3 ideas
One piece of Alaskan ground is read at once as wilderness to preserve, resource to extract, Native subsistence territory, state revenue base, and a homesteader's refuge. Each claimant's vision is internally coherent, so conflict comes less from ignorance than from incompatible definitions of what the land is for. Setting the claims side by side, rather than picking a hero, shows that 'the land question' is really a contest over meaning.
In and around Eagle, a small town on the Upper Yukon near the Canadian border, McPhee lived among people who came to 'the country' to trap, fish, pan for gold, and build cabins far from government. Figures like the trapper Dick Cook pursue near-total self-reliance, yet they depend on the river, the seasons, and some outside supplies. Their way of life collides with federal land withdrawals and park proposals that would restrict cabin-building and trapping on land they treat as open.
After Alaskans voted in 1974 to move the capital from Juneau, which is remote and reachable only by sea or air, a site-selection committee flew over the Railbelt between Anchorage and Fairbanks hunting for a place to build a capital from scratch. The search exposed regional rivalries, Anchorage's pull, real-estate speculation, and planners' visions of an ideal city imposed on empty ground. It shows how much political ambition a blank-slate location project attracts.