March-April 2020
She mushed her dogteam 1,000 miles across the trackless north, from her remote lodge near Juneau to Fairbanks, where she was the Miss Juneau entrant in the 1936 Miss Alaska Contest.
Mary Joyce, Adventurer Mary Joyce was an Alaskan adventurer of the highest caliber, and when Alaska was still just a territory she owned and operated a remote lodge near Juneau, became the first woman radio operator in the territory, and flew her own bush plane. In later years, after selling her lodge, she joined Pan Alaska Airways as a stewardess, and then settled in Juneau, where she worked as a nurse and bought two popular local bars. But Mary Joyce’s biggest claim to fame, besides her dauntless courage in trying new adventures, was her 1936 dogsled trip from her Taku Lodge near Juneau to Fairbanks, 1,000 miles away. Mary was invited to participate in the 1936 Fairbanks Ice Carnival as a representative for the City and Borough of Juneau. Always ready for an adventure, she decided to drive her sled dogs on the thousand-mile journey, and she kept notes on index cards while on the trail and later wrote a book about the trip based on those notes. Her book was not published until 2007 when her cousin, Mary Anne Greiner, edited her manuscript and published it under the title, Mary Joyce, Taku to Fairbanks, 1,000 Miles by Dogteam (AuthorHouse, 2007): “She was the first white person over a portion of the trail which later became part of the Alcan Highway. Her
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