"A Remarkable Summer"

Part of the cover of the original National Geographic containing Shiras's article.

A REMARKABLE SUMMER

JANUARY 2012

A hundred years ago, George Shiras III wrote about a splendid (and unusual) summer spent in Alaska, mostly near Skilak Lake: In 55 days of travel and exploration, he wrote, rain fell during only 19 hours.

Chasing after wildlife with his large camera, his wooden tripod and his heavy photographic plates, he said that he and his party were “wind bound” three days and “experienced a number of violent squalls lasting an hour or so.” In nearly two months, there were three entirely cloudy days and about a half-dozen partly cloudy days.

Blessed with this astonishing stretch of weather, Shiras was able to return home with enough information and images to fill 72 pages of the May 1912 edition of The National Geographic Magazine with an article entitled “The White Sheep, Giant Moose, and Smaller Game of the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska.”

George Shiras III was the son of Supreme Court justice, George Shiras Jr., who had been nominated to the post by President Benjamin Harrison in 1892. Young George himself had served in the U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania, but in 1905 he surrendered a political career to pursue a life of photography, and in 1906 he achieved public acclaim the effect of which can still be felt today.

Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor, who was the first full-time editor of National Geographic and served in that capacity for 55 years, recalled the day in 1906 that Shiras walked into his office “with a box full of extraordinary flashlight photographs of wild animals. He had invented the technique for making such pictures, and an exhibit of his work had won gold medals at Paris and St. Louis Expositions.”



Photo courtesy from the Fair family collection. George Shiras III was enamored

of the Harding Ice Field during his trip to the high country south of Skilak Lake.

In the introduction to Shiras’s debut article, Grosvenor said that he viewed the box of photos “with mounting excitement” and began to sort them into two piles, one very tall, the other very small. Shiras had earlier been able to interest a New York publication in only three of his images and so was astounded to learn that Grosvenor wanted to use everything in the tall pile—74 photographs, filling 50 pages, only four of which would be text.

The magazine would never be the same, and neither would flash photography.

Two distinguished geographers on the National Geographic Board resigned, in part because they believed that Grosvenor was turning their publication into a “picture book.” And they may have had a point, but the July 1906 issue was an immediate hit, and circulation spiked.

George Shiras III found himself with an open ticket to travel where he wished and photograph what he pleased—with the National Geographic Society a willing buyer and a more than willing sponsor. In 1911, after numerous trips across the continent, he set his sights upon Alaska.

In the introduction to the resulting article, he said he wished to study the animals “where the camera, rather than the rifle, was to capture the permanent trophies of the hunt.”

Shiras narrowed the focus of his trip to the Kenai Peninsula because it contained the wildlife he was interested in and virtually all of the terrain, in one place, that he could find elsewhere in that country:

“It is seldom that a small, semi-detached portion of a large and diversified country can satisfactorily portray the whole, not only in the romantic history of its discovery and early explorations, but in those present-day conditions, where the climate, topography, and economic resources excite attention and comparison. Were all of Alaska erased from the map except the Kenai Peninsula and its immediately adjacent waters, there would yet remain in duplicate that which constitutes the more unique and that which typifies the whole of this wonderful country.”

With maps and travelers’ recommendations at hand, he narrowed his plans, and on July 8, 1911, he departed from Seattle for a well-funded two-month sojourn in the Last Frontier.

Alaska, at this time, was one year away from becoming a territory, and two years away from the first meeting of its Territorial Legislature. Anchorage did not yet exist, for the first encampment at Ship Creek was three years away. Because there were no highways, the main artery into the Kenai Peninsula and hence into the Alaska interior was via the seaport and railway at Seward, which had been established with that name only eight years earlier.

Photo courtesy of the Fair family collection. Pictured here, beyond the hikers in the

foreground, is the upper drainage of Benjamin Creek, which flows into the Killey River.

Shiras came upstream into the mountains in the left of this photo to study the Dall sheep.

Seward was the “Gateway City,” and Shiras’ steamship landed there early on July 15 after cruising the length of Resurrection Bay for about 10 hours. Within the next two days, Shiras had met his chief guide, Thomas B. Towle—officially a $3.50-a-day packer then, Towle would become a registered guide the following year, according to Kenai National Wildlife Refuge historian, Gary Titus—and had traveled by “gasoline car” 23 miles up the Alaska Northern Railroad right-of-way to the head of Kenai Lake.

During the next week, accompanied by several men who would haul the bulk of his equipment and run his wilderness bases, he was guided the length of the lake to a camp on Cooper Creek to await the arrival of supplies. From there, he traveled downriver to Skilak Lake, along its northern shore, and across the lake to a narrow-necked peninsula about three miles west of Cottonwood Creek. The small peninsula neatly divided a single large bay into two smaller bays, so Shiras named the site of his base there “Double-bay Camp.”

On July 24, he spied his first moose on the Kenai Peninsula.

Besides photography, Shiras had an affinity for wildlife, and he was willing to spend hours each day, hidden behind blinds constructed of brush and grass or stones, swatting innumerable mosquitoes as he waiting for just the right photo-op.

He also had an inquisitive mind about nearly all things in nature. He was, for instance, fascinated by the bulk and mass of what later became known as the Harding Ice Field, and he took his observations and speculations with him back to the East Coast, hoping to prompt further investigations. He was intrigued, too, by the chemical content of a mineral lick near Double-bay Camp, and he returned home with samples and had them tested by a scientist.

Elsewhere, he pondered the sense of smell of the Dall sheep and the more tenacious spawning habits of sockeye salmon, and he was awestruck by the aggressiveness of a pair of ptarmigan in successfully defending their brood against an attacking hawk.

Shiras spent the end of July and early August observing moose, before climbing up the Cottonwood Creek trail, along the Marmot Lakes, and down to the lower stretches of Benjamin Creek, near its confluence with the Killey River, where Towle had a cabin in which he had lived during his gold-mining days. Shiras spent about a week in this high country, observing and photographing sheep in the mountains around Twin Lakes, as well as watching brown bears, red foxes and hoary marmots.

He departed Skilak country in early September, with high water necessitating his men to line the boats upriver through conditions much more rugged than was customary, and his resultant article in the pages of National Geographic featured dozens of photographs and many pages of keen observations about his experiences.

Among his final observations in the article, he noted that subsequent hunting parties in the Skilak area had reported bad weather during the latter half of September and throughout October. “So the above data must be taken rather as an evidence of what the weather can be than what it is apt to be,” he said, clearly appreciating his good fortune.

He finished with these words: “In conclusion, let us hope that those interested in the permanent prosperity of the Kenai Peninsula appreciate the value of an abundant and available supply of game-food animals and fish, and understand how much the presence of this game has contributed to its fame throughout the world…. Long after the last flake of gold has been panned from the sands and the last blast has fractured the veins of quartz, the Kenai Peninsula should continue to be the home of the giant moose and the place where the sheep, the grouse, and the salmon are worth more in dollars and more in life than all the visionary or fleeting fortunes beneath the soil.”

 

Photo courtesy of Monte Edwards. Near Twin Lakes, situated about halfway between the Benjamin Creek headwaters and its terminus at the

Killey River, Shiras made a nearly weeklong camp to study Dall sheep. Benjamin Creek was named for the eldest brother of Shiras’ guide,

Thomas B. Towle.