THE YAKUTAT BAY REGION. a 
By Ralph S. Tarr. 
GEOGRAPHY. 
From Cross Sound to Controller Bay, a distance of over 300 miles, the coast line is remark- 
ably straight and contrasts strikingly with the deeply indented coast to the southeast and 
northwest. (PI. II.) Its straightness is due to the steeply rising mountain wall of the St. 
Elias Range and to a seaward fringe of glacial debris brought down from the mountains 
during a former period of greater extension of glaciers. At this earlier period glaciers 
spread out at the mountain base, as the Malaspina Glacier now spreads out at the base of 
Mount St. Elias. The moraines and deposits from these glaciers built the low foreland 
which fringes the mountain base. 
About midway this straight stretch of coast line is broken by the broad Yakutat Bay, the 
only notable indentation in this part of the Alaskan coast. Yakutat Bay opens to the 
Pacific as a broad V-shaped bay about 20 miles wide at the entrance, shallow at the mouth 
and deepening toward the head. Its outer shores are low where it extends across the fore- 
land, but they abruptly rise where the bay enters the mountains, and thence onward to its 
head the bay is a magnificent fiord. Where both shores of this bay enter the mountains it is 
called Disenchantment Bay. At the head of Disenchantment Bay the fiord abruptly 
turns and extends back toward the Pacific. This part is called Russell Fiord, and its 
head lies outside of the mountains in the foreland east of Yakutat Bay. There are two 
small branches of Russell Fiord, known as Nunatak Fiord and Seal Bay, respectively. 
The whole fiord resembles a bent arm with the shoulder at the Pacific, the fist at the head 
of Russell Fiord. On the inner side of this bend is a mountainous peninsula with peaks rising 
from 3,000 to 4,500 feet. The other shores rise to still greater heights, reaching 5,000 to 
6,000 feet within a few miles of the fiord. Back of these peaks, toward the north, northwest, 
and northeast, snow-capped mountains rise to heights of 10,000 to 16,000 feet. 
The low mountains of the peninsula support small valley galciers, but from the higher 
mountains huge ice streams descend, three of them reaching the sea. Of these glaciers the 
largest is the Hubbard, which discharges its icebergs into Disenchantment Bay, where they 
join the bergs from the smaller Turner Glacier, a few miles farther southwest. The third 
tidal glacier is the Nunatak, which enters the head of Nunatak Fiord. South of this is a 
large, nontidal glacier called the Hidden Glacier. There is clear evidence that these gla- 
ciers were once more extensive and, in fact, that they formerly extended throughout both 
arms of the fiord. For years most of the glaciers have been receding. 
STRATIGRAPHY. 
Neither the fossils nor the rock collections have as yet been carefully studied, so that it is 
at present impossible to make a final statement of results. There are four terranes of dis- 
tinctly different character, which for the present will be called, respectively, (1) the crystal- 
line rocks, (2) the "Yakutat" series, (3) the coal-bearing beds, and (4) the unconsolidated 
deposits. 
« Acknowedgments are due to my two associates, Lawrence Martin and B. S. Butler, for efficient 
assistance in this work. 
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