The Early American Years
In 1867 Russia sold Alaska to the United States for the bargain price of 3 cents per acre. The purchase ushered in a new era of trade and connections with the industrializing world. The first Euro-american to give an account of Lake Clark itself was Charles Leslie McKay, collecting for the Smithsonian Institution in 1881. Ten years later, explorer Alfred B. Schanz’s party traveled through the Lake Clark area. Included in the party was John W. Clark, a representative of the Alaska Commercial Company. Although the Schanz's group was apparently aware that the Dena’ina name for the lake was Qiz’jeh Vena, they renamed it Lake Clark. The Americanized pronunciation of Qiz’jeh Vena, which translates as “lake where many people gather,” is Kijik. Kijik is now the name of a lake and river that flows into Lake Clark, as well as an historic village and a National Historic Landmark.
In 1903, the first permanent white resident arrived in Lake Clark. Like many who would follow him, Brown Carlson was a trapper and jack-of-all-trades who built a cabin and cultivated an impressive garden. Soon after, the Alaska gold rush reached Lake Clark. Miner, prospectors, and the U.S. Geological Survey explored the Chigmit and Neacola mountains and the Bonanza Hills. Local Dena’ina Athabascan people began panning for gold, and supplemented that income by selling furs.
Explorers, trappers, and miners entering the Lake Clark area brought introduced diseases. Already weakened by epidemics of smallpox, measles, and tuberculosis, Dena’ina people in the Lake Clark area were devastated by a measles and flu epidemic in 1902. The depopulation brought about changes in settlements. Many remaining Dena’ina people settled in Old Nondalton or Lime Village. A few families moved to Tanalian Point, on the southeast shore of Lake Clark. During the first half of the twentieth century, people in the Lake Clark area continued to live on subsistence, mining, and trapping.