GVA-Pixel

History of Gustavus

Gustavus is situated in the ancestral homeland of the Huna Tlingit, for whom we have a deep respect. 

The Huna Tlingit have stewarded the land since time immemorial.

The history of Gustavus has three timelines: The forces of nature that formed it in the last 200 years, which makes Glacier Bay a United Nations World Heritage Site; white settlement; and Native oral history and use.

When Captain George Vancouver sailed through Icy Strait in 1794, Glacier Bay was completely covered by the Grand Pacific Glacier. Over the next century, the glacier retreated some 40 miles, and a spruce-hemlock forest began to develop on the land. By 1916, the glacier had retreated 65 miles from the position observed by Vancouver.

Gustavus is located on a flat area formed by the outwash from the glacier — and the area is still growing. Gustavus began as an agricultural homestead in 1914. In homage to abundant wild strawberries growing on the flats, the area was once known as Strawberry Point. The current name was derived from Point Gustavus, which lies seven miles to the southwest.

Glacier Bay National Monument, was established by President Calvin Coolidge in 1925. Gustavus was included into Glacier Bay National Mounument in 1939 when it was expanded. In 1980, with the passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, the National Monument became a National Park.

 

 

 

Download a copy of James R. Mackovjak’s book, Hope and Hard Work

 

Homesteading

The first white settlers to make a home in Strawberry Point were three pairs of newlyweds, fresh off a steamer in Juneau in the spring of 1914. However, the first settlers to stay came in 1917, when Abraham Lincoln Parker homesteaded at Good River with his wife and six children.
Homesteading here came to an abrupt end in 1939, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt enlarged the Glacier Bay Monument boundary which closed the public land around Gustavus to homesteading. The 13 families that had successfully patented their homesteads were stunned. Roosevelt’s actions not only land-locked their homesteads and halted further growth and development, but the brown bear reserve now surrounding their ranches prohibited hunting and held the threat of devastating their herds of cattle. Homesteaders felt they were being driven out of the area.
The situation changed during WWII when the War Department built a large airfield, roads and bridges on national monument lands. Following the war, the Civilian Aeronautical Administration proposed turning the airfield over to the NPS, an untenable situation given the Park Service’s conservation mission. After a decade of internal haggling within the NPS between the wildlife biologists who wanted to keep Gustavus lands inside the national monument and the landscape architects who wanted it excluded, and thanks in part to an unrelenting letter-writing campaign by Charles Parker, a son of A.L. Parker, the agency recognized the advantage of building its headquarters in nearby Bartlett Cove to take advantage of the modern airfield and a growing community to support tourism. In 1955 President Dwight D. Eisenhauer signed a presidential proclamation that excluded 19,000 acres of land from the national monument, and homesteading was restored.

(Some of this information was provided courtesy of Gustavus Historic Archives and Antiquities.)

For more information about Gustavus History please follow the link:

http://www.gustavushistory.org/