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Restore Nationally-Significant 1804 Tlingit/Russian Battlefield
Sitka National Historical Park » Restore Nationally-Significant 1804 Tlingit/Russian Battlefield » Document List
This project will re-establish the visual connection between the 1804 Fort Site and the ocean. Over the past 30 years, the 1804 Battlefield has been completely transformed through forest succession and lack of periodic maintenance to prevent succession. It was an open, intertidal flat during the battle, was a coastal meadow from 1900 to 1979, and is now an emergent, mixed alder/hemlock forest. This succession began as a result of three factors: incomplete site restoration from a National Park Service revetment project in the mid-1980s, ongoing deposition of "stray" logs from the Alaska Pulp and Paper mill from 1958 to 1994, and modest isostatic rebound in the park.
This project will update the existing 1999 Cultural Landscape Report during design and rehabilitate and perform deferred maintenance on the overgrown battlefield site south and southwest of the 1804 Tlingit fort where the Kiks'adi launched their counter attack on October 2nd, 1804. The park's current GMP and Cultural Landscape Report both call for this work to be completed. Work includes project design, limbing of trees, cutting of small (<6" diameter) trees, and brush clearing, as well as removing beached Sitka Spruce, Alaskan Yellow Cedar, and Western Hemlock mill logs, to restore the coastal meadow to its open appearance.
In addition to landscape rehabilitation and vista opening, the park will develop new waysides to provide visitors with a better understanding of the fighting on the 1804 Battlefield. The existing wayside exhibits were designed and written in 2013, but without the benefit of the battlefield being open and more accurately portrayed.
This project will update the existing 1999 Cultural Landscape Report during design and rehabilitate and perform deferred maintenance on the overgrown battlefield site south and southwest of the 1804 Tlingit fort where the Kiks'adi launched their counter attack on October 2nd, 1804. The park's current GMP and Cultural Landscape Report both call for this work to be completed. Work includes project design, limbing of trees, cutting of small (<6" diameter) trees, and brush clearing, as well as removing beached Sitka Spruce, Alaskan Yellow Cedar, and Western Hemlock mill logs, to restore the coastal meadow to its open appearance.
In addition to landscape rehabilitation and vista opening, the park will develop new waysides to provide visitors with a better understanding of the fighting on the 1804 Battlefield. The existing wayside exhibits were designed and written in 2013, but without the benefit of the battlefield being open and more accurately portrayed.