November 24, 2025 — High in a mountain valley on the far west side of this tidal inlet sits an unusual plot of land.
It’s a private parcel, with a gravel airstrip and four or five buildings that make up a small worker camp. But there are no towns in sight. Known as the Johnson Tract, the property is fully surrounded by the vast Lake Clark National Park — millions of wild acres marked by the broad white peaks of a volcano, sprawling glaciers and a muddy ocean coastline patrolled by brown bears.
Beneath the Johnson Tract lies a potential fortune. For decades, geologists have eyed gold, copper and zinc deposits thought to be worth billions of dollars. But they’ve never been tapped.
Now, amid surging gold prices and rising demand for metals like copper, the prospect is generating new excitement — and concern.
A prominent Alaska mining company is leasing the Johnson Tract from its Indigenous owners, and the property, some 125 miles southwest of Anchorage, has emerged as one of the most promising mining prospects in Southcentral Alaska.
But conservationists, commercial salmon fishermen and local lodge owners fear a mine, encircled by the federal protected area, could disrupt harvests and harm wildlife, including an endangered population of beluga whales.
Getting the Johnson Tract’s minerals to buyers will require trucking ore through a now-roadless corner of the national park to a future port.
Critics point out that the bay where the mining company, Contango Ore, Inc., wants to build a shipping terminal is an important winter habitat for the endangered belugas. Concern for the whales, among other objections, led mine opponents to sue federal regulators earlier this year over a permit that Contango received to build a short access road and expand an airstrip at the site.