About the Park:

Katmai National Monument was created in 1918 to preserve the famed Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, a spectacular forty square mile, 100 to 700 foot deep ash flow deposited by Novarupta Volcano in 1912. A National Park & Preserve since 1980, today Katmai is still famous for volcanoes, but also for brown bears, pristine waterways with abundant fish, remote wilderness, and a rugged coastline.

The Cultural Resources program at Katmai National Park and Preserve documents people in the parks, now and in the past, and helps preserve places with special history.People have made their homes in Katmai National Park and Preserve for at least 9,000 years. Cultural resources professionals help share the stories of people with ties to the park, then and now.In Alaska, as in the rest of the United States, the National Park Service recognizes and manages five basic types of cultural resources: