Collections

This bone harpoon and seal ear bone are more than 6,000 years old.

The Katmai museum collection consists of more than 400,000 objects. It includes paleontological samples, archeological artifacts that are thousands of years old, historic photographs and documents, tapes, ethnographic items, oral history interview transcripts, archives, administrative records, small mammal collections, biological and paleontological specimens, geological samples, and other items reflecting the cultural and natural history of this unique place.

Many of these items are fragile and require special conservation methods. The museum specialists at Katmai ensure that these irreplaceable pieces of the past will be available to future generations.

Links to some of the Katmai documents in the collection:

• A Naknek Chronicle; ten thousand years in a land of lakes and rivers and mountains of fire
• Buried Dreams; the rise and fall of a clam cannery
• Embattled Katmai; a history of Katmai National Monument
• Fure's Cabin; historic structure report, Bay of Islands, Naknek Lake
• Isolated Paradise; an administrative history of Katmai and Aniakchak
• Building in an Ashen Land; historic resource study of Katmai
• Tourism in Katmai Country; a history of concessions activity in Katmai
• Witness; firsthand accounts of the largest volcanic eruption in the Twentieth Century