16 Incredible Vintage Photos from an Alaska Wildlife Refuge

Every job has its fair share of drudgery and red tape. This is, as the jokes go, doubly true for government workers. So that’s one reason, perhaps, why this collection of vintage photographs by federal employees feels so remarkable.

These images all depict or were taken by U.S. Fish and Wildlife employees from the 1950s through the early 1980s. All of them are from Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge, which spans nearly 2 million acres and four different islands in Southwest Alaska, including nearly two-thirds of Kodiak Island. The refuge was established in 1941 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt for “the purpose of protecting the natural feeding and breeding range of the Kodiak bear.” That’s one reason bear biologists, bear hunters, and bears themselves feature so heavily in the photos below.

But mostly, as I sifted through more than a hundred old photographs to select the ones you see below, I noticed that the federal employees who lived and worked at the refuge seemed to be, well, having fun.

It could be that getting your photo taken was a rarer phenomenon 50-plus years before smart phones, when folks were more likely to flash a big grin for the camera. But I don’t think that’s it. Miraculously, these are all excerpts from annual reports. They should, in theory, be rather dull. Instead, the free-spirited yet hard-working attitudes of these USFWS employees are evident throughout the photo albums, from typed and handwritten captions to the subject matter themselves.

What’s more, the details about the story behind each image are sparse. And that’s part of the appeal: These snapshots offer a peek into the life and times of the dedicated men and women — biologists, refuge managers, pilots, and more — who make our public lands such incredible places to visit, fish, and hunt. Here’s a look at just a few of them.