COS JACKET — On a canoe trip down the lower Tanana River, we’ve scrambled up a sandy bank to explore a place that is less populated now than it was a century ago. No one, in fact, lives at Cos Jacket anymore. There is a cabin-size cache with a tin roof. A few sagging log […]
LOWER TANANA RIVER — On a day like this 121 years ago, a hungry U.S. Army explorer passed here at the mouth of Fish Creek, where clear water collides with the cloudy Tanana. Henry Allen did not stop to fish. He had food, and further exploration, on his mind as he and his party paddled […]
It is a very remarkable fact that a region under a civilized government for more than a century should remain so completely unknown as the vast territory drained by the Copper, Tanana and Koyukuk Rivers. So wrote Henry Allen in a government report on his muscle-powered journey from the mouth of the Copper River to […]