

New Land: Alaska 



Were the attractions of this north coast but half known, thousands of lovers of nature's 

 beauties would come hither every year. Without leaving the steamer from Victoria, one 

 is moving silently and almost without wave motion through the finest and freshest landscape 

 poetry on the face of the globe. . . . It is as if a hundred Lake Tahoes were united end to 

 end. . . . While we sail on and on thoughts loosen and sink off and out of sight, and one 

 is free from oneself and made captive to fresh wildness and beauty. 



John Muir, First Journey to Alaska, 1879. 



THE PRICELESS PRIMITIVE quality of Alaska and the distinctiveness 

 of its national forests are Territorial assets of enormous value. Here is a 

 country almost continental in size, with richness and variety of inspirational 

 resources, a frontier as yet little changed by man. Its land still lacks settlers. 

 Its mineral deposits have been only partially developed. Its great river 

 systems, mountains, volcanoes, tidewater glaciers, and fiords retain their 

 primitive grandeur. The great conifer forests that clothe the south coast 

 stand intact. The vast, open woodlands of the Yukon drainage and the far- 

 northern tundra areas remain in large part unbroken wilderness. Wildlife 

 is abundant, including the caribou which roams the interior watersheds in 

 great herds as the bison once roamed the Great Plains. The population, 

 white, Indian, and Eskimo, barely exceeds 1 person to 10 square miles. 1 

 Alaska is still almost entirely public domain with only 1 percent of its area in 

 private ownership. 



1 The area of Alaska is 586,400 square miles. The population in 1939 is estimated to 

 be 62,700. 



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