1950 Map of Healy B-1

About this map

The Susitna River braids through a glaciated wilderness at the base of the Clearwater Mountains in this mid-century survey. Captured during a period of extensive aerial photogrammetric mapping by the Geological Survey, the landscape is defined by the massive Susitna Glacier and West Fork Glacier which feed the complex drainage networks below. The map documents an area with no roads or trails, where the land lines were predetermined by the Bureau of Land Management rather than being established by physical markers. The shifting gravel bars of the East Fork and the descent of Boulder Creek illustrate the dynamic hydrology of the Alaskan interior before modern development. This sheet preserves the state of these ice-bound mountains and remote river valleys as they were annotated just after the war.