" ... The sudden closing of the Kennecott copper mine in 1938 left many (of these) industrial and residential structures abandoned. Leaving with only what they could carry, the miners left plates on tables and sheets on beds. Preserved by their remoteness and Alaska's harsh freezing temperatures, the sites retain many of these precious artifacts ..."--Back cover

Port Chatham, Alaska was once a busy fishing village. By 1950, every single resident had left the town, leaving it abandoned. Over the years, legends told that the residents fled because they were being terrorized by a Bigfoot-like creature the local Natives called Nantiinaq. Stories of mutilated bodies, missing hunters and strange, otherworldly creatures have long been associated with Port Chatham. Retired police investigator, Larry Baxter, delves into the real-life mystery of Port Chatham and chronicles his research for the truth into one of Alaska's most infamous legends.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter. This is the unforgettable story of how Christopher Johnson McCandless came to die. "It may be nonfiction, but Into the Wild is a mystery of the highest order." —Entertainment Weekly McCandess had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Not long after, he was dead. Into the Wild is the mesmerizing, heartbreaking tale of an enigmatic young man who goes missing in the wild and whose story captured the world’s attention. Immediately after graduating from college in 1991, McCandless had roamed through the West and Southwest on a vision quest like those made by his heroes Jack London and John Muir. In the Mojave Desert he abandoned his car, stripped it of its license plates, and burned all of his cash. He would give himself a new name, Alexander Supertramp, and, unencumbered by money and belongings, he would be free to wallow in the raw, unfiltered experiences that nature presented. Craving a blank spot on the map, McCandless simply threw the maps away. Leaving behind his desperate parents and sister, he vanished into the wild. Jon Krakauer constructs a clarifying prism through which he reassembles the disquieting facts of McCandless's short life. Admitting an interest that borders on obsession, he searches for the clues to the drives and desires that propelled McCandless. When McCandless's innocent mistakes turn out to be irreversible and fatal, he becomes the stuff of tabloid headlines and is dismissed for his naiveté, pretensions, and hubris. He is said to have had a death wish but wanting to die is a very different thing from being compelled to look over the edge. Krakauer brings McCandless's uncompromising pilgrimage out of the shadows, and the peril, adversity, and renunciation sought by this enigmatic young man are illuminated with a rare understanding—and not an ounce of sentimentality. Into the Wild is a tour de force. The power and luminosity of Jon Krakauer's stoytelling blaze through every page.

Into the Wild meets Helter Skelter in this riveting true story of a modern-day homesteading family in the deepest reaches of the Alaskan wilderness—and of the chilling secrets of its maniacal, spellbinding patriarch. When Papa Pilgrim, his wife, and their fifteen children appeared in the Alaska frontier outpost of McCarthy, their new neighbors saw them as a shining example of the homespun Christian ideal. But behind the family's proud piety and beautiful old-timey music lay Pilgrim's dark past: his strange connection to the Kennedy assassination and a trail of chaos and anguish that followed him from Dallas and New Mexico. Pilgrim soon sparked a tense confrontation with the National Park Service fiercely dividing the community over where a citizen’s rights end and the government’s power begins. As the battle grew more intense, the turmoil in his brood made it increasingly difficult to tell whether his children were messianic followers or hostages in desperate need of rescue. In this powerful piece of Americana, written with uncommon grace and high drama, veteran Alaska journalist, Tom Kizzia uses his unparalleled access to capture an era-defining clash between environmentalists and pioneers ignited by a mesmerizing sociopath who held a town and a family captive.

We all have ghost towns. Impermanent places we dream of returning to. Here was Alaska's. In 1938, the last copper train left the Wrangell Mountains. But the spirit of the old days-free-wheeling, self-reliant, bounty-blessed-lived on in the remote town of McCarthy. The valley's few holdouts were joined over time by a gallery of prospectors, grifters, back-to-the-landers, dreamers, escape artists, hippies, speculators, preachers, and outlaws. While the rest of Alaska boomed in the new oil age, an old and makeshift way of life persisted against the quiet undertow of the past, that ebbing toward the wilderness that was here before us. Then the modern world found its way back in. A road, a bridge, a national park. A mass shooting that left six dead. Cold Mountain Path is a deeply American saga of renunciation and renewal--a rollicking local history that is also a lyrical exploration of time, loss, and change. . . and a pulsating account of the morning that brought Alaska's ghost town decades to an end. Tom Kizzia's previous book, Pilgrim's Wilderness, was an Amazon Top-Ten Book of the Year and was named Alaska's best True Crime book by the New York Times. Kizzia has written for The New Yorker and was a longtime reporter for the Anchorage Daily News. He has a place of his own near McCarthy.

The rich tapestry of Alaska is threaded together by 365,000 miles of waterways, from cascading mountain streams to meandering valley rivers, from the meltwaters of glaciers to broad rivers that empty into the sea. This guide profiles a wide variety of rivers from all over Alaska, concentrating on trips for intermediate boaters, and including a few major expeditions for the experienced river-runner. A section on gear outlines what to take into the backcountry.