Situated in the heart of Denali National Park, our location is essential to our uniqueness. Camp Denali is a little over 2 miles past Wonder Lake, near the end of the 92-mile Denali Park Road. We are the only lodging inside the National Park with direct views of Denali and the Alaska Range.
Denali National Park, Alaska, encompasses six million acres of boreal forest, tundra, rivers, glaciers, and dramatic geologic relief, including the impressive massif of Denali. Standing at 20,310 feet, Denali is the centerpiece of the 600-mile Alaska Range, and the tallest mountain in North America.
Mount McKinley National Park was established as a two-million-acre park in 1917 to preserve its wildlife. In 1980, under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), Mount McKinley Park underwent a name change to become Denali National Park and Preserve, and tripled in size. At the same time, the original two million acres were designated as federal Wilderness.
The landcapes of Denali have long been traveled seasonally for trade, hunting, fishing, trapping and harvesting by Indigenous Alaskans. While the nomadic pattern of this use meant that no permanent settlements existed at the time of park formation, periodic subsistence uses prevailed. Today the NPS provides for the continuation of traditional subsistence activities on park land for qualifying local residents.
We recognize that we are newcomers to this land and that we benefit every day from the traditional and ongoing land stewardship of the indigenous people of Alaska. At Camp Denali and in this part of Denali National Park, we inhabit the ancestral territories of the Dené, or Athabascan people, notably the Denaakk'e (Koyukon) and the adjacent Benhti Kenaga' (Tanana), Dinak'l (Upper Kuskokwim).
We acknowledge and are grateful for the centuries of care given to the land we now inhabit by those that came before us. Our intention is to honor the place-based knowledge of the indigenous people of this area and their ongoing reliance on and care for these lands, through our own stewardship.
The expansion of the park in 1980 encompassed an area of old hills and tight valleys known as the Kantishna Mining District. A short-lived gold rush occurred in this area in 1906-07. The few prospectors who stayed led to a number of mining claims in the hills and creeks. Claims that were not successfully acquired by the National Park Service became privately-held land. Such is the history of the three neighbor lodges down the valley from us.
Camp Denali is situated on homesteaded land, the location chosen for its terrestrial beauty rather than its subsurface mineral potential. Our location between Denali's federally-designated Wilderness and Kantishna provides a profound wilderness experience. Indeed, the NPS is mandated to manage much of the Kantishna area as if it were federal wilderness and to maintain the remote character of Kantishna by limiting commercial development.
