Collections

The museum collections for Gates of the Arctic serve to document the cultural and natural history of the Central Brooks Range and are used for research, interpretation, and resource management purposes. The largest of the collections are in archaeology and archives, followed by smaller collections in biology, paleontology, history, and ethnology. The majority of the collections are stored in a state of the art curation facility in the Fairbanks Administrative Center, while others are curated in partner repositories such as the University of Alaska Museum of the North (UAMN).

Gates of the Arctic has been described as a living landscape and the museum collections reflect this unique attribute. The cultural materials housed in the museum illuminate the details of human occupation of the central Brooks Range from modern times stretching back for over ten thousand years. The limited paleontological collections reach back even further. The biological collections, housed primarily at UAMN, provide a record of the combined arctic and sub-arctic ecology of the region. The extensive archive documents the creation and early years of the park and preserve as well as years worth of administrative activity including numerous resource management undertakings within the park.

Explore a Web Exhibit

This virtual exhibit highlights a specific section of the collections, and is a combination of stories and images that provide a deeper insight into a specific subset of the overall collection. Browse archaeological research at a prehistoric Paleo-Eskimo camp: A virtual exhibit

 

The Gates of the Arctic museum collections have no permanent exhibit space but are used regularly incorporated in traveling and temporary exhibits, and can be explored virtually through an online catalog, and web-based exhibits. Contact the park curator to request access to collections for research or educational uses.

Visit the Web Catalog

A new on-line collections web catalog is now available for anyone to browse. The collections can be searched in several different ways and many of the items have associated images that can be viewed.