Alaska park’s visitors center is a standout

DENALI NATIONAL PARK, Alaska — Visitors to Denali National Park and Preserve often are awe-struck by North America’s highest mountain, standing majestically in the Alaskan interior. The park’s new visitors center sends a different message: Even a mountain as big as Mount McKinley does not stand alone.

“Denali’s borders exist only on maps,” one exhibit reads, while another counsels: “Denali depends on us.”

“The point of all this is that what people do outside the park can affect the park,” says Carol Harding, the park’s interpretive planner.

Miss Harding points to one display that mentions air pollution from Russia and mercury, DDT and PCBs being found in the park’s Wonder Lake. Another display mentions the problem of human-generated noise drowning out natural sounds.

Denali National Park expects about 400,000 visitors this year, with most of them arriving in June, July and August. Greeting them will be the Denali Visitor Center, which opened for its first full season of visitors on May 15.

Inside the 14,000-square-foot building are a stunning 20-by-70-foot acrylic mural on a curved wall showing 20,320-foot Mount McKinley, a moose with a 62-inch antler spread made from epoxy resin, and a 12-foot-diameter model of the 6-million-acre park about 275 miles north of Anchorage.

Displays also include a representation of pioneer miner Fannie Quigley’s cabin. She and her husband moved into the Kantishna mining area in the early 1900s. She died alone in 1944 at age 74 after refusing to leave the park when her husband was injured in a mining accident and left Alaska.

The Quigley display includes her recipe for making blueberry pie — starting with getting bear fat for the crust by killing a bear and hauling it back in pieces in a backpack. The pie also required a 125-mile trip to Nenana by dog sled for sugar.

Another exhibit, a “What Use Is a Moose” wooden puzzle, is popular with children. Pull off the antlers and learn that they are good for making spoons. Pull off the nose and find out it is considered tasty either boiled or roasted. The moose’s brain is useful for tanning hides.

No matter what is displayed inside, park engineer and project manager Joe Durrenberger says, the visitors center had to be environmentally friendly, and the environmental concerns were evident from the beginning.

In spring 2002, a machine was brought in to peel off the top layer of trees and dirt from the 3-acre site. The material was then ground up and mixed to make 4,000 yards of topsoil used to landscape the site.

The building’s design incorporated renewable wood products and locally produced materials such as Alaska white spruce logs and Alaska birch for the trim. Wall panels were made from wheat board, a product derived from wheat hulls. Beams were made from compressed scraps and glue obtained from a plywood mill near Vancouver, British Columbia.

Energy was a big issue. “A big building like this tends to be a big energy hog,” Mr. Durrenberger says.

The goal was to have solar panels and innovative heating and cooling systems that would make the center self-sufficient for energy, but budget constraints prevented solar panels from being installed on the roof.

The solar panels that were installed — about one-third the number originally planned for the building — are in the windows and generate about 5 percent of the building’s energy needs, Mr. Durrenberger says.

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