Alaska, the Great Country - Ella Higginson

In the autumn of the same year a party of men surveying for the Reynolds Home Railway, from Valdez to the Yukon, met armed resistance in Keystone Canyon from a force of men holding right of way for the Guggenheims. A battle occurred in which one man was killed and three seriously wounded.

The wildest excitement prevailed in fiery Valdez, and probably only the proximity of a United States military post prevented the lynching of the men who did the killing.

Ever since the advent of the Russians, Copper River has been considered one of the bonanzas of Alaska. It was discovered in 1783 by Nagaief, a member of Potap Zaïkoff's party. He ascended it for a short distance and traded with the natives, who called the river Atnah. Rufus Serrebrennikof and his men attempted an exploration, but were killed. General Miles, under Abercrombie, attempted to ascend the river in 1884, with the intention of coming out by the Chilkaht country; but the expedition was a failure. In the following year Lieutenant H. T. Allen successfully ascended the river, crossed the divide to the Tanana, sailed down that stream to the Yukon, explored the Koyukuk, and then proceeded down the Yukon to St. Michael and returned to San Francisco by ocean.

His description of Miles Glacier was the first to be printed. This glacier fronts for a distance of six miles in splendid palisades on Copper River. This and Childs Glacier afford the chief obstacles to navigation on this river, and Mr. A. H. Brooks reports their rapid recession.

The river is regarded as exceedingly dangerous for steamers, but may, with caution, be navigated with small boats. Between the mouth of the Chitina and the head of the broad delta of the Copper River, is the only canyon. It is the famous Wood Canyon, several miles in length and in many places only forty yards wide, with the water roaring through perpendicular stone walls. The Tiekel, Tasnuna, and other streams tributary to this part of the Copper also flow through narrow valleys with precipitous slopes.

The Copper River has its source in the mountains east of its great plateau, whose eastern margin it traverses, and then, passing through the Chugach Mountains, debouches across a wide delta into the North Pacific Ocean between Katalla and Cordova. It rises close to Mount Wrangell, flows northward for forty miles, south and southwest for fifty more, when the Chitina joins it from the east and swells its flood for the remaining one hundred and fifty miles to the coast.

The Copper is a silt-laden, turbulent stream from its source to the sea. Its average fall is about twelve feet to the mile. From the Chitina to its mouth, it is steep-sided and rock-bound; for its entire length, it is weird and impressive.