Kantishna

This Blog Entry builds on the prior five entries.

The first attempt to climb Mr. Denali was made by Judge James Wickersham in 1903. While Wickersham was not successful, he found flecks of gold in Chitsia Creek in the Kanntishna Hills about 20 miles north of the mountain. As the news of the find traveled, hundreds of prospectors made the very difficult trek to the hills.

By 1905, four mining camps had sprung up in the Kantishna Hills around early claims. The largest of them was Kantishna on Moose Creek where it makes an S-shape bend upon entering the hills. Kanntishna had a Post Office that served the 2000 prospectors who lived in all forms of structures in the four settlements and across the hills. The other three camps closed within a year as prospectors searched for better "picking." By 1909, a claims office was built in Kantishna so miners did not have to travel 200 miles to Fairbanks to file a claim. The Kantishna Road House was one of the local businesses, but the settlement faded way within a decade.

Mining of gold, silver, and antimony in quartz veins continued until the 1980s when the Kantishna Hill Area was incorporated into the expanded Denali National Park, but mining was never a highly productive.

Today, there are three lodges in the Kantishna Hills, including a new Kantishna Roadhouse built in the 1990s on the original site of the settlement - at mile marker 91 on the 92.5 mile Park Road. At the end of the road is the Kantishna Air Strip, which is owned by the State of Alaska. It costs about $330 per passenger to fly from the air strip at the park entrance.

When the Park was established in 1917, the Kantishna Hill area was purposefully not included within it because of the numerous mining and Native Americans land claims. But, it was included in the 1980s park expansion though with special standing which allows the lodges to exist. The Kantishna Road House is owned by the Doyon Native Corporation. The original claims office and roadhouse (pictured above) are on the property.