- Location
- Alaska
- Current protection
- Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve (National Park Service)
- Status
- No active campaign
- Tier
- Tier 2 · National Monument
- In the book
- Not featured in Undiscovered America
Why should it be a National Park?
Aniakchak is a caldera about six miles across on the Alaska Peninsula, a volcano that collapsed some 3,500 years ago and erupted again as recently as 1931. Inside the crater, Surprise Lake drains through a gap in the wall called The Gates to become the Aniakchak River, which runs wild to the Pacific.
It is one of the least visited units in the entire National Park System, which is exactly the point. A place this dramatic, known this little, deserves the name that would tell people it exists.
The history of National Park Campaigns
Aniakchak came within a word of being a National Park. When the Alaska lands bill moved through Congress in 1979, an early Senate version would have made it Aniakchak National Park and Preserve. The final 1980 law kept the monument President Jimmy Carter had proclaimed and added a preserve instead.
- Distinct National Park attempts
- 1 (1979, S. 222)
- Other designation attempts
- 2 (1978 monument; 1980 monument and preserve)
Sources
- S. 222, Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1979 (96th Congress)
- G. Frank Williss, "Do Things Right the First Time": The National Park Service and the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980 (NPS, 1985)
- Wikipedia, List of proposed National Parks of the United States
- 1931
Aniakchak erupts, spreading ash across the peninsula.
- December 1, 1978
Jimmy Carter proclaims Aniakchak National Monument under the Antiquities Act.
- 1979
An early version of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, S. 222, would make it Aniakchak National Park and Preserve.
- December 2, 1980
The final law establishes Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve and designates the Aniakchak a wild river.