Mount Wrangell is an active volcano with steam and the odor of sulfur wafting near its summit.
Paper routes and lawn mowing provide small change compared to the $1,000 or so a Wrangell child can earn each summer by hawking garnets to cruise ship passengers and other tourists.
The property was deeded to the Boy Scouts of America in 1962 by the late Fred Hanford, a former mayor of Wrangell, a town of about 2,100 in southeastern Alaska.
In 1973, Mr. Seidenberg learned that Wrangell had surfaced in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about Soviet prison camps.
The State Department insists that Wrangell isn't part of the talks.
The spill occurred in the Wrangell Narrows, a 24-mile long channel amid the mountainous, thickly forested islands of the Inside Passage, which runs along the Alaskan and Canadian coasts between Seattle and Juneau.