Map of Haines, Alaska by USGS, 1991 – Chilkat State Park & Chilkoot River

Published in 1991, the United States Geological Survey’s “Skagway A-2 NE” presents a finely detailed provisional topographic portrait of the Haines, Alaska, region at a scale of 1:25,000. Though its title places it within the Skagway quadrangle system, the map’s focus is the dramatic meeting of town, mountain, river, and saltwater around Haines, Chilkat Inlet, and Chilkoot River. As a provisional USGS sheet, it reflects a working precision: a landscape rendered for practical use, scientific reference, and geographic clarity. Contour lines articulate the steepness of Southeast Alaska’s terrain, while blue waterways and carefully placed labels guide the eye through an environment shaped by ice, tides, forests, and human settlement.

The USGS, long regarded as one of the world’s most authoritative mapping institutions, brought to this map its characteristic discipline and restraint. Founded to study and document the nation’s geology, hydrology, topography, and natural resources, the agency produced maps that became indispensable to surveyors, planners, engineers, scientists, and travelers. Here, that institutional clarity is evident in the clean hierarchy of information: settlements, roads, harbors, rivers, mountain forms, and shorelines are all arranged with measured exactness. The result is not merely a utilitarian document, but a sophisticated cartographic record of a remote coastal landscape at the end of the twentieth century, when precise topographic mapping remained essential to understanding Alaska’s rugged geography.

Haines appears as the principal populated place, set between Portage Cove, Haines Harbor, and the broader waters of Chilkat Inlet. Nearby Fort William H. Seward adds a layer of historical resonance, recalling the strategic and military importance of this coastal gateway. Roads connecting Haines with surrounding areas are traced against a backdrop of compressed contours and irregular shorelines, revealing how infrastructure negotiates difficult terrain. The waterfront names—Pyramid Harbor, Portage Cove, and Haines Harbor—evoke a maritime world of ferries, fishing craft, and sheltered anchorages. McClellan Flats and Shakes Island further enrich the coastal geography, showing the subtle interplay of tidal margins, lowland areas, and settlement on the edge of the northern Pacific.

The map’s topographic drama lies in its depiction of the mountains and waterways that define this part of Southeast Alaska. Takshanuk Mountain rises prominently, its elevation expressed through dense contouring that conveys both scale and severity. The Chilkoot River and adjacent water bodies introduce a contrasting fluidity, threading through valleys toward the sea. Chilkat Pass suggests the larger regional geography beyond the immediate coast, a corridor through mountains historically significant for travel, trade, and movement between interior and maritime Alaska. Chilkat State Park anchors the landscape in conservation and natural beauty, preserving a setting where steep slopes, forested terrain, river systems, and marine waters converge in a compact but visually powerful composition.

As a 1991 record, “Skagway A-2 NE” captures Haines and its surroundings at a particular moment in their geographic and infrastructural evolution. The map preserves the road network, place names, harbor forms, and mapped terrain as understood at that date, offering a valuable comparison point for later changes brought by development, shifting shorelines, revised land management, or natural processes. Its provisional character gives it a particularly interesting status: authoritative yet transitional, part of the ongoing USGS effort to refine and update the national topographic archive. For collectors, historians, and admirers of Alaska, it offers an elegant, information-rich view of a coastal frontier where mountains descend sharply to cold blue water.

Cities, towns and places on this map

• Haines
• Chilkat State Park
• Chilkoot River
• Chilkat Inlet
• Chilkat Pass
• McClellan Flats
• Killisnoo
• Haines Harbor
• Portage Cove
• Pyramid Harbor
• Takshanuk Mountain
• Shakes Island
• Fort William H. Seward
• Roads connecting Haines to nearby areas
• Water bodies, including rivers and lakes

Historical context & cartographic details

• Published by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in 1991.
• The map is identified as Skagway A-2 NE.
• Marked as a provisional topographic map.
• Created at a detailed scale of 1:25,000.
• Shows terrain features such as mountains, waterways, urban development, and precise elevation changes.
• Uses contour lines to indicate elevation and relief.
• Includes color gradients to depict topographical features.
• Represents water bodies in shades of blue.
• Features clear, methodically placed labels for cities, rivers, and mountain ranges.
• Reflects the area’s topography and infrastructure as recorded in 1991.
• Provides a historical snapshot that may differ from the modern landscape due to later development or natural change.
• Produced by the USGS, a U.S. government scientific agency responsible for studying natural resources and providing reliable landscape information.

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