ed., chart of 

 1901). This observation was confirmed by the natives, who said 

 that they no longer dare to camp on Osier Island nearby because of the 

 danger of waves from calving bergs. 



Other recent changes in the Yakutat Bay area have been the drying 

 up or shallowing of the sloughs connecting the Ankau lagoons with 

 Lost and Situk Rivers, and shifts in the sandbars at the mouths of the 

 Situk and Ahrnklin Rivers that have resulted in some disturbances 

 of the salmon runs. 



On July 9, 1958, Yakutat again felt the effects of a severe earth- 

 quake, when waves drowned three persons on Khantaak Island. The 

 southwest end of the island near Point Turner was, according to 

 reports, "lifted forty to fifty feet in the air[!]" and then submerged 

 (New York Times, July 10, 1958). My local correspondents do not 

 make clear whether the old village site on the island was affected. At 

 the same time, a landslide in Lituya Bay raised giant waves which 

 denuded the mountain slope near the head of the bay to the prodigious 

 height of 1,720 feet. AH the shores of the bay were lashed by waves 

 that stripped them of vegetation and that overrode the three habi- 

 tation sites near the mouth visited by LaPerouse in 1786. Trim lines 

 in the forest growth indicate that similar giant waves, but of lesser 

 extent, had previously devastated the shores of the bay: in late 1853 

 or early 1854 (although no major earthquake was reported), about 

 1874, in 1899 (probably associated with the Yakutat quake), and in 

 1936 (caused by a landshde) (Miller, 1960). Native traditions re- 



