AA-2026-AE88D9
On the image
The U.S. Forest Service planted this trailhead sign for the Nugget Creek Glacier Trail sometime in the postwar decade when the agency was busy making America's wilderness legible to the American public, a project that assumed the public would show up and that the glaciers would stay put. The black painted board with its gold lettering carries the Forest Service shield with quiet institutional confidence, the federal government's way of saying it has thought about this and you should feel guided.
Nugget Creek feeds out of the Juneau Icefield in southeast Alaska, and in the 1950s a hike to this glacier was a reasonable afternoon's ambition. The scrubby alder thicket pressing in behind the sign is doing what alder does at this latitude — advancing steadily into any cleared ground the moment human attention moves elsewhere, indifferent to the agency's organizational chart.
The sign still names a glacier. That is the fact this scene was not trying to record, and the one that gives it its full weight now.
Visually related — by likeness
Nugget Creek Glacier Trail Sign, U.S. Forest Service, Alaska, 1950s. 1950–1959. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-AE88D9. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/nugget-creek-glacier-trail-sign-u-s-forest-service-alaska-1950s.
@misc{aaAA2026AE88D9,
title = {Nugget Creek Glacier Trail Sign, U.S. Forest Service, Alaska, 1950s},
year = {1950–1959},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-AE88D9},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/nugget-creek-glacier-trail-sign-u-s-forest-service-alaska-1950s}
}TY - ART TI - Nugget Creek Glacier Trail Sign, U.S. Forest Service, Alaska, 1950s PY - 1950–1959 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-AE88D9 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/nugget-creek-glacier-trail-sign-u-s-forest-service-alaska-1950s ER -
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