Port Alsworth Improvement Corporation (PAIC) is a non-profit community association committed to improving the lives of locals and visitors in the area.
History
Tanalian Point, the forerunner of Port Alsworth and Lake Clark’s first Euro-American settlement, was settled by prospectors in the late 1880s. The site offered ready access to nearby copper prospects and the best wood fuel and timber for cabins. Dena’ina Athabaskan Indians lived at Tanalian Point after prospectors established it as a community. It developed into a staging area for the Telaquana Trail and mining activities on Kontrashibuna Lake and Portage Creek. Big game hunters arrived in 1921 seeking local guides.
Pioneer bush pilot Leon “Babe” Alsworth and his wife Mary, the settlement’s first postmistress, were among the first settlers in the 1940s. Port Alsworth now has numerous fishing lodges, some open year-round, and is the local headquarters for the Lake Clark National Park and Preserve.
The Early American Years
In 1867 Russia sold Alaska to the United States for the bargain price of 3 cents per acre. The purchase ushered in a new era of trade and connections with the industrializing world. The first Euro-american to give an account of Lake Clark itself was Charles Leslie McKay, collecting for the Smithsonian Institution in 1881. Ten years later, explorer Alfred B. Schanz’s party traveled through the Lake Clark area. Included in the party was John W. Clark, a representative of the Alaska Commercial Company. Although the Schanz's group was apparently aware that the Dena’ina name for the lake was Qiz’jeh Vena, they renamed it Lake Clark. The Americanized pronunciation of Qiz’jeh Vena, which translates as “lake where many people gather,” is Kijik. Kijik is now the name of a lake and river that flows into Lake Clark, as well as an historic village and a National Historic Landmark.
In 1903, the first permanent white resident arrived in Lake Clark. Like many who would follow him, Brown Carlson was a trapper and jack-of-all-trades who built a cabin and cultivated an impressive garden. Soon after, the Alaska gold rush reached Lake Clark. Miner, prospectors, and the U.S. Geological Survey explored the Chigmit and Neacola mountains and the Bonanza Hills. Local Dena’ina Athabascan people began panning for gold, and supplemented that income by selling furs.
Explorers, trappers, and miners entering the Lake Clark area brought introduced diseases. Already weakened by epidemics of smallpox, measles, and tuberculosis, Dena’ina people in the Lake Clark area were devastated by a measles and flu epidemic in 1902. The depopulation brought about changes in settlements. Many remaining Dena’ina people settled in Old Nondalton or Lime Village. A few families moved to Tanalian Point, on the southeast shore of Lake Clark. During the first half of the twentieth century, people in the Lake Clark area continued to live on subsistence, mining, and trapping.
The Age of Air Travel
The first aircraft to land on Lake Clark was a Waco 10 biplane on floats in 1930. The historic flight ushered in a new era, and made life in Lake Clark more connected to the outside world. Soon Tanalian Point resident Floyd Denison had radio contact with Star Airlines in Anchorage, which later became Alaska Air. Just twelve years later, Leon “Babe” Alsworth Sr. established the first air taxi service on Lake Clark, based at the new settlement of Port Alsworth. During World War II and after, many of Lake Clark’s residents served their country in the armed forces. Demand for furs declined in the 1960s and 1970s, but a new industry was just beginning – wilderness tourism.