In 1974, Brad Snow and Lilly Allen hand-built a log cabin on the Nation River in northeastern Alaska, about five miles up from the confluence with the Yukon River. They lived off the land - hunting, fishing, and trapping - and traveled the country by canoe in the summer and by dogteam in the winter. In 2005, Brad donated photographs to the Alaska and Polar Regions Collections & Archives at Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks of this river life in the mid-1970s in what is now Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve. The Brad Snow and Lilly Allen Photograph Collection provides a wonderful glimpse into a way of life that few people have the opportunity to experience, as well as a key period in the history of Alaska land use issues. This slideshow includes many of these photographs with audio of Brad providing context for and descriptions of them. Disregard the numbers that Brad says; they were temporary identifiers that do not always correspond to the order of the images in the slideshow.
Brad Snow
In 1974, Brad Snow and Lilly Allen hand-built a log cabin on the Nation River in northeastern Alaska, about five miles up from the confluence with the Yukon River. They lived off the land - hunting, fishing, and trapping - and traveled the country by canoe in the summer and by dogteam in the winter. They later moved into the community of Eagle, Alaska. They were part of a larger group of cabin dwellers in this part of the Yukon who worked together to make a life for themselves in the country; they socialized, played music together, helped each other, and shared critical wilderness knowledge. Some of these residents ran into conflicts with the National Park Service when the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve was established in 1980. Brad and Lilly documented this lifestyle and time period along the Yukon River by taking photographs of day to day life. In 2005, Brad donated some of their photographs to the Alaska and Polar Regions Collections & Archives at Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks.