Forests in the vicinity of the Kenai Peninsula portion of the Chugach National Forest are of special ecological interest because of their transitional nature between coastal and interior forest types. The Continental Interior boreal forest and Maritime Pacific coast ecological regions merge on the Forest. Fire has historically been present in this century in the Kenai Mountains but whether fire is the important disturbance process creating structural and landscape diversity within this ecosystem is unknown. This report describes three distinct periods of fire frequency - prehistoric (pre 1740), settlement (1741-1913), and post-settlement (1914-1997). Fire reports on the Forest from 1914-1997 were summarized and attributed into a GIS data base documenting fire occurrences for the post-settlement period. A historic fire map was generated for known disturbance burn polygons. A historic land classification document containing maps and photographs, reveals widespread fire disturbances at the turn of the century, settlement period. The present study examined the fire history disturbances of three isolated mature forest areas to reconstruct the age distributions of living trees. Twenty-four historic burns were also examined, future work will reconstruct the age distributions of living trees sampled. Radiocarbon dates of soil charcoal were collected under mature forest stands to document pre-historic fire occurrences. Within the historic burns, remnants of older stumps and isolated residual trees reveal mature forests existed prior to disturbance. Needleleaf forests adjacent to these historic burns have ages greater then 200 ybp. The ages of living Lutz spruce and mountain hemlock within the mature forests sampled are greater then 200 ybp, subsurface soil charcoal is greater then 500 ybp. Although abiotic disturbances such as wind, snow avalanche, landslides, glacial recession, and flooding have been recognized for the important ways in which they influence the pattern of vegetation and tree recruitment on the Forest, the role of fire is now recognized as an important disturbance process over many millennia in this transitional climate. The historical records of fires and tree ages, together with the present mature forests and beetle kill fuel loads, suggest that the next interval of stand-regenerating fires is near.