1953 Map of Nulato C-4

About this map

Soonkakat River meanders across this interior Alaskan landscape, defining a complex hydrologic network of wetlands and seasonal waterways as they appeared in the early 1950s. The northern edge of the map is dominated by the broad, braided channels of Patsy Slough and Happy Slough, which isolate the landmass of Big Island. This region, surveyed via photogrammetric methods from 1952 aerial photography, remains largely untouched by permanent settlements or roads, instead characterized by the intricate drainage of Gorton Creek and numerous unnamed lakes and marshes. The presence of predetermined, unsurveyed land lines from the Bureau of Land Management illustrates the early stages of formalizing land tenure in this remote portion of the Yukon-Koyukuk region, where the terrain itself dictated the movement of indigenous peoples and early explorers along its river corridors.