For anyone interested in the American Frontier and the people who created the United States, Hazelets' Journal provides a lively and absorbing account of an important part of that unique time. There is a good discount on copies of the print edition of Hazelet's Journal at this link.

Although the highly detailed maps of the Geological Survey which accompany this volume give a superb pictorial view of the country through which Hazelet traveled, and his own narrative gives the best description I have seen from any source, it may be of some interest to provide here a brief outline of the early examination of the country by way of an introduction to the book.

The Copper River region generally suffered in public notice in 1897 and the years following, and was far out-shone in effort and production by the Klondike, Nome and Fairbanks and even by a number of the lesser diggings. The Chistochina gold field however eventually produced handsome returns which in itself is a tribute to Hazelet's unerring judgment and skill as a prospector, and in 1900 with the discovery of the Bonanza Copper fields by the McClellan party brought the area to national prominence.

At the time this journal was written the country was known only through the cursory reconnaissance surveys of Abercrombie in 1884 and Allen in 1885, both for the U. S. Army, so accurate mapping of the area was not accomplished until 1900 when the Geological Survey undertook that task, and the results of the survey were not published until a number of years later.

Valdez Arm had been first visited and named in 1790 by the Spaniard DeHaro, but it was not until the winter of 1897 that a settlement came into being there with the first trickle of prospectors attempting to enter the basin of the Copper River through the back country of Valdez. Before l898 was over, 3000 men had made the attempt, and the trail over the glacier is said to still show evidence of that trek by the debris left along the route. A post office was established at Valdez in July 1899, and the town was incorporated July 1st, 1900 with a recorded population of 315 souls.

The foot of the glacier at 500 feet elevation lies about five miles from tidewater and rises abruptly in successive glacial ledges or benches to the summit, 13 1/2 miles distant in a northerly direction. Beyond the summit the glacier, here named Klutina, slopes downward for another six miles where at 2500 feet it drains into the Klutina River and Lake. The Klutina was first reported by Allen in 1885, although he had seen only the issuance of this tributary into the Copper.

The Copper River was first noticed by the Russian, Nagaief, in 1781, and given the name on account of the reported existence of that metal in its vicinity. Its native name was Atna or Aetna; the Spaniards had called it Rio de los Perdidos. No whites had travelled it until the summer of 1884 when Captain William R. Abercrombie, 2nd Inf., USA ascended the stream from its mouth to latitude 60 o, 41′, a mere 17 miles to the vicinity of Miles Glacier where he was halted by the rapids.

To clarify and extend Abercrombie’ s observations, the Army in the following summer sent Lieut. Henry T. Allen with two enlisted men to follow the river to its source. Leaving Nuchek on Hinchinbrook Island on March 20, 1885 in native skin boats, and accompanied by the trader Peder Johnson who acted as interpreter, the party took two months to negotiate the 160 miles which brought them to the confluence with the Klutina where Hazelet entered the Cooper.

Allen's account of this passage recounts difficulties similar to those of Hazelet, if less vividly told, and confirmed the nature of the Copper's watercourse in an exceptionally rapid fall for its entire length.  Between Allen's Camps 8 and 9, which were ten miles apart, the observed fall was 110 feet.  Allen's sketch map is the basis for the modern nomenclature of the principal tributary streams, and for many of the mountains seen and triangulated from the river.  Except in the case of the mountains, Allen retained in essential form the native names.  He found the natives, the Atnatanas, almost as hungry and ill provided a lot as his own party.  His report was published in 1887 as Senate Ex. Doc. No. 125, Forty Ninth Congress, Second Session.

In 1898, Captain Abercrombie was again sent into this region with a detachment of thirteen men to open a military road from Valdez to the interior.  This party, after a futile attempt to make a stable trail over the glacier, surveyed the Keystone Canyon and Thompson Pass now followed by the Richardson Highway and with hand tools cleared a trail and built wooden bridges to form a passable pack and dog team trail. At the time, Hazelet entered the country the sole extant map of it was Allen's, and this delineated only the Copper River itself and what could be seen from the river, i.e., the tributaries as they entered the Copper River Country and the high mountains to the east.

The glaciers, lakes and rivers between Valdez and Copper Center were only known from the Indians and the few whites who had gone over the glacier in 1897. In the entry for May 22, 1898, Haze1et informs us of his surprise at learning the Indian name of Kutina for the lake they were camped upon, he and others there having been under the impression they were on the Tonsina. Nowhere in the journal does Hazelet speak of a map, a surprising fact for one of his intelligence and orderly mind.

Yet I feel he must have had one, and if so probably a copy of Allen's, since he unerringly identifies the tributaries as he works up the Copper. That he gives these streams the Indian names as had Allen, is no clear indication that he got them direct from the natives, although he appears to have cultivated certain of these friendly people, for the high peaks of Drum, Sanford and Wrangell are assigned correct names and bearings from his points of observation. There are, however, two curious exceptions to indicate that his Indian contacts were not ignored.

The first is the Klawosinak River of Hazelet which Allen renders as Klawasi. If the common native “na” ending, meaning river be added, the variation is reduced to Hazelet’s providing the final hard “k” an easily understandable rendering of the gutterals that he encountered among them. The second variation is Hazelet's rendering of the Tsina River as Chena, which although phonetically reasonable, anticipates the name of that famous stream in the Fairbanks area by several years.

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