The Keys Project in Northern Alaska, 1951–53

In the years following World War II, the U.S. Government was concerned with the paucity of information available about terrain features surrounding the Arctic Basin. To provide a better understanding of polar conditions, the U.S. Air Force authorized the Physical Research Laboratories, Boston University, to conduct a three-year study. The study, known as the Keys Project, was funded by the Wright Air Development Center, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. Its objective was to identify various terrain conditions on the North Slope of Alaska and correlate these features with multi-spectral, aerial photographic mosaics. It was hoped that the annotated mosaics could then be used not only to identify terrain conditions in northern Alaska, but also to evaluate tundra conditions in similar Arctic regions. The project director was F.C. Erickson, who also served as the chairman of the Geography Department at Boston University. Project headquarters were at Umiat, Alaska (69 ̊23' N, 152 ̊10' W; Fig. 1). Umiat, located on a gravel terrace along the Colville River, had served as a base of operations for assessing oil, gas, and oil-shale potentials in Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 4 (Reed, 1958). The base consisted of a gravel airstrip with the capacity to handle larger aircraft, a small radio tower–weather station, dieselpowered electrical generators, a cluster of deteriorating Quonset huts, and a vacated repair shop. Umiat had no running water, and potable water had to be trucked in from the nearby Colville River. The Colville, the largest river in northern Alaska, could accommodate float planes at Umiat and elsewhere, and broad gravel bars and terraces served as landing strips for wheeled aircraft. The project was classified at that time, so very little public information is available. Since this project provided an important step for many subsequent bioenvironmental research projects on the North Slope, it is important to document this particular period of early field observations. The following account of the Keys Project is based on recollections and personal notes of the author, who joined the project in 1953.