Hope is a historic community on the Kenai Peninsula at the mouth of Resurrection Creek, on the south shore of Turnagain Arm in upper Cook Inlet, about 22 miles (35 km) southeast of Anchorage and 18 miles (29 km) west-southwest of Girdwood, Alaska. Resurrection Creek rises in the Kenai Mountains and flows roughly north for 20 miles (32 km) to Turnagain Arm, draining a watershed of about 103,000 acres (41,700 ha). The Kenai Mountains are built largely of Cretaceous-age flysch, slate and graywacke accreted onto North America, and in its lower reaches Resurrection Creek has carved a canyon through thick glacial gravel. Turnagain Arm has the second-largest tidal range in North America, exposing broad silt mudflats and producing a tidal bore twice a day. In the 1890s the creek was the site of Alaska’s first gold rush. Charles Miller staked the first claim before leasing it to others. By 1893 about a dozen miners were working claims, and many more followed in 1894. Resurrection Creek has yielded an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 ounces (850 to 1,130 kg) of gold since 1895.
Long before the gold rush, Turnagain Arm was the homeland of the Dena’ina Athabascan people, who fished, hunted and gathered there for generations. The low country near Hope, a grassy tide flat of about 50 acres (20 ha), later suited settlers for gardening and haying. The town was established there around 1896 as Hope City, reputedly named for a young prospector, Percy Hope, and became a trading post for placer miners and pioneers. Deep draft ocean-going ships could not enter Turnagain Arm, so small gasoline boats ran at high tide to Kern Creek, Girdwood, Sunrise and Hope from steamship terminals at Seldovia, Tyonek and Knik. The Pacific Coast Steamship Company and Alaska Steamship Company ran steamers between Seattle and Seldovia year-round, but travel farther up Cook Inlet was possible only in summer, since ice closed the upper inlet each winter. Most gold seekers sailed to Seldovia, then went overland via the Resurrection Pass Trail to Hope, or took a shoal-draft boat to Tyonek and a smaller boat on to Hope.
Today the Resurrection Pass Trail is a popular recreational hike, running about 38.4 miles (62 km) from its northern end near Hope to its southern end at the Sterling Highway near Cooper Landing. Public-use cabins are available by reservation at Caribou Creek, Fox Creek, East Creek and Devil’s Pass, and recreational gold panning is still allowed in designated areas of Resurrection Creek. The trail passes through spruce and aspen forest at lower elevations and alpine tundra with wildflowers above tree line at 2,400 feet (732 m), offering spectacular scenery and chances to see moose, black and brown bears, caribou, wolves, marmots, Dall sheep, mountain goats, ptarmigan and grouse. Hope presently survives as one of the few gold-rush towns on the Kenai Peninsula still standing; its historic core, with buildings dating from the 1890s to the 1940s, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972 as the Hope Historic District. Now a census-designated place of about 160 residents, Hope draws weekend visitors from Anchorage for hiking, fishing and its small-town, gold-rush-era atmosphere. Read more here and here. Explore more of Hope and Resurrection Creek here: