THE FATHER OF DENALI NATIONAL PARK

Charles Alexander Sheldon was born on October 17, 1867 into a hard-working family involved in marble quarrying and manufacturing. Sheldon attended Andover and graduated from Yale in 1890, the year the family business collapsed. Through family contacts he was hired as assistant superintendent of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad. From there he moved to Mexico and in 1898 became general manager of the Chihuahua and Pacific Railroad. He invested in the Chihuahua and Pacific Exploration Company, developers of Potasi, one of the richest silver and lead mines in Mexico. In just four short years this investment secured Sheldon's financial future and he retired at age 35.

A life-long hunter and fisherman, Sheldon’s conservation career began in 1904 when he contacted C. Hart Merriam and Edward W. Nelson of the U.S. Biological Survey, forerunner of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Sheldon loved all wildlife but North America’s wild mountain sheep fascinated him. He first hunted desert sheep in Mexico's Sierra Madre and then pursued bighorns in the Rocky Mountains. Stories of the so-called “thinhorn” sheep of the northern wilderness attracted his attention and in 1904, he hunted and observed Stone sheep in Canada’s Yukon. His first book, The Wilderness of the Upper Yukon, detailed his sheep hunting experiences in the Yukon Territory in 1904 and 1905. 

Sheldon, self-effacing to a fault, cared deeply about nature, wildlife, hunting and family, but seldom spoke of himself. Throughout his life he preferred to be called Sheldon, or “Billie.” (After World War I some people referred to him as “Colonel Sheldon,” a title which embarrassed him.) “Sheldon was personally a most attractive man. He possessed great sweetness of nature and was friendly, frank, and forthright.” His friends included Theodore Roosevelt, George Bird Grinnell, Gifford Pinchot, Carl Rungius, Wilfred H. Osgood, Raold Amundsen, Alexander Graham Bell, and Admiral Byrd.

Sheldon’s love of his “noble and splendid” mountain sheep eventually led him to Alaska in search of Dall sheep, the least known of the four North American species. In late June, 1906, in Fairbanks Alaska, Judge James A. Wickersham introduced Sheldon to Harry Karstens, whom he promptly hired for his expedition into the Mt. McKinley region. “I recall no better fortune than that which befell me when Harry Karstens was engaged as an assistant packer...He is a tall, stalwart man, well poised, frank, and strictly honorable...peculiarly fitted by youth and experience for explorations in little-known regions, he proved a most efficient and congenial companion.”

For Sheldon, his 1906 expedition to the base of Mt. McKinley, although satisfying, was only partially successful. He had more study and collecting to do there, a noble plan forming in his mind. “During the months we roamed over a good part of what is now Mount McKinley National Park gathering specimens,” Karstens said. “Sheldon was so taken with the beauty of the area and the amount of game...that he decided to try and have this area set aside for a game refuge and park.”

In 1907, Sheldon returned for a year’s stay near the head of the Toklat River. “The preceding year I had selected a site for my cabin...on an ancient level bar on the east side of the Toklat about three miles below my camp of 1906.” Sheldon, assisted by Harry Karstens, built the cabin and spent a year studying and collecting in what he called his “beloved wilderness.”

During his stay on the Toklat River, Sheldon had fallen in love with the central Alaska Range and its wildlife. He not only recognized the danger of uncontrolled market hunting, but possessed the character, political connections, and independent means to stop it. Just as avidly as he had hunted sheep, Sheldon doggedly chased his dream of a national park on the north side of Mount McKinley through the halls of Congress.  It wasn't an easy fight. 

Sheldon's connections with pioneer conservationists such as Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, George Bird Grinnell, Stephen T. Mather, Edward W. Nelson, and C. Hart Merriam, assured his views would be heard in the highest seats of power. The support he received from the Boone and Crockett Club, American Game Protective Association, and Camp Fire Club was crucial.

In mid-October 1915, Sheldon laid out his park plan to Dr. Nelson, Chief of the U.S. Biological Survey. Belmore Browne, artist, adventurer, and mountain climber, who in 1912 almost achieved the first ascent of Mt. McKinley, joined forces with Sheldon to promote the park idea. Following the Boone and Crockett Club's formal endorsement of the park plan in September 1915, Sheldon solicited the aid of Judge Wickersham, Alaska's Delegate to Congress. Wickersham adopted the proposal On April 16, 1916, Delegate Wickersham and Senator Key Pittman of Nevada introduced identical park bills. “It is particularly fitting that Mr. Wickersham, who was the first man to attempt to climb Mt. McKinley in 1903, should have introduced the bill.” 

In January 1917, A Bill to Establish a Mount McKinley National Park passed both houses of Congress. After the formality of obtaining the signature of the Secretary of the Interior, Charles Sheldon hand-carried it directly to the White House. On February 24, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson signed it into law.   

This singular conservation act, passed just prior to America’s involvement in World War I, remains a monument to its chief architect, Charles Sheldon. Sheldon was anything but a conservation dilettante. Throughout his adult life he campaigned for protection of migratory birds, forests, parks, and limits on hunting. At one time or other he served on the board of directors of the Boone and Crockett Club, National Parks Association, American Forestry Association, National Recreation Committee, National Geographic Society, and served as Chairman of the Commission on the Conservation of the Jackson Hole Elk. He was a member of such disparate groups as the Explorers Club, American Ornithological Union, Washington's Cosmos Club, and the New York Zoological Society.

After Charles Sheldon died on September 21, 1928, in Nova Scotia, the story of his McKinley adventures was edited by C. Hart Merriam and Edward Nelson and posthumously published by his wife as “Wilderness of Denali”

Alaska’s crown jewel, Denali National Park and Preserve, began as Mt. McKinley National Park. We owe much to the vision of this pioneer conservationist, Charles Sheldon.

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