he braided Copper River lies at the cultural and geographical heart of this area. Its waters are icy-cold, and dozens of tributaries feed into it. If the Copper River Valley was late in being "discovered" by outsiders, this was in part because the raging river after which it was named failed to provide a secure summer access route through the mountains.

The Copper River is 287 miles long. It drops an average of about 12 feet per mile, and drains a total of 24,000 square miles, an area the size of West Virginia. The river has 13 major tributaries, and runs along at an average of 7 miles an hour. The river is a mile wide at the Copper River delta, near Cordova. Many of the traditional Native American villages located in the Copper River Valley are at the mouths of tributaries (or smaller rivers) entering the larger Copper River. Some examples are communities at Slana, Chistochina, Gakona, Gulkana, Tazlina, Copper Center, Tonsina, and Chitina. (By the way, "na" means "river" in the Ahtna language. It may sound odd, but there are many other places in America with that familiar "na" ending: for instance, Montana and Indiana.) The Copper River has always been a major winter transportation corridor for Alaska Natives. Before the arrival of white settlers, the Ahtna people of the Copper River Valley ran an extensive and lucrative trade network here, moving valued goods across the entire region.