In the deep Interior of Alaska, the great Yukon River strikes
through bluffs and moutains of an ancient landscape to unmask
rocks whose histories reach back a billion years to life's
beginnings on Earth. This impressive river enters Alaska from
Canada through the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve before
making its way westward across the State and flowing out to the
Bering Sea. Here the river bed follows a great geologic fault,
and the flows are swift. A heavy silt load causes channel
braiding in large sections of the river. Side-streams tumble
from the hinterlands; chief among these are the Charley, the
Kandik, and the Nation. The preserve includes all 106 river
miles of the Charley River and its entire 1.1 million-acre
watershed. The 2.5 million-acre Yukon-Charley National Preserve
persists as a haven largely untouched by glaciation and mostly
free of human imprint. Truly isolated, the preserve is wilder
and less populated now than it was 50 or 80 years ago, following
the Klondike and Nome gold rushes.