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Research dossier · Places & Architecture

Mount McGhan

mountain in Alaska, United States

Architectural plans, a scale model, maps and brass measuring instruments
Places and architectureInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 15, 2026
Entity authorityQ131127778
Source-derived summary

Mount McGhan is a 4,730-foot-elevation (1,442-meter) mountain summit in Alaska, United States.

Description

Mount McGhan is located on the Kenai Peninsula on land managed by Chugach National Forest. It is set 23 miles (37 km) north of the city of Seward in the Kenai Mountains. Although modest in elevation, topographic relief is significant as the summit rises 3,275 feet (998 meters) above Crescent Lake in one mile (1.6 km), and 4,300 feet (1,311 meters) above Kenai Lake in two miles (3.2 km). Precipitation runoff from the mountain drains into these two lakes which are part of the Kenai River drainage basin. The mountain was named in 1988 after Bruce McGhan (1953–1986) at the request of his widow, Debra McGhan, with the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly supporting the proposal to honor her late husband who died in an industrial accident.

Climate

Based on the Köppen climate classification, Mount McGhan is located in a subpolar oceanic climate zone with long, cold, snowy winters, and mild summers. Weather systems coming off the Gulf of Alaska are forced upwards by the Kenai Mountains (orographic lift), causing heavy precipitation in the form of rainfall and snowfall.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Mount McGhan” is mountain in Alaska, United States. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Mount, McGhan and mountain, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewMost useful as a place-based finding aid connecting the present description to earlier jurisdictions, maps and built evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1988, 1953, 1986—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Mount, McGhan and mountain is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “mountain in Alaska, United States” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q131127778. Authority coordinates are 60.433, -149.545. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1988, 1953 and 1986.

Critical limits

Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.

Best used for
  • Historic place names
  • Jurisdictional context
  • Routes into maps and plans
Verify next

Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Mount McGhan”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Mount McGhan primary sources, Mount McGhan archive and Mount research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Mount McGhan”?
  2. Which earlier names or jurisdictions may reveal additional records?
  3. Which authority defined the place, boundary or structure at the relevant date?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Mount McGhan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.