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Valued Landscapes of the Far North: A Geographical Journey through Denali National Park. By Eugene J. Palka. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. xvi + 142 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. Cloth $65.00, paper $24.95.

Centrally located in the state and in Alaskan consciousness, Denali National Park and Preserve (formerly Mt. McKinley National Park) is also the centerpiece for most visitors. Combining the continent's highest peak, open terrain, and easily observed wildlife, the park seldom fails to impress. Valued Landscapes of the Far North focuses on the visitor experience to Denali, a place notable for being the world's largest tract designated as a national park, a wilderness area, and an international biosphere reserve. The author, a U.S. Army officer now on the faculty at West Point, frequented the park during an active duty stint in Alaska, turned his affection into a dissertation, and revised it for this book. Palka applies traditional and new approaches of geography toward understanding why this national park did not suffer developments typical elsewhere, and how Denali remains pristine despite hosting over a million visitors annually.

Chapters on historical, physical, and cultural geography, mostly descriptive with some theory to leaven the mix, address these questions in brief fashion. Few new insights emerge. Of course "Denali's hostile environment and remote location" limited its need for tourist infrastructure (p. 30). Also obvious is that the Denali experience was defined by the decision of the National Park Service in 1972 to force visitors to ride communal buses on the park s sole ninety-mile road, eliminating the traffic problems of other parks. Denali's cultural landscape has developed entirely under the NPS, yet the author spends no time examining its institutional culture, nor does he provide details about development alternatives or management decisions.

By keeping his focus within the legislated park boundaries, Palka misses the more interesting points of cultural geography that lie on the fringes. At the road's beginning is the predictable collection of roadside tourist services, while at its end are the upscale, bird-watcher-catering destination lodges. These latter are relatively new additions to the pre-park landscape of the Kantishma mining district, whose claim owners would be surprised at Palka's assertion that they "abandoned the area" in 1906 (p. 14). The property rights of these owners, who might wish to sell to hotel developers, have significant potential impacts on the use of the park road, and thus the overall visitor experience at Denali.

Most interesting, though, is the way Palka examines the visitor experience. Drawing upon two seasons of surveys and interviews, he finds that each functional category of visitor-hikers, campers, and bus riders-creates a fulfilling niche. Even the bus riders, who might seem to be detached observers, adopt an identity in that activity and find ways for self-affirmation, a process furthered by their interaction at the road's rest stops. Visitors report themselves changed by even brief times in the park. Palka attributes this to the uniqueness of Denali's environment, and encourages further research into the notion of therapeutic landscapes, "invigorating yet relaxing and restorative" (p. 125). One wishes that Palka had pondered more on the irony of a road needed to show visitors landscapes without roads; wouldn't two roads be twice as therapeutic? Or half as much?

Reviewed bv Timothy Rawson, who teaches at Alaska Pacific University in Anchorage. His own book on the park, Changing Tracks: Predators and Politics in Mt. McKinley National Park (University of Alaska Press), will be available in spring 2001.