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By the early 1970s, Alaska stood at a turning point. The discovery of oil, expanding international fisheries, and rising demands for federal land protections collided with longstanding Native claims to ancestral homelands. In response, the National Park Service created the Alaska Task Force, a small group charged with charting the future of nearly 50 million acres.
What emerged was more than a bureaucratic review – it became a living record of culture, subsistence, and wilderness. The Task Force’s “Master File” of photographs captured Alaska as it was: salmon wheels turning on the Yukon, hunters curing seal skins, villages along riverbanks, burial sites and memorials, vast glaciers and tundra. Together, these images preserve a critical moment when Native heritage, federal policy, and the raw frontier converged to reshape America’s last great wilderness.

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