Denali Park Road: the visitor center to Savage River

At the start of the tour

Welcome to Denali Park Road

Welcome to the Denali Park Road. I'll be your guide on the first fifteen miles of it, the paved stretch you can travel in your own car, from the park entrance out to Savage River.

Denali National Park and Preserve covers about six million acres, more than nine thousand square miles of mountains, rivers and tundra. And through all of it runs just one road. The Denali Park Road is ninety-two miles long, and only the first fifteen miles are paved. In summer, private cars may go as far as Savage River. Beyond that, the road belongs to buses, bicycles and people on foot.

Congress created this park in 1917 as Mount McKinley National Park, and it did so for one main reason: to protect Dall sheep. It was the first national park created to protect wildlife. In 1980 it was renamed Denali National Park and Preserve, and it roughly tripled in size.

Here's how this works. I'll tell you a story on the way to each stop, and another once you're there. We'll stop at the visitor center, at park headquarters, where the park's sled dogs live, at Mountain Vista, and at Savage River, where the public road ends. On the long stretch in the middle there are a few more stories, about the road itself, the mountain and the people who first climbed it.

Keep an eye out for wildlife as we go. Moose, caribou, sheep, wolves and grizzly bears are the five that most visitors hope to see. Give every animal plenty of room, and if a bear is close, stay in the car.

Our first stop is the Denali Visitor Center.

Point 1 · At the stop

Denali Visitor Center

This is the Denali Visitor Center, at Mile one and a half of the park road and about seventeen hundred and fifty feet above sea level. It opened in 2005 as the park's main welcome and information center. Inside are rangers, exhibits and a park film called Heartbeats of Denali, about twenty minutes long and without narration: just the seasons, the landscapes and the animals. The building was designed to go easy on the land, with solar panels on its south side and wall panels, ceiling tiles and carpets made from recycled or quickly renewable materials. Around it are a restaurant, a park store, a bus stop and, less than a hundred yards away, the Alaska Railroad depot.

That railroad is the reason all of this is here. In 1921, when construction of the line from Seward to Fairbanks reached Riley Creek, officials picked this spot as the best way into the new park. A rough little frontier town called McKinley Park Station grew up around the depot. An Italian immigrant named Maurice Morino ran a two-story log roadhouse here, and it served its first meal on Thanksgiving Day, 1921. One guest remembered him at the door in a red bandana, telling her that all their doors were open to her, as were their hearts. He sang Italian arias all day long.

The town didn't last. In 1932 the park boundary moved east to the Nenana River, the whole community ended up inside the park, and its people scattered. Later, a big hotel stood right where the visitor center parking lot is now. The McKinley Park Hotel opened in 1939, burned in 1972, and was replaced by a temporary building made partly of railroad cars, which took in guests through 2001.

Outside the summer season this building is closed, and the Winter Visitor Center is in the Murie Science and Learning Center, just across the park road.

Hardly anything is left of the old station town. But the trains still pull in, and the trip into the park still begins here.

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History, on the way there

On the way: Park Headquarters and the Sled Dog Kennels

Next, we're heading to park headquarters, home of the park's sled dogs.

The story of this park starts with two men and a winter. In 1906, a naturalist and hunter named Charles Sheldon came into this country to study Dall sheep, and he hired a local man to help with the packing. That man was Harry Karstens. He had come north for the Klondike gold rush at eighteen, and he'd made his living since then carrying mail by dog team. In the winter of 1907 and 1908, the two of them stayed out on the Toklat River, deep in what is now the park, and talked about Sheldon's idea of protecting it. Back east, Sheldon lobbied Congress for years, and in 1917 Mount McKinley National Park became law.

Then nothing happened. For four years the park existed in name only, with no money and no one to protect it. Many Alaskans of the time saw national parks as playgrounds for wealthy Easterners, and they resented the new rules. Caribou, moose and sheep were being hunted hard to feed Fairbanks, the gold camps and the thirty or more dog teams in the area.

In 1921, Congress finally paid for a superintendent, and the job went to Sheldon's old packer. He was forty-two, well known across the territory, and he had already stood on the summit of the continent's highest peak. He was met with open hostility. He built his first headquarters on Riley Creek, near the station, but the site flooded and was bitterly cold in winter, so in 1925 he moved it up here.

He did it all on a shoestring. His rangers patrolled by dog team, built cabins, hauled coal and cut firewood. In September 1925 his staff was a clerk, two rangers, and his wife, Louise, a nurse, signed on as a third ranger at one dollar a month, so that she'd have legal standing to help.

Sheldon summed him up as a tall, stalwart man, frank and strictly honorable, and one of the best dog drivers in the north.

Point 2 · At the stop

Park Headquarters and the Sled Dog Kennels

This is park headquarters, about three miles inside the park. Its log buildings make up a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places. Rangers began building here in 1925, with logs and rough-sawn lumber, and their cabins looked a lot like the ones local miners and trappers built. One of these buildings began in 1935 as the Ranger Club, a dormitory for bachelor rangers with a stone fireplace, and since 1954 it has been the park's headquarters and the superintendent's office. Official weather observations have been kept here since 1925.

A short walk away are the kennels, and the dogs are the real stars. Denali's kennels are the only sled dog kennels in the National Park Service, and the tradition goes back to February 1922, when the first superintendent bought the park's first seven sled dogs. Today's dogs still do real work. Two million acres of this park are designated wilderness, where motors aren't allowed, so in winter the dog teams carry rangers on patrol, break trails that skiers use, and haul timber and supplies to remote cabins and work sites. Each dog runs around fifteen hundred miles a year. And at forty below, when an engine won't start, a dog team just needs a good breakfast.

The pups come in litters named on a theme. One litter was named for the weather: Dew, Fog, Graupel, Squall, Storm, Torrent and Vapor.

In summer the kennels are open daily, and rangers hitch five dogs to a wheeled sled for a short run around a gravel track; more than sixty thousand people a year come to watch. From late September through the winter, the kennels open on weekend afternoons, and many of the dogs may be out working in the park. Pets aren't allowed in the kennels at all, because a strange dog sets off the whole yard.

More than a hundred years on, a team of these dogs is still one of the most reliable ways to cross this country in the depths of winter.

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History, on the way there

On the way: Mountain Vista

Next, we're heading to Mountain Vista, at Mile 13 of the park road.

Long before there was a visitor center or a bus system, the place to stay in this park was a tent camp out this way, called Savage Camp. It was the park's first concession, and from 1923 to 1938 it was the main destination for visitors. The first concessioner, Dan Kennedy, started with a few canvas tents and some horses. By 1925 a company called the Mount McKinley Tourist and Transportation Company had taken over, and that same year the new road reached the camp, so guests could arrive by car.

Picture the trip in 1926. You'd take the morning train from Fairbanks and arrive at the station around two in the afternoon, where a string of Studebaker touring cars would be waiting. You'd stop to register at the superintendent's log headquarters, then ride on through rolling, wooded hills and out into open country, with the high mountains of the range in view the whole way.

The camp sat on an open, dry bench, with views in every direction. Guests slept two to a ten-by-twelve-foot tent cabin with a board floor, two cots and a wood stove, and every morning someone came by to light the stove and bring hot water. The dining hall had linen tablecloths, and chairs instead of benches. The social hall had a dance floor and a record player. One visitor called it camping de luxe.

Out back was a corral of twenty-seven horses brought up from Montana. Yellowstone donated two stagecoaches in 1926, and guests rode them on what was called the Big Game Drive, about eight miles up the Savage River, to look for sheep, caribou and foxes. In 1930 the park's first sightseeing flights took off from the camp's own airstrip. And on cloudy evenings someone would stay up, and if the mountain came out during the night, they'd wake the guests so they could see it.

For years the man in charge was Bobby Sheldon. Back in 1905, in Skagway, he had built the first car in Alaska, from sketches and a salvaged marine engine, to impress a young woman. It could do fifteen miles an hour. At Savage Camp he cooked, cleaned, cut firewood, mended tents and fixed the cars, and he had a showman's touch. One year he advertised a Labor Day special and promised the fall colors would be perfect, because his crew had spent the past week applying them to the trees and bushes.

When the big hotel opened beside the railroad in 1939, Savage Camp closed. Some of its buildings were moved away, and the cook house burned in 1954. Today, all that's left is the footprint of the camp and the photographs.

Point 3 · At the stop

Mountain Vista

This is Mountain Vista, at Mile 13. It's often windy up here, and a little colder than down at the visitor center, so a warm layer helps.

A short loop trail starts from this rest area: about six-tenths of a mile around, on smooth, level gravel. It looks out over the Savage River valley to the south and Mount Healy to the north, and on a clear day it brings you to a good view of the big mountain, off to the southwest. Signs along the way show how the plants and the development here have changed over time, and partway around, a spur leads down to the bank of the river.

You're in what's called the transition zone, between the boreal forest of the lower valleys and the open tundra higher up. Treeline in Denali is only about three thousand feet above sea level, so up here the forest thins to brush and scattered trees, and the views open up. Your chances of spotting animals go up where the trees thin out.

One animal you might meet here is the moose, the largest member of the deer family. A bull can weigh nine hundred to fourteen hundred pounds and stand up to six and a half feet at the shoulder, on legs long enough to wade into ponds and paw through deep snow. About eighteen hundred moose live on the north side of the Alaska Range in this park. Most of the year they're loners, and during the autumn rut the bulls can be extremely dangerous. On foot, stay at least twenty-five yards from a moose, and three hundred yards from a bear.

Not far from here, where Jenny Creek meets the Savage River, is the site of the old Savage Camp. The guests who arrived in touring cars nearly a century ago came for much the same view you have now.

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History, on the way there

On the way: Savage River

Next, we're heading to Savage River, where the public road ends.

The river got its English name from a trapper. Tom Strand came north from Washington State in the Klondike gold rush and made his way to the Kantishna mining district. There, among several men named Tom, he picked up the nickname Tom Savage. He worked as a prospector, a miner, a guide, a mail carrier and a market hunter, and he trapped along this river. But the river had a much older name. In the Lower Tanana language, its name means "from Cottonwood Creek."

When the road builders reached the Savage River, they built their first log cabin here, in 1924 and 1925: two cabins facing each other, with a covered breezeway between them called a dogtrot. It was the cook house and dining room for the road crews, who slept in tents nearby, and later rangers used it for shelter on their winter dog team patrols. In 1940 the two cabins were separated and moved. One became a ranger patrol cabin, and the other ended up as firewood. The survivor still stands, not far from the campground, and it has hosted living history programs for visitors since 1994.

The first bridge over the Savage River was finished in 1925, with timbers hauled to the site by teams of horses. It has been replaced twice since, most recently in 1983. In 1928 a trail was built down through the canyon, to help rangers protect the game along the park's northern boundary, and for the interest and entertainment of visitors.

Then came 1972, and the rule that turned this river into a line on the map. Past the Savage River check station, private cars stop and the buses take over. In summer, this is as far into the park as your own car can go.

Point 4 · At the stop

Savage River

This is Savage River, Mile 15. Right here the pavement ends and the road turns to dirt, and from here on it belongs to buses, bicycles and people on foot. The river sits too low for a view of the big mountain, but it has plenty to show you on its own.

The Savage is a braided river, spread across a wide bed of gravel in channels that wander and shift over time. Most braided rivers in Denali are fed by glaciers, but no glaciers are left anywhere in this river's watershed. It braids because its headwaters shed so much brittle, broken rock, with too few plants to hold it in place.

The valley tells a story of ice. Upstream, to the south, the river runs wide and shallow in a U-shaped valley, the shape glaciers leave behind. Downstream, it squeezes into a fast, narrow V-shaped canyon, cut by the river itself. The big glaciers here came more than two million years ago, so the river has had plenty of time to carve. You can see both shapes from the road bridge.

Look closely at the rocks, too. This canyon is one of the few places along the road where the old bedrock shows, a shiny rock called mica-quartz schist that sparkles with flaky minerals and veins of quartz. And just uphill from the parking area is Savage Rock, a jagged outcrop that still puzzles geologists. Why it stands out so far above its surroundings is a mystery. Faulting may have pushed it up, it may have slid down from above, or it may simply be tougher rock. Nobody knows yet.

The Savage River Loop Trail follows the river downstream to a footbridge in the canyon and comes back along the other bank. In summer, rangers are here for most of the day. There's no cell service, no water and no food, so you really are at the edge of the wild.

That's the end of our tour. The road goes on another seventy-seven miles, through country most people see only from a bus window, all the way to the old mining community of Kantishna. Thanks for riding along, and safe travels.

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