Overview
About Wassillie Trefon Dena'ina Fish Cache
Why stop
- A rare surviving example of Dena'ina food-storage craft
Heads up
- A small outdoor exhibit, so the visit is brief
The Wassillie Trefon Dena'ina Fish Cache is a raised, square-notched log food store outside the Port Alsworth Visitor Center. Built around 1920, it's a compact outdoor exhibit and a good short stop if you're interested in Dena'ina history or traditional woodwork. You can see it without going into the visitor center.
Parkwolf’s verdictA short stop in Port AlsworthMap
Where it is
The highest, rockiest slopes around here are a summer buffet for grizzly bears.
Lake Clark Tour Guide
Your drive to Wassillie Trefon Dena'ina Fish Cache, narrated.
Parkwolf is a GPS audio tour guide for Lake Clark National Park. As you drive, it chimes in with what’s ahead: hidden gems, upcoming stops, history, geology, and wildlife, right through your car’s speakers.
See the Lake Clark audio tourRecorded for this place
Port Alsworth Visitor Center and Fish Cache“Up ahead is the Port Alsworth Visitor Center, a useful stop for trail maps and a closer look at local history. Outside, look for the Wassillie Trefon Dena'ina Fish Cache, a raised log building used to store food.”
Plays as you drive up to Wassillie Trefon Dena'ina Fish Cache in the Parkwolf Lake Clark Tour Guide.
More stories near here in the app
- Libby's Orange Sailboat
- Cissie's Kitchen
- Tanalian Trails and Falls
- 18 audio storiesacross Lake Clark’s roads, triggered by GPS as you drive
- Wildlife heatmapsfor Brown Bear, Bald Eagle, Common Merganser
- Works offlinemaps, 5 trails, 34 places, and audio download before you lose signal
- CarPlay readysimple controls built for the drive
“Fantastic app with many points of information… It’s great to just turn on while you’re driving and it gives you an audio tour of the national Park. We love it!!!!”
Guide
More about Wassillie Trefon Dena'ina Fish Cache
Getting to itUse the visitor center at 1 Park Place as your destination; the cache stands outside.
Use the visitor center at 1 Park Place as your destination; the cache stands outside. It's listed as accessible year-round, with a fairly flat gravel approach from the road. A wheelchair can be borrowed at the visitor center. Allow a few minutes rather than planning a long museum visit.
Look at the joineryThe building is held together with square notches, without nails or spikes.
The building is held together with square notches, without nails or spikes. Its raised floor and gable ends show the careful construction: a grooved upright inside the gable helps lock the end logs together. Fish caches like this kept food securely, and this one still shows how Trefon made that work with wood alone.
A rare survivorWassillie Trefon was a Dena'ina master woodworker who built houses and caches around the Lake…
Wassillie Trefon was a Dena'ina master woodworker who built houses and caches around the Lake Clark region and made plank skiffs. Fish caches of this kind once stood at Dena'ina and inland Yup'ik villages, seasonal camps and summer fish villages across the region; most have disappeared. This one was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2013, preserving a rare example of local food-storage craft and Native American history.
Wildlife
Wildlife in Lake Clark
142 sightingsBrown BearMost seen around 8 AMSighting map
11 sightingsBald EagleMost seen around 6 PMSighting map
13 sightingsCommon MerganserMost seen around 8 AMSighting mapSighting maps show where each species has been reported across Lake Clark. Wildlife moves, so no sighting is guaranteed.
