Vol. XIV, No. n 



WASHINGTON 



November, 1903 



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THE WRANGELL MOUNTAINS, ALASKA* 



Walter C. Mendenhall 

 Of the United States Geological Survey 



MOUNT WRANGELL, the act- 

 ive volcano in the valley of 

 the Copper River, was named 

 in honor of Baron Von Wrangell, gov- 

 ernor of the Russian colonies in Alaska 

 from 1 83 1 to 1836. The peak was no 

 doubt first seen by white men during 

 some of the various official attempts by 

 the Russians in the early part of the 

 century to explore Copper River, al- 

 though they seem to have known of it, 

 under the name Chechitno Volcano, in 

 the eighteenth century, probably from 

 native accounts. The last, the most 

 promising, and the most tragic of the 

 Russian exploring expeditions was that 

 led by the creole Serebrenikoff in 1848. 

 He, with two white companions, was 

 sent by Tebenkof, at that time chief 

 director of the Russian colonies in 

 America, to examine the Copper to its 

 source, then to visit the distant Kwik- 

 pak, as the Russians called the Yukon. 

 The work was carried through the 

 Chugatch Mountains which border the 

 coast to some point beyond the mouth 

 of the Copper's western tributary, the 

 Tazlina, where Serebrenikoff and his 



companions were murdered by natives, 

 whom their behavior had goaded to 

 desperation. Afterward the natives re- 

 turned the records of the explorers to 

 the Russian authorities. 



Probably Russian traders visited the 

 Copper Valley and the Wrangell Moun- 

 tain region between 1848 and 1S67, the 

 date of the transfer of the territory to 

 the United States, for they knew of the 

 easy route from Cook Inlet, where they 

 had strong colonies, by way of the 

 Matanuska Valley to Lake Plevezenie ; 

 but there seems to have been no further 

 official attempt to explore in this direc- 

 tion. 



After the purchase, our first clear ac- 

 count of the mountain is from the diary 

 of a prospector, John Bremner, who in 

 1884 ascended the Copper with the in- 

 terior natives who were returning from 

 the coast to their winter homes. Brem- 

 ner was in search of the great blocks of 

 native copper which were currently re- 

 ported to exist in the region. His trip 

 must have seemed hazardous, for he 

 was without white companions, and the 

 Copper River Indians had sustained a 



* Published by permission of the Director, U. S. Geological Survey. 



