Two 1899 exploration maps: Herron's Indian winter and summer trails from Tyonek over the Alaska Range to the Yukon, and the Geological Survey's route up the Dalton Trail from Lynn Canal to the Tanana.
In 1899 the Army’s Cook Inlet Exploring Expedition looked for an all-American route from tidewater to the Yukon. Lieutenant Joseph S. Herron’s party went from Tyonek, the Dena’ina village on the west shore of Cook Inlet, over the Alaska Range to the upper Kuskokwim and on to Fort Gibbon at the mouth of the Tanana, guided much of the way by Dena’ina and Upper Kuskokwim people. His map marks the trails they followed — the “Indian winter trail” and the summer trails between the river systems — with the villages and the Native names of the rivers and mountains along the way.
Herron’s map is fitted to its own printed graticule and is accurate to about 16 kilometres; his route was mapped by compass and pace across country no one had surveyed. The trails are drawn as he travelled them, so they are the routes of one expedition in one year, not a complete map of Alaska’s trails. The Geological Survey’s 1899 map of its route from Lynn Canal follows the Dalton Trail, the Chilkat trading trail into the interior, past Kluane Lake to the headwaters of the White and Tanana rivers, with the Chilkoot and White Pass trails; it is a small-scale reconnaissance map placed by its mountains and towns, accurate to about 30 kilometres. More Alaska maps will follow; request a map if you know one.
Start a thread All discussions
Know Alaska? Join free to add field notes, fix where a place sits on the map, and help find more maps.Join free