Nahanni Valley
In 1908, Charlie McLeod found his brothers Willie and Frank on a riverbank in what is now called Deadmen Valley. Both skeletons were missing their heads. The heads were never found, and the Scottish engineer who went in with them in 1905 was never accounted for at all.
Field Guide Entry
The brothers
Willie and Frank McLeod heard rumors of gold on the South Nahanni in 1904, went in, and came out with samples worth going back for. They set off again in 1905 with a Scottish engineer. None of the three came out.
Three years later their brother Charlie led a search party in and found Willie and Frank on a riverbank. The skeletons had no heads. The engineer was never found at all, and the ground they had been prospecting was never relocated.
The names on the map
Deadmen Valley, Headless Creek, and the old name Headless Valley for the whole watershed all come from that search party, and so does the Lost McLeod Mine, which has been looked for ever since and never produced.
What the evidence carries
Two bodies left on an open riverbank for three years, in country that holds wolves, bears, and hard winters, will not be found intact. Whether the heads were taken or lost is not something the remains can settle, and the accounts written down decades later are not the kind of record that settles it either.
Later deaths and disappearances in the same watershed were added to the story as it traveled, some of them documented and some not.
The park
Nahanni National Park Reserve was established in 1976 and inscribed by UNESCO in 1978, among the first sites on the World Heritage List. Náįlįcho, Virginia Falls, drops roughly twice the height of Niagara.
This is Dene homeland, and the hazards the park lists are water, weather, distance, and the time it takes for help to arrive.
Visiting Information
There is no road. Access is by chartered floatplane from Fort Simpson, about 2 hours each way, or as part of a guided river expedition.
A permit from the park office at Fort Simpson is needed to land in the park. Everyone staying overnight or traveling multi-day registers with that office, in person or by phone, before entering. Náįlįcho, Virginia Falls, and Glacier Lake are the only places where day use is allowed.
Most visitors come on a guided paddle of the South Nahanni, which runs a week or longer. Independent trips call for real wilderness experience, because the distances make outside help slow to arrive by definition.
The park is co-managed with the Dehcho First Nations, and the operators running trips work under that arrangement.
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