Alaskan History Magazine, Jan-Feb 2020

January-February 2020

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January-February 2020

The digital edition of the Nov-Dec, 2019 issue at the publishing site Issuu

Digital Editions This is the fifth issue of Alaskan History Magazine, and the second one available to buy as a single issue if you’re not a subscriber to the print edition. The first three issues, May-June, JulyAugust, and Sept-Oct, 2019 are available to anyone to read free; the Nov-Dec, 2019 issue is the first digital issue for sale, and now this Jan-Feb, 2020 issue. These beautiful digital editions are a great way to share the magazine with friends and family, or to take them with you while traveling, or for just enjoying on your favorite electronic device.

Please note that, as with previous digital editions, the page count will differ slightly from the print edition. At some point I hope to align them, and I also hope to add interactive content to these electronic versions, including embedded audio and video clips. A word about the company making this possible….

Issuu (/ˈɪs.juː/) is an electronic publishing platform founded in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2006, enabling creators of publications to share their content digitally. In 2009, Issuu was named one of TIME's 50 Best Websites. By 2011, Issuu software was being used by several online publications, and by early 2013, the company opened an office in Palo Alto, California. With the move, the founders of Issuu stated that they saw social media and digital distribution partnerships as the key to its growth, rather than focusing mostly on publishing relationships.

My goal with Alaskan History Magazine is to utilize the powerful digital and social media tools which Issuu offers to make the stories and history of our state available in a dynamic, exciting, and profoundly informative format. Thank you for supporting that dream! ~Helen, publisher

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January-February 2020 This issue’s cover image, a theatrical poster titled “Across the Chikoot Pass,” was created and copyrighted in 1897 by The Strobridge Lithograph Co., Cincinnati & New York. It is part of the theatrical poster collection of the Library of Congress. There are two versions, with slightly different details, such as the placement of the pack mule and the banner title. The entire poster is shown on the left.

American playwright Scott Marble (1847 – April 5, 1919) also wrote the stage melodrama The Great Train Robbery (1896), which would become a movie classic.

Inside the magazine: This issue features a look at the history of Chilkoot Pass and the ages-old trail which crossed it, not only in the Klondike gold rush era, but long before then as a vital trade route for the coastal Tlingit Indians, and later as an access route for the earliest gold prospectors, along with a large number of scientists, military expeditions, explorers and adventurers.

Also in this issue is a look at the great Davidson Ditch, a 90-mile aqueduct which channeled water from the Chatanika River over hills and across valleys to the rich gold diggings at Fox and Dome Creek, north of Fairbanks. And Fairbanks was the site of another article in this issue, the historic meeting of the Tanana Chiefs in 1915.

To the north and west, at Nome, an unusual lady was making a place for herself in the history books as one of the great authors of children’s books, writing classics such as Baldy of Nome and Navarre of the North, but Esther Birdsall Darling was also a high society lady from a wealthy California olive-growing family….

The first article in this issue is a look at another famous writer, Ella Rhodes Higginson, Washington State’s first Poet Laureate, and author of Alaska, The Great Country, published in 1908. This issue concludes with an article about the Bard of the Yukon, Robert Service, who penned the immortal lines of favorite northern ballads such as The Spell of the Yukon, The Shoorting of Dan McGrew, and The Cremation of Sam McGee. Enjoy this issue!

Subscriptions, Single Issues, and Foreign Orders: Single issues are $10.00 postpaid; a one year subscription, 6 issues, is $48.00 postpaid (U.S. addresses only). Outside the U.S. please use Amazon to order (single issues only). For information visit www.alaskan-history.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

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January-February 2020 Jan-Feb 2020 VOLUME 2, NO. 1

ISBN 9781677027262

Published bimonthly

by Northern Light Media

GOVERNORS

FOCUS:

OLD BOOKS

THE GUYS AT THE TOP FROM 1867 TO 1959 - 8

ANTIQUE MAPS OF ALASKA - 46

THE HISTORY OF ALASKA BETWEEN THE PAGES - 48

ALASKAN HISTORY

The Chilkoot Trail “The men take up the packs, and this is what happens: They walk to Packers on Dyea Trail, 1897. the base of the cliff, with a stout alpenstock in hand. They start to climb a narrow foot-trail that goes up, up, up. The rock and earth are gray. The Photo by LaRoche, Seattle, packers and packs have disappeared. There is nothing but the gray wall of Wash., from the Library of Congress, [www.loc.gov/ rock and earth. But stop! Look more closely. The eye catches movement. item/2016653518/].

The mountain is alive. See! They are going against the sky! They are human beings, but never did men look so small.” ~Tappan Adney for Harpers Weekly, 1897 Article begins on page 16

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January-February 2020 ELLA HIGGINSON

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AUTHOR OF ALASKA, THE GREAT COUNTRY Ella Higginson didn’t miss much in her exclamations over the many charms of Alaska. Nor did she refrain from disparaging remarks when anything assaulted her refined sensibilities.

THE DAVIDSON DITCH

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90 MILES TO CHATANIKA It was the first large-scale pipeline project in Alaska, and lessons learned in its construction were applied to building the 800-mile Trans-Alaska Pipeline System half a century later.

THE 1915 TANANA CHIEFS CONFERENCE

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THEIR MEETING IN FAIRBANKS STILL RESONATES TODAY The Tanana Chiefs Conference brought together Native Athabascan leaders from the Tanana River villages to meet with government officials to discuss the many changes happening in the Territory of Alaska at that time.

ESTHER BIRDSALL DARLING

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“SCOTTY” ALLAN’S KENNEL PARTNER IN NOME The great dog race of the north is to be run April 8. A woman of California's exclusive society circles has entered a team of fourteen dogs and hopes to capture the $5000 purse. The woman is Mrs. C. K. Darling of Berkeley.

ROBERT SERVICE

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THE BARD OF THE YUKON Although he did not arrive in Dawson City until ten years after the great gold rush of 1898, his poetry and writings of the era helped shape the romantic ideals of the Klondike. But there was much more to the man….

Photo postcard: A pack team leaving Valdez, circa 1910.

Cover Notes, In this Issue . . . . . . . 1

Focus on: Antique Maps . . . . . . . 46

Table of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . 4 - 5

Classic Alaskan History Books . . 48

Publisher’s Notes . . . . . . . . . . . 6 - 7

Current Alaskan History Books. . 49

Governors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Resources & Subscriptions . . . . . 50

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January-February 2020 Publisher’s Note Alaskan History M•A•G•A•Z•I•N•E

A New Year

Jan-Feb, 2020

North to the Future

Volume 2, Number 1

A new year, and five issues into publishing a new magazine!

When I started this publication last April I had no idea it would be so well received. I was just unhappy that so much of Alaska’s incredible history was seemingly relegated to libraries and dusty websites, and I thought it should be available in a beautiful fullcolor presentation for sharing with friends and family. And many of you have shared it, and it makes me smile every time another gift subscription crosses my desk, because to me it means that someone thought enough of what I’m doing to share it with someone who will also enjoy it, and that always makes my day.

Published by Northern Light Media Post Office Box 870515 Wasilla, Alaska 99687 (907) 521-5245 www.Alaskan-History.com Email AlaskanHistory@gmail.com Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/ alaskanhistory/ Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/ AlaskanHistory/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/HelenHegener Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ akhistorymagazine/

ISBN 9781677027262

To be honest, each and every subscription—and even the single issue orders—make my day when they come in, because they are financial proof that others value this project and want to support it and see it continue. I didn’t start this magazine with a business plan, or any kind of financing, or even a bankroll of savings. I started it on a wing and a prayer, and a belief that it would fly if it was worthy. Time will tell.

I have enough publishing background and real life experience to know things don’t always go as planned, even when they’re not planned. There’s a tipping point between subscription income and publishing costs, postage rates are always subject to rising, and equipment failures can be disastrous, so I am looking at options for safeguarding this magazine while stretching its wings. Accepting advertising is one option, but not my first choice. I have been advised there are grants for this kind of work, and that’s nice, but I don’t know anything about the world of grants, except there are miracle workers called grantwriters; if you know a good one, could you put me in touch with him or her?

I have also been told it might be a good idea to look into nonprofit status for this publication, and it certainly fits the description of not for profit. But again, that is beyond my field of experience and I would appreciate any advice or assistance in that department.

In the meantime, I will continue producing the best magazine I can with what I have, in faith that things will work out.

Thanks for reading, and for your support!

Helen Hegener Helen Hegener, Publisher

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January-February 2020 Issue Notes

Inspiring Alaskans

• Alaskan artist Jon Van Zyle graces our pages with another lovely bit of original art, this time for the feature article on the Chilkoot Trail! You can see more of Jon’s beautiful artwork at his website, jonvanzyle.com • A change to the books section: It now includes current good books.

• The Timeline is now entirely online at the magazine’s website. There is also an Index to the 2019 issues.

• The Sources & Resources section on page 48 now reflects the sources used in this issue more directly, with links to online resources when available, and includes reference books and other media.

“Quotable” • John Muir, in Travels in Alaska (1915): “The islands were seen in long perspective, their forests dark green in the foreground, with varying tones of blue growing more and more tender in the distance; bays full of hazy shadows, graduating into open, silvery fields of light, and lofty headlands with fine arching insteps dipping their feet in the shining water. But every eye was turned toward the mountains.”

• Hudson Stuck, in The Alaskan Missions of the Espiscopal Church (1920): “Alaska is that northwestern extension of the North American continent which, approaching closely the shores of Asia, was discovered by the Russians and was known for upwards of a century as Russian America. It consists of a compact central mass with two straggling appendages running from its southwest and southeast corners respectively….”

• C. L. Andrews, in The Story of Alaska (1931): “The name Alaska was derived from a word in use by the Aleutian islanders at the time of the coming of the Russians, Alyaska, or or Alaksu, and by them applied to the mainland of the Peninsula of Alaska.”

• Arthur Treadwell Walden, A Dog-Puncher on the Yukon (1928): “The ordinary freight outfit consisted of three full-sized sleds, one behind the other, drawn up close and connected by cross-chains, making each sled follow exactly in the same track as the sled ahead of it. The sleds had to be so strongly made and heavily braced with iron that each weighed from sixty to eighty pounds, the front one being the heaviest. They were loaded for the average team with six hundred, four hundred, and two hundred pounds apiece, thus making a total of twelve hundred pounds, or about two hundred pounds per dog.”

https://www.facebook.com/groups/AlaskanHistory/ https://twitter.com/HelenHegener https://www.instagram.com/akhistorymagazine/

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Fannie Quigley Born in 1870, Fannie left home at 16. In 1897 she joined the Klondike gold rush to Dawson City, and in 1906 she arrived in K a n t i s h n a , w h e re s h e staked more than two dozen claims. In 1918 she married gold miner Joe Quigley. Fannie Quigley spent almost 40 years hunting, trapping and prospecting, and she became well-known for her hospitality, and for the blueberry pies made with lard from bears she shot.

The spirit of Fannie Quigley inspires the publication of Alaskan History Magazine!

Subscriptions, Single Issues, eMags and Online:

Single issues are $10.00 postpaid; a one year subscription, 6 issues, is $48.00 postpaid (U.S. only).

For information about emagazines and other options visit our website: www.alaskan-history.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

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January-February 2020

Alaska’s Early Governors Military and Civilian, from 1867 to 1959 The United States purchased Alaska from the Russian Empire in 1867; before that time it was known as Russian America, and controlled by the governors and general managers of the Russian-American Company.

Department of Alaska, 1867-1884

Jefferson C. Davis

Lester A. Beardslee

The unorganized territory of Alaska, vast regions of which were still unexplored, was originally under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of War, administered by Army officers for the first 10 years, beginning with Col. Jefferson C. Davis (not to be confused with the Confederate President with a similar name), and continuing through eight more Army officers, who served between 21 days and two years in office.

In 1877 the Army was withdrawn from Alaska, leaving the customs collector the only federal official in the land for two years. During this time three men served as the de facto governor of the territory, with Montgomery Pike Berry serving from June to August, 1877; Henry C. de Ahna serving from August 1877 to March, 1878; and lawyer and newspaper publisher Mottrom Dulaney Ball serving from April 1878 to June, 1879.

In April, 1879, the U.S. Navy was given jurisdiction over the Department of Alaska and the USS Alaska, under the command of Capt. George Brown, arrived in Sitka to assume control. Two months later Capt. Lester A. Beardslee, Commander of the USS Jamestown, took over and served as executive authority. Over the next year, while serving as Commander of the Department of Alaska, he explored Alaska's waters and named Glacier Bay. In October, 1879, Henry Glass was promoted to commander ot the Jamestown and began serving as the senior naval officer in Alaskan waters in 1880. Edward P. Lull served as Commander of Alaska on the USS Wachusett from August to October, 1881, when Henry Glass relieved him and served a second term. Over the next three years, four more naval commanders would fill the role and exercise executive authority in Alaska. During this era the residents of Alaska repeatedly petitioned the federal government for their promised rights of citizenship, to no avail.

Henry Glass

District of Alaska, 1884-1912

John H. Kinkead

In 1884 Congress passed the First Organic Act, which redesignated the Department of Alaska as the District of Alaska, which meant it would be an incorporated but unorganized territory with a civil government. Under this new definition the governor would be appointed by the president of the United States, and the first appointment, by Chester A. Arthur, was John Henry Kinkead, a dry goods businessman and politician who served from July 4, 1884 to May 7, 1885.

The second governor of the District of Alaska was Alfred P. Swineford (1885-1889), who in 1898, would move back to Alaska and publish a book, Alaska: Its History, Climate and Natural Resources (1898, Rand, McNally & Co.). In his book, Swineford had some sharp words about the state of affairs in Alaska, describing the First Organic Act as a law in which: “…all the more important and valued rights, privileges and immunities of American citizenship are expressly and positively denied to them (the residents of Alaska).”

Five more men would serve as governor of the District of Alaska between 1889 and 1913, when the Second Organic Act, passed August 24, 1912, organized the Territory of Alaska, with a legislative assembly. The governor was still appoointed by the president.

Alfred P. Swineford

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January-February 2020 Territory of Alaska, 1912-1959

The First Organic Act had provided a barebones framework of bureaucracy for Alaska. The Second Organic Act in 1912 authorized a legislature, which gave Alaskans a voice in the laws which were to govern them, but the federal government retained great control over laws regarding fishing and other natural resources, and the governor was still appointed by the President.

Walter Eli Clark, a newspaper publisher, had been appointed the last governor of the District of Alaska by President Taft, who considered him to be knowledgeable about the district because Clark had prospected for gold near Nome, Alaska for a short time in 1900 and he traveled through the district in 1903 and 1906. Clark retained his governorship under the new territorial status until 1913 when he resigned to make way for President Woodrow Wilson’s appointee, John Franklin Alexander Strong, a Canadian-born journalist. Strong was a veteran of the 1897 Klondike Gold Rush, and he established The Nome Nugget (1905), the Herald in Katalla (1907), and The Nugget in Iditarod (1910) before becoming publisher of Juneau's Alaska Daily Empire in 1912.

Thomas W. Riggs Jr., an engineering graduate of Princeton University, was another Klondike veteran who worked extensively in Alaska Territory, in 1906-13 as a leader of the team which surveyed the Alaska-Canada border, and later as a Commissioner overseeing construction of the Alaska Railroad. He was appointed Governor of Alaska Territory and served from 1918 until 1921.

The fourth Territorial Governor of Alaska, serving from 1921–1925, was Scott Cordelle Bone, appointed by President Warren G. Harding. He had been the managing editor of the Washington Post from 1888-1905, founded the Washington Herald in 1906, and was editor-in-chief of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer from 1911 to 1918. He is perhaps best known for making the decision to use dogsleds instead of a plane to transport diphtheria antitoxin from Nenana to Nome in the 1925 Serum Run. In July, 1923, he hosted President Harding, the first President to visit Alaska.

In 1925 President Calvin Coolidge appointed George Alexander Parks, the territory's first resident governor. An engineer who had worked in the Alaska Territory for most of his career, Parks traveled extensively throughout the land, gaining an intimate knowledge of the geography and becoming acquainted with both the white and indigenous populations of Alaska. When President Harding, Hubert Work, and Herbert Hoover were visiting Alaska, Parks was assigned as a tour guide for the dignitaries. The group was impressed by their guide's detailed knowledge of the territory, and when President Calvin Coolidge was later looking for a new territorial governor, Work and Hoover, by then Presidential Cabinet members, recommended Parks. George A. Parks was the first person to serve two complete four-year terms and the first chief executive to travel extensively by air. In 1926 he initiated a contest among school children to design a territorial flag, resulting in 13-year-old Benny Benson’s design, eight stars of gold on a field of blue.

John Weir Troy, appointed Governor of Alaska in 1933 by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, first went to Alaska in 1897 to report on the gold rush for a Seattle newspaper. He’d edited and published the Skagway Daily Alaskan newspaper and the Alaska-Yukon Magazine, and was also editor of the Daily Alaska Empire. A longtime advocate of increased Alaskan autonomy from the federal government, he served until 1939, when he resigned because of ill health.

After Troy, President Roosevelt appointed Ernest Henry Gruening in 1939, and he served two consecutive terms, leaving office in 1953, a prominent advocate of Alaska statehood. When statehood was achieved in 1959, Gruening became a United States Senator, serving until 1969.

Benjamin Franklin Heintzleman, Governor from 1953 till 1957, spent much of his career supporting the development of Alaska Territory, largely opposed to efforts granting statehood.

Last in office before statehood, Michael Anthony "Mike" Stepovich, appointed by Dwight D. Eisenhower, served from 1957 to 1958, and was a leading advocate in the effort to gain statehood for Alaska. Born in Fairbanks, he was the territory's first native-born governor. ~•~

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Walter E. Clark

J.F.A. Strong

Thomas A. Riggs

Scott C. Bone

George A. Parks

John Weir Troy

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January-February 2020 A great Russian moved under inspiration when he sent Vitus Behring out to discover and explore the continent lying to the eastward; two great Americans—Seward and Sumner—were inspired when, nearly a century and a half later, they saved for us, in the face of the bitterest opposition, scorn, and ridicule, the country that Behring discovered and which is now coming to be recognized as the most glorious possession of any people; but, first of all, were the gentle, dark-eyed Aleuts inspired when they bestowed upon this same country—with the simplicity and dignified repression for which their character is noted—the beautiful and poetic name which means "the great country.” ~from the foreword

Ella Higginson in Alaska Ella Rhoads Higginson (1862-1940) was one of America’s most celebrated early 20th century writers, the recipient of several national awards for her short fiction and the first Poet Laureate of Washington State, in 1931. In 1863, when Ella was a baby, her family traveled the Oregon Trail, and she was raised near present-day Portland. At 23 she married Russell Higginson, a druggist, and they moved to Bellingham, Washington in 1888, spending the rest of their lives there. Starting in 1904, Ella traveled to Alaska for four summers as part of the research for her book on Alaska.

‘Alaska, the Great Country,’ an annotated history of Alaska and an absorbing travelogue of Higginson's adventures there, was published in 1908, went through several editions, and was quoted by leading authorities of the day. Her observations of territorial Alaska are online to read free at the Project Gutenberg website [https://tinyurl.com/wakq3gb]. A few excerpts from her book are shared here: Alaska The Great Country, by Ella Higginson (1908) Every year, from June to September, thousands of people "go to Alaska." This means that they take passage at Seattle on the most luxurious steamers that run up the famed "inside passage" to Juneau, Sitka, Wrangell, and Skaguay. Formerly this voyage included a visit to Muir Glacier; but because of the ruin wrought by a recent earthquake, this once beautiful and marvellous thing is no longer included in the tourist trip.

This ten-day voyage is unquestionably a delightful one; every imaginable comfort is provided, and the excursion rate is reasonable. However, the person who contents himself with this will know as little about Alaska as a foreigner who landed in New York, went straight to Niagara Falls and returned at once to his own country, would know about America.

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January-February 2020 Enchanting though this brief cruise may be when the weather is favorable, the real splendor, the marvellous beauty, the poetic and haunting charm of Alaska, lie west of Sitka. "To Westward" is called this dream-voyage past a thousand miles of snow-mountains rising straight from the purple sea and wrapped in coloring that makes it seem as though all the roses, lilies, and violets of heaven had been pounded to a fine dust and sifted over them; past green islands and safe harbors; past the Malaspina and the Columbia glaciers; past Yakutat, Kyak, Cordova, Valdez, Seward, and Cook Inlet; and then, still on "to Westward"—past Kodiak Island, where the Russians made their first permanent settlement in America in 1784 and whose sylvan and idyllic charm won the heart of the great naturalist, John Burroughs; past the Aliaska Peninsula, with its smoking Mount Pavloff; past Unimak Island, one of whose active volcanoes, Shishaldin, is the most perfect and symmetrical cone on the Pacific Coast, not even excepting Hood—and on and in among the divinely pale green Aleutian Islands to Unalaska, where enchantment broods in a mist of rose and lavender and where one may scarcely step without crushing violets and bluebells.

The spell of Alaska falls upon every lover of beauty who has voyaged along those far northern snow-pearled shores with the violet waves of the North Pacific Ocean breaking splendidly upon them; or who has drifted down the mighty rivers of the interior which flow, belltoned and lonely, to the sea.

I know not how the spell is wrought; nor have I ever met one who could put the miracle of its working into words. No writer has ever described Alaska; no one writer ever will; but each must do his share, according to the spell that the country casts upon him.

He that would fall under the spell of Alaska, will sail on "to Westward," on to Unalaska; or he will go Northward and drift down the Yukon—that splendid, lonely river that has its birth within a few miles of the sea, yet flows twenty-three hundred miles to find it.

Alaskan steamers usually sail between eight o'clock in the evening and midnight, and throngs of people congregate upon the piers of Seattle to watch their departure. The rosy purples and violets of sunset mix with the mists and settle upon the city, climbing white over its hills; as hours go by, its lights sparkle brilliantly through them, yet still the crowds sway upon the piers and wait for the first still motion of the ship as it slides into the night and heads for the far, enchanted land—whose sweet, insistent calling never ceases for one who has once heard it.

Sitka, on the Inside Passage Route

Ella Higginson, date unknown

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January-February 2020 The first eleven chapters tell of traveling up the Inside Passage, in great and riveting detail, and with lengthy asides to explain the history of the land. Chapter twelve opens with arrival in Sitka: Since Sitka first dawned upon my sight on a June day, in her setting of vivid green and glistening white, she has been one of my dearest memories. Four times in all have the green islands drifted apart to let her rise from the blue sea before my enchanted eyes; and with each visit she has grown more dear, and her memory more tormenting.

Something gives Sitka a different look and atmosphere from any other town. It may be her whiteness, glistening against the rich green background of forest and hill, with the whiteness of the mountains shining in the higher lights; or it may be the severely white and plain Greek church, rising in the centre of the main street, not more than a block from the water, that gives Sitka her chaste and immaculate appearance.

Upon landing at Sitka, one is confronted by the old log storehouse of the Russians. This is an immense building, barricading the wharf from the town. A narrow, dark, gloomy passageway, or alley, leads through the centre of this building. It seems as long as an ordinary city square to the bewildered stranger groping through its shadows.

In front of this building, and inside both ends of the passage as far as the light reaches, squat squaws, young and old, pretty and hideous, starry-eyed and no-eyed, saucy and kind, arrogant and humble, taciturn and voluble, vivacious and weary-faced. Surely no known variety of squaw may be asked for and not found in this long line that reaches from the wharf to the green-roofed church. There is no night so wild and tempestuous, and no hour of any night so late, or of any morning so early, that the passenger hastening ashore is not greeted by this long line of dark-faced women. They sit like so many patient, noiseless statues, with their tempting wares clustered around the flat, "toed-in" feet of each.

Not only is this true of Sitka, but of every landing-place on the whole coast where dwells an Indian or an Aleut that has something to sell. Long before the boat lands, their gay shawls by day, or their dusky outlines by night, are discovered from the deck of the steamer.

How they manage it, no ship's officer can tell; for the whistle is frequently not blown until the boat is within a few yards of the shore. Yet there they are, waiting! Sometimes, at night, they appear simultaneously, fluttering down into their places, swiftly and noiselessly, like a flock of birds settling down to rest for a moment in their flight. Their wares consist chiefly of baskets; but there are also immense spoons carved artistically out of the horns of mountain sheep; richly beaded moccasins of many different materials; carved and gayly painted canoes and paddles of the fragrant Alaska cedar or Sitka pine; totem-poles carved out of dark gray slate stone; lamps, carved out of wood and inlaid with a fine pearl-like shell. These are formed like animals, with the backs hollowed to hold oil. There are silver spoons, rings, bracelets, and chains, all delicately traced with totemic designs; knives, virgin charms, Chilkaht blankets, and now and then a genuine old spear, or bow and arrow, that proves the dearest treasure of all.

Ella Higginson didn’t miss much in her exclamations over the many charms of Alaska. Nor did she refrain from disparaging remarks when anything assaulted her refined sensibilities. Her denegrations no doubt brought a knowing nod of approval from her peers of the day, but they can grate on today’s enlightened readers. Still, her reporting is valued for the details of life in turn-of-the-century Alaska, as in her comments about agriculture in the territory.

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January-February 2020

Squaws selling salmon berries at Sitka

Ella Higginson, date unknown

The main station of Government Agricultural Experimental work in Alaska is located at Sitka.

Professor C. C. Georgeson is the special agent in charge of the work, which has been very successful. It has accomplished more than anything else in the way of dispelling the erroneous impressions which people have received of Alaska by reading the descriptions of early explorers who fancied that every drift of snow was a glacier and every feather the war bonnet of a savage.

In 1906, at Coldfoot, sixty miles north of the Arctic Circle, were grown cucumbers eight inches long, nineteen-inch rhubarb, potatoes four inches long, cabbages whose matured heads weighed eight pounds, and turnips weighing sixteen pounds—all of excellent quality.

At Bear Lake, near Seward and Cook Inlet, were grown good potatoes, radishes, lettuce, carrots, beets, rhubarb, strawberries, raspberries, Logan berries, blackberries; also, roses, lilacs, and English ivy. In this locality cows and chickens thrive and are profitable investments for those who are not too indolent to take care of them. Alaskan lettuce must be eaten to be appreciated.

During the hot days and the long, light hours of the nights it grows so rapidly that its crispness and delicacy of flavor cannot be imagined.

In southeastern Alaska and along the coast to Kodiak, at Fairbanks and Copper Centre, at White Horse, Dawson, Rampart, Tanana, Council City, Eagle, and other places on the Yukon, almost all kinds of vegetables, berries, and flowers grow luxuriantly and bloom and bear in abundance. One turnip, of fine flavor, has been found sufficient for several people.

In the vicinity of the various hot springs, even corn, tomatoes, and muskmelons were successful to the highest degree. On the Yukon cabbages form fine white, solid heads; cauliflower is unusually fine and white; beets grow to a good size, are tender, sweet, and of a bright red; peas are excellent; rhubarb, parsley, and celery were in many places successful.

Onions seem to prove a failure in nearly all sections of the country; and potatoes, turnips, and lettuce are the prize vegetables. Rampart is the loveliest settlement on the Yukon, with the exception of Tanana. Across the river from Rampart, the green fields of the Experimental Station slope down to the water. The experiments carried on here by Superintendent Rader, under the general supervision of Professor Georgeson—who visits the stations yearly—have been very satisfactory. ~•~ Selected Writings of Ella Higginson: Inventing Pacific Northwest Literature is a book about Ella Higginson’s life and writing, by Laura Laffrado, a professor of English at Western Washington University, published in 2015 by the Whatcom County Historical Society.

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January-February 2020

The Davidson Ditch The Davidson Ditch is a 90-mile pipeline built in the 1920s to supply water to gold mining dredges north of Fairbanks. Abandoned in the 1960’s, it was the first large-scale pipeline project in Alaska, and lessons learned in its construction were applied to building the 800mile Trans-Alaska Pipeline System from Valdez to Prudhoe Bay half a century later.

By 1910, most of the placer claims around Fairbanks had been well-worked. From a peak of 9.5 million in 1909, gold production began declining, and by 1920 less than one million dollars in gold was being produced annually.

Mining engineer Norman C. Stines, an unusual man with an equally unusual history, had worked abroad with some of the preeminent mining engineers in the world. He had observed the success of the huge gold mining dredges near Nome, and he believed the same technique would prove profitable in the Fairbanks area, but the lack of available water presented a problem.

Dredges, which work from barges, require tremendous amounts of water to float the barges, thaw the permafrost, and remove the overburden, exposing the gold-bearing ground. In their research document The Davidson Ditch, produced for the cultural resource consulting firm Northern Land Use Research, Inc. in 2005, Catherine Williams and Sarah McGowan wrote, “Only by moving millions of cubic yards of the muck overlying goldbearing gravels …. could the low-grade placer gold deposits be mined profitably.”

Nome surveyor and civil engineer James M. Davidson had overseen the construction of the 50-mile Miocene Ditch, which channeled water from the Nome River to early mining operations in that area. Born on December 3, 1853 at Ft. Jones in northernmost California, Davidson had attended the University of California, took courses in civil engineering, and had mined on the Klamath River before turning to farming. Almost wiped out in the financial panics of the 1890’s, he’d been among the thousands of hopefuls crossing the Chilkoot Pass in 1898, but as a trained engineer with a background in mining, the then-45-year-old Davidson was better prepared than most of the stampeders on the trail to the Klondike.

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January-February 2020 Davidson traveled down the Yukon River, decided he didn’t like Canadian laws and mining methods, and crossed into Alaska, happy to be back on American soil. He was mining on Mastodon Creek, in the Birch Creek Mining District near Circle, when word was received of a gold strike on Anvil Creek, near Nome, and seizing the opportunity, Davidson booked passage on the first steamship down the Yukon River in the spring of 1899. It proved to be a wise move, and by 1920, when Stines traveled to Nome to seek him out, Davidson had built a thriving surveying and engineering business.

After meeting with Stines, Davidson agreed to travel to Fairbanks and study the situation.

He conducted initial field surveys of a major water diversion-supply system for the Chatanika drainage north of Fairbanks. Behind the scenes was the United States Smelting Refining and Mining Company, which established the Fairbanks Exploration Company, or FE Co., to design, construct, and operate the facilities at the Chatanika Gold Camp. The exact relationship of Stines and U. S. Smelting is uncertain, but from 1920 on they backed Stines and let him lead the Alaskan field projects into the development and early mining stages.

In July 1924, Davidson, with a 22-man survey crew, mapped the topography, calculated water flow, and staked out a ditch route 90 miles long designed to divert water from the Chatanika River at a point below the junction of Faith and McManus Creeks to hydraulic sluicing operations at Cleary and Goldstream, just north of Fairbanks. He obtained the necessary mining options and water rights for the project, and, after the initial survey was complete, James Davidson, then over 70 years old, retired, leaving the detailed surveying and construction to others. He died in northern California just four years later, never seeing the completed engineering marvel which would bear his name.

The final design was by J.B. Lippincott, consulting engineer, a man of international reputation in the world of hydraulic engineering, who had been an assistant chief engineer on the Los Angeles Aqueduct, completed in 1913. In April, 1926 the first crews began clearing the right-of-way for the ditch. The route more or less paralleled today’s Steese Highway, and a handful of work camps were established along the route to house workers.

Construction took place before the advent of the bulldozer, so earth moving was primarily done by tractors, graders, and steam and diesel shovels, but it was necessary to employ gangs of workers equipped with hand shovels in many places inaccessible to the machinery.

The entire system was gravity fed, utilizing no pumps or mechanics. A containment dam just below the meeting of Faith and McManus Creeks fed water into open ditches which gradually descended along ridge lines. Fifteen inverted siphons channeled the water down hillsides, across intersecting streams, and back up to the grade level. A 3,700-foot long tunnel was blasted though a ridge between Chatanika and Goldstream Valley.

As built, the Davidson Ditch had 83.3 miles of earthwork section, 6.1 miles of inverted siphon, a 0.7 mile long tunnel, and about 0.4 miles of pen stocks and flumes. The construction project concluded ahead of schedule but over budget on May 18, 1928, when the first water flowed into the pipeline.

In the 1930s the famed musher Leonhard Seppala, who had braved blizzard conditions in the 1925 Serum Run to Nome, lived at Chatanika and patrolled the Davidson Ditch with his dogteam, ensuring the steady flow of water to the gold dredges was not interrupted.

Today the rusty red pipeline is visible from several places along the Steese Highway, and a Davidson Ditch Historical Site at milepost 57.3 tells of the history and construction.

Abandoned in the late 1960s, the remains of the conduit are partially protected by its inclusion in the White Mountains National Recreation Area. It is eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, but to date it has not been listed. ~•~

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The geography of Chilkoot Inlet played an important role in the history of Alaska. Rising straight out of its blue-green waters, the Coast Range stood as an almost inpenetrable barrier between the bountiful rivers and bays of the Inside Passage and the equally bountiful interior of rivers, lakes, and valleys. Each place provided a wealth of natural resources in fish, game, and vegetation, and the Native peoples who lived in these areas enjoyed a brisk trade in their respective stores of fish, furs, and other useful resources. There were, however, only a very few routes over the forbidding mountains, and whoever controlled those routes controlled the trade.

In his classic memoir, Old Yukon: Tales—Trails—Trials (Washington Law Book Co., 1938) pioneer judge and congressman James Wickersham wrote about the indigenous history of the Chilkoot Inlet: “The Chilkat Indians, and their cousins, the Chilkoots, are members of the Tlingit nation, speak the same language, are divided into the same social clans, and are otherwise so closely related by blood and tribal customs as to constitute one people.

“For ages the Chilkats controlled the old Indian trade route from the Chilkat Inlet through their fortified village at Klukwan to the middle Yukon fur country; in the same way the Chilkoots, with the assistance of the dominant Chilkats, controlled the Dyea Trail over the pass to the lakes forming the headwaters of the Yukon River. The ownership and control of these two trade routes, through otherwise impassable mountain ranges, gave these warriors and traders a monopoly of the valuable trade with all the Stick (Tena) Indian tribes in the middle and upper Yukon basin, and made them the richest and most powerful tribe on the coasts of Alaska. They did not hesitate to attack any power that interfered with their age-old claims of established right to these trails and the control of trade over them. In 1852 they learned that the Hudson Bay Company’s trader, Robert Campbell, had erected Fort Selkirk at the junction of the Lewes and

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Line of Klondikers with supplies ascending Chilkoot Pass, Alaska, 1898. Caption on image: "Section of line of packers ascending Chilkoot summit copyright 1898.� Photograph by Eric A. Hegg. University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections [Order No. HEG366]

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Freight and supplies near the Long Wharf, Dyea, circa 1898. Photographer Eric A. Hegg.

University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections, [HEG117] the Pelly rivers to control the fur trade with the Stick Indians in that region, all on the British side of the line. They immediately sent an armed body of their warriors from Klukwan over their Chilkat trail to that post, burned the buildings, carried away the goods, and gave the great English company notice not to rebuild the post, which command was obeyed.�

Forty years later Arthur Harper would establish a store at the site, and around the same time, in 1879, a group of twenty gold prospectors from Sitka attempted to travel the trail up the Dyea River to Chilkoot Pass, but they were turned back by the Indians, who feared their monopoloy of the Yukon fur trade might be destroyed if the passes were opened to American gold hunters.

Wickersham explained the historically important outcome of the confrontation: “The disappointed prospectors returned to Sitka and appealed to Captain Beardslee, commanding the U.S.S. Jamestown, stationed there for the protection of white traders. A naval launch carrying twenty armed sailors and a Gatling gun, under command of a naval lieutenant, escorted five sail boats filled with armed prospectors from Sitka to Chilkat Bay. After reading a letter from Captain Beardslee addressed to the Chilkat and the Chilkoot chiefs and assuring them the prospectors would not meddle in any way with their fur trade, the naval officer explained the Gatling gun to them, and they agreed to open the Dyea pass to the gold hunters only. On May 20, 1880, the Dyea-Chilkoot gate was first opened to white men, and the Edmund Bean party

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Businesses lining Trail Street, Dyea, Alaska, circa 1898. Photographer Eric A. Hegg.

University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections, [HEG114] of twenty American prospectors passed through to the Yukon headwaters in search for placer gold.”

While James Wickersham’s history is entertaining and mostly accurate, there is much more to the story, and one of the most comprehensive resources is the 2011 National Park Service publication, The Chilkoot Trail: Cultural Landscape Report for the Chilkoot Trail Historic Corridor.

This beautifully illustrated landmark work details the trail mile by mile, and provides the most compelling exploration of the route, variations of the trail, buildings, structures, artifacts, vegetation, cultural history and significance, with in-depth analysis and evaluation and over a dozen detailed maps, and it is available to download or read free online [see Resources, p. 48].

The Chilkoot Pass notes the Chilkat and Chilkoot Indians maintained four large villages and many seasonal camps centered around what is now northern Lynn Canal. One was Dyea (Dayei, or “packing place”), a seasonal fishing and harvesting camp for the Chilkoots, and a tidewater staging area for trade between the coast and the interior. From the booklet: “Trade between the groups consisted mainly of the exchange of coastal products for furs and other products of the interior. To the north flowed clams, seaweed, dried fish, sea otter pelts and other marine products. In particular, eulachon (hooligan) oil, tendered from a cod-like fish, was an important commodity that the Tagish relied upon for nutritional and cooking needs, and gave rise to the Chilkoot route being tagged the ‘grease trail’ by Euro-American explorers. In exchange, the Tagish sent primarily fur stocks of moose, caribou, and beaver, among others, as

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Above: ”Camp life at Finnegan's Point,” ca. 1897. www.loc.gov/item/2006690155/ Below: Forty Indian canoes at Dyea, ca.

1897. www.loc.gov/item/2004672222/

well as lichen dyes and goat wool, south to the coast.”

The Dyea Trail, or as it would come to be known, the Chilkoot Pass Trail, began on the broad, flat flood plain delta of the Taiya or Dyea River. The trail ascended gently, following the 17-mile-long river through the mountains. After about 12 miles the trail began to rise sharply, gaining over 1,600 feet in just two and a half miles. Then the steep climb over the pass itself, followed by trails leading down the eastern flanks, where long lakes provided easier travel, whether by canoe or toboggan.

An early guidebook for Klondike stampeders was a slim volume titled Klondyke Facts (American Technical Book Co., 1897), written

by Dawson City founding father Joseph Ladue, who crossed the Chilkoot Pass in 1882 with a group of fifty men bound for the goldfields. He described a questionable ‘first crossing’: “George Holt, who afterward was murdered

by Indians at Cook’s Inlet, was the first man who crossed from the coast to the headwaters of the Lewes [Yukon], with no purpose other than prospecting the country. The date is variously set from 1872 to 1878, but the preponderance of testimony makes the latter date the more probable one. He was accompanied by two Indians and crossed by the Chilkoot Pass. On his return he reported the discovery of ‘coarse gold.’ His trip was authenticated by inquiry among miners who had followed the routes he told them of.”

No mention is made of George Holt in the NPS booklet, but it does give credit to Drs. Aural and Arthur Krause, brothers who worked under the auspices of the Geographical Society of Bremen, Germany.

“Although several parties of prospectors crossed over the pass in 1880 and 1881, the first detailed accounts of the Taiya River Valley come from the German ethnographer, Arthur

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January-February 2020 Krause (1882). Arriving in Deshu, a small settlement with a trading outpost and mission near contemporary Haines, Aurel and Arthur Krause documented native life in the nearby v i l l a g e o f C h i l k o o t a n d e x p l o re d t h e surrounding areas. In April of 1882, after Aural had returned to Germany, Arthur made his first trip to the Taiya River Valley, which he would later map extensively.”

In late May of 1882, Krause and two Tlingit guides prepared “to go over the Dejäh Pass to the Yukon Lakes,” and there are details of their trip in the NPS booklet. “Krause’s mapped route, and its narrative description, reveals the existence of a well-defined Tlingit trail corridor based on the traditional ecological knowledge of the environmental conditions (seasonality, currents, terrain shifts, available resources for harvest).”

A year later, in April 1883, First Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka was dispatched to lead the Alaska Military Reconnaissance in assessing the increasing disturbances of peace between the Indians and whites in the area.

Schwatka’s reconnoiter, utilizing Krause’s map, resulted in the first American survey of the Taiya River valley and the trail over Chilkoot Pass. Again, details of the journey—and comparisons with Krause’s—can be read in the online NPS booklet, which continues the history of the area: “After the Krause and Schwatka surveys of 1883, a small trading post was established near the Dyea Tlingit encampment sometime between 1884 and 1886 by Edgar Wilson and John Healy. At the time, most of Dyea’s Tlingit, including men, women, and children, were engaged in the packing and transporting of goods for an increasing number of prospectors, surveyors and scientists. The arrival of a trading post at the small Native village was the first indication that control of

National Park Service map - view at http://www.nps.gov/klgo/planyourvisit/ images/BIGtrailmap.jpg

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Healy & Wilson trading post, Dyea, c. 1898. Not much is known about Edgar Wilson, but his brother-in-law John Healy had been a soldier, guide, Indian scout, hunter, trapper, editor, and even a sheriff before coming to Alaska. [National Archives, BR-1-A-10C] travel and commerce on the Tlingit-dominated trail was about to change in dramatic ways.”

No one could have foreseen how dramatic the change would be. The discovery of gold in the Fortymile district in 1886 led to an ever-increasing parade of miners and prospectors through Dyea. But it was the August 17, 1896 discovery of gold on a creek named Bonanza, a tributary of the Klondike River, itself a tribuary of the Yukon, which changed everything.

On July 14, 1897 the S.S. Excelsior docked in San Francisco and sparked a fevered interest among the veteran California gold miners. Three days later the S.S. Portland arrived at the port of Seattle with its legendary ‘ton of gold,’ and the west coast—indeed the entire nation—went mad for the Klondike diggings. A special edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer desclared in bold headlines “Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!” and local outfitting stores began emptying their shelves overnight, as men and women hastily grabbed for whatever supplies they could and caught the next ship north. Where there had been a trickle of hopeful prospectors searching for another El Dorado, there was now unleashed a flood tide of humanity in all its incarnations. Over the next few years an estimated 100,000 stampeders would join the rush to the north, and the bulk of them were headed for Dyea.

There were other routes, to be sure, such as the White Pass Trail out of nearby Skagway, of which Samuel E. Moffett wrote in 1903, “By the White Pass route you did not have the precipitous ascent of the Chilkoot, but you had to go twice as far, and you struggled through

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January-February 2020 bogs in which you were likely to leave your horse and, perhaps, your entire outfit as well. The whole trail was blazed by the carcasses of dead horses.”

That passage would come to be known as The Dead Horse Trail, but when the White Pass and Yukon Railway was completed in August, 1900, it quickly became the route of choice.

The Dalton Trail over the old Chilkat Pass was easier, but it could only be used when the glaciers were not melting and the river levels were low, which translated to early spring when only the lower-level snows had melted, and just before freeze-up in the fall. The Dalton Trail was also considerably longer than the other two, being 300 miles to water transportation as opposed to 40 or 50 miles on the Chilkoot and White Pass Trails.

These three were the only non-glaciated passes over the Coast Range in an area stretching from south of Juneau to north of Yakutat. Whatever the route, a trip to the Klondike was not to be taken lightly, but the trip over Chilkoot Pass could be an arduous undertaking. This was made evident in a report by Frederick Funston, who would later gain recognition as “a giant of American military history.” He wrote, “Four of us were landed with our effects at the head of Dyea Inlet, a hundred miles north of Juneau, at daybreak on April 10, 1893. My three companions were McConnell, a grizzly old Canadian, Thompson, a miner from Idaho, and Mattern, a good-natured German, who had mined in half a dozen western states. I was the only one of the party who had had any previous Alaskan experience, but all had roughed it in other

Horse drawn sleds looking toward Sheep Camp, 1898. Photograph by Eric A. Hegg.

University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections [HEG120]

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January-February 2020 countries, and we felt equal to the much-vaunted terrors of Chilkoot Pass, Miles Canyon, and the Whitehorse Rapids. McConnell, Thompson, and Mattern were bound for the placer goldmining camp of Forty Mile Creek, at that time the only one on the Yukon, while I had a sort of roving commission from the United States Department of Agriculture to make a botanical collection, take weather observations, and obtain any other scientific information possible…”

“Near our landing-place was a small Thlinket Indian village of Dyea, whose inhabitants turn an honest penny every spring by assisting miners bound for the interior in packing their supplies to the summit of the pass. We divided our goods into seven packs and engaged five men and two women to carry these loads to the summit of the pass, a distance of fifteen miles, where they were to leave us to our own devices.”

The party left on the second day after arriving on the beach, and Funston noted, “The Indians supported the loads on their backs by the aid of deerskin bands, passing across the forehead. Several children carried on their backs light loads, consisting of food and cooking utensils for the use of the Indians, while two of the dogs also wore packs.”

They spent a night at the forks of the river, “completely exhausted by floundering through the soft snow under their heavy packs,” and camped the second night at the upper limit of timber, “a place known as Sheep Camp.” Roused before daybreak, “looking for a couple of miles up a large gorge flanked by precipitous snow-covered mountains, we could see at the summit, thousands of feet above, the little notch known as Chilkoot Pass, the gate to the Yukon land.

Klondikers at The Scales preparing to ascend Chilkoot Pass, note the tram towers and cables. March, 1898. University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections [HEG368]

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Klondikers waiting in line for customs, Chilkoot Pass, Alaska, ca. 1898. Photographer Eric A. Hegg. University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections [HEG 629] The seriousness of the work at hand was now apparent. Our picturesque retinue of children and dogs was left in camp to await the return of the Indians, and having had breakfast at eight o’clock, the seven Indians and ourselves began the toilsome climb upward. The Indians, struggling under their heavy loads, stopped for breath every few moments. We four white men had the exasperating task of dragging along the two empty sleds.

“At eleven o’clock we had reached the foot of the last and hardest part of the ascent. From here to the summit is only half a mile, but the angle of the slope is about forty-five degrees, and as we looked up that long trough of glistening ice and hard-crusted snow, as steep as the roof of a house, there was not one of us that did not dread the remainder of the day’s work. As soon as the Indians ascertained that the crust of the snow was hard and unyielding they divided the packs, leaving nearly half of their loads at the foot of the ascent, intending to make a second trip for them. The two women who had accompanied us thus far now returned to Sheep Camp, and one of the men, producing a strong plaited line of rawhide, about one hundred feet long, which he had brought with him, passed it under every man’s belt, lashing the nine of us together about ten feet apart. The man at the head of the line carried in his hands one of our hatchets, and as we advanced cut footholds in the ice and hard-packed snow. The slope being too steep for direct ascent, we resorted to ‘zig-zagging’—that is, moving obliquely across the bottom of the trough for about sixty feet and then turning at right angles in the opposite direction. Our progress was painfully slow, as every step had to be cut. There was no use in stopping, as there

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Remaining posts at Dyea Dock looking south towards Taiya Inlet, 1968. Photograph by Jet Lowe for the Historic American Engineering Record (Library of Congress HAER AK-38) was no opportunity to stretch one’s limbs and nothing to sit down on, so that we kept pegging away, and the hours seemed endless before we stood on the narrow crest of snow that divides the valley of the Yukon from the sea. It was six and a half hours since we had left Sheep Camp, and three since we had lashed ourselves together at the foot of the last ascent.”

Within a few years, as the rush to the Klondike assumed major proportions, the steps cut into the snow and ice of Chilkoot Pass would become known as the “Golden Stairs,” and men would proceed up in lockstep fashion, a image which might be utterly unbelievable if not for the photographs proving it so. Four miles below the summit, Sheep Camp would become a haphazard tent town of more than a thousand souls, with fifteen hotels, innumerable eating places, and even a hospital to tend those wounded on the trail.

Far below, at tidewater, the boomtown of Dyea grew up around the Healy & Wilson trading post in the fall of 1897, as word of the Klondike gold strike brought increasing numbers of people north. The National Park Service website describes the growth of Dyea: “As late as September 1897, Dyea was still nothing more than the Wilson & Healy trading post, a few saloons, the Tlingit encampment, and a motley assemblage of tents. In October, speculators mapped out a townsite, but Dyea’s biggest growth did not begin until the Yukon River system began to freeze up and the winter storms slowed traffic on the Chilkoot Trail. Without the ability to dash up the trails, people began spending more time in Dyea and it became more town-like.”

A long wharf, almost two miles in length, was begun in 1897, shortly after the platting of the townsite, by promoter L. D. Kinney. The wharf was 50 feet wide, 4,000 feet long, and extended

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January-February 2020 from low tide to deep water, being 34 feet deep at the shore end and 60 feet deep at the outer end, with pilings driven 25 to 50 feet into solid ground.

Completed in May 1898, the great wharf extended almost two miles across the mud flats and into deep water, and connected to Broadway which led directly into town.

During the winter of 1897-1898, Dyea grew until the downtown area was about five blocks wide and eight blocks long. At the height of its prosperity the town boasted over 150 businesses, mostly restaurants, hotels, supply houses, and saloons.

There were also doctors, a dentist, attorneys, bankers, photographers, realtors, two newspapers, two telephone companies, a volunteer fire department, two hospitals and three undertakers, who were pressed into service when a devastating avalanche roared across the trail on Palm Sunday, April 3, 1898, killing over 70 people.

By 1898 three aerial tramways were erected to haul goods over the most difficult sections of the trail, but a year later the White Pass and Yukon Railway had been completed between Skagway and Bennett, the railway purchased the tramway equipment and had it removed, and by the fall of 1899 the Alaska Mining Record reported there was not a restaurant or hotel to be found on the Chilkoot Trail. Fires, the elements, and the flooding of the Taiya River in the 1940s and ‘50s destroyed most of the remaining structures.

The Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park was created in 1976, a four unit park comprised of the Dyea and Chilkoot, Skagway, and White Pass units in Alaska; and the Seattle unit in Washington state, memorializing the historical period during the Gold Rush. The site of the town of Dyea and the route of the Chilkoot Trail were designated as National Historic Landmarks in 1978, officially recognized by the United States government for their national historical significance. ~•~

The Dyea Trail, March 4, 1898

A postcard, the ‘Golden Stairs’

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Group portrait at the first Tanana Chiefs Conference, 1915. Seated front, L to R: Chief Alexander of Tolovana, Chief Thomas of Nenana, Chief Evan of Koschakat, Chief Alexander William of Tanana. Standing at rear, L to R: Chief William of Tanana, Paul Williams of Tanana, and Chief Charlie of Minto. [Albert Johnson Photograph Collection, University of Alaska Fairbanks.]

The 1915 Tanana Chiefs Conference On the corner of First and Cowles Streets, near downtown Fairbanks, sits an unusual square log building, with a hip roof extending over a wide porch along two sides. The main entrance is located at the corner of the building, giving the entire structure an air of being something special, which, in fact, it is. Built in the summer of 1909 with money donated by a philanthropist who never set foot in Alaska, the structure was the site of a landmark gathering in Alaska’s history, when Native chiefs and government representatives met to discuss the future.

The George C. Thomas Memorial Library was named for a Philadelphia banker who, after learning of efforts to supply reading materials for Alaskan pioneer settlers, donated $4,000 for its construction. The 40 by 40 foot log building was dedicated on August 5, 1909, with the Honorable James V. Wickersham, Territorial Delegate to Congress, attending, along with Archdeacon of the Yukon Hudson Stuck and other local notables. Unfortunately, the philanthropist, George C. Thomas, died before the opening of the library, but he left $1,000 per year for maintenance of the library for three years.

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The George C. Thomas Library in July 2011, looks almost the same as when it was built 102 years before. [Details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_C._Thomas_Memorial_Library] The Tanana Chiefs Conference brought together Native Athabascan leaders from the Tanana River villages of Crossjacket, Chena, Minto, Nenana, Salchaket, Tanana/Ft. Gibbon, and Tolovana to meet with government officials to discuss the many changes happening in the Territory of Alaska at that time.

Taking place July 5 and 6, 1915, the government officials at the Council included Judge James Wickersham, Thomas Riggs of the Alaska Engineering Commission, C. W. Richie and H. J. Atwell of the U. S. Land Office, and the Reverend Guy Madara from the Episcopal Church. Also present were interpreter Paul Williams of Ft. Gibbon and G. F. Cramer, Special Disbursing Agent of the Alaskan Engineering Commission.

The transcript of the meeting is at the Alaska State Library [ASL-MS-0107-38-001], and it is a compelling read for anyone interested in Alaskan history, clearly showing the simple clarity and intelligence of the Indian words, and the paternalistic assurances of the white men present.

The transcript of the meeting is at the Alaska State Library, ASL-MS-0107-38-001

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The Tanana Chiefs and others, by Albert J. Johnson. Standing in the back row (left to right): Julius Pilot, Nenana; Titus Alexander, Hot Springs, Mr. Cramer, Mr. Th (Thomas) Riggs, Mr. Richie, Chief Alexander Williams. Seated (left to right): Jacob Starr, Tanana; Chief William, Tanana; Chief Alexander, Tolovana; Chief Thomas, Nenana; Hon. James Wickersham; Chief Evan of Coschaket; Chief Charlie, Minto. Front row (left to right): Chief Joe, Salchaket; Chief John, Chena; Johnnie Folger, Tanana; Rev. Guy H. Madara; Paul Williams, Tanana. [Univ. of Alaska Fairbanks, Albert Johnson Photograph Collection UAF-1989-166-37]

In March, 2018, the University of Alaska Press published The Tanana Chiefs: Native Rights and Western Law, edited by UAF Emeritus Professor William Schneider, noting about the meeting, “It was one of the first times that Native voices were part of the official record. They sought education and medical assistance, and they wanted to know what they could expect from the federal government. They hoped for a balance between preserving their way of life with seeking new opportunities under the law.”

Schneider explains further in his Introduction: “For Native leaderds and students of Native history, the record of this meeting is a baseline for measuring progress in areas such as governmental relations, recognition of legal rights, land claims, health care, social services, and education. The meeting is also important because it demonstrated the leadership of the Native chiefs, who stated their concerns and expressed their desire to work with the federal government, even though they couldn’t agree with all that was asked of them.”

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January-February 2020 In a book review for the Anchorage Daily News titled “How 14 Athabascan tribal leaders set the course of Native rights in Alaska,” Fairbanks author and literary critic David A. James reviewed Schneider’s book, writing, “While he failed to fully understand the Athabascan point of view, there’s no doubt Wickersham wanted to find a way to protect them before they were overwhelmed by the influx. The transcript of the meeting shows the gulf in the world-views that existed between, on one side, Wickersham and other officials, and on the other, the chiefs.

Steeped in 19th century methods of resolving conflicts with Native Americans, Wickersham believed a reservation was the best solution. The chiefs were having none of it. They approached the meeting not as wards of the U.S. government (the Treaty of Cession had put them under the care of the government but denied them citizenship), but rather as the leaders of sovereign nations — meeting as equals, not supplicants.”

This can be seen in some statements from the conference: Paul Williams: "Then, you people will understand that we natives have decided to keep off the reservation, and do not wish to go on a reservation at all. But our next suggestion, that we wanted and of course which we shall wish the Delegate to bring up for us and see what he can do for us about it, ….we have decided that we all wish to ask the Government if they couldn't get us some industrial schools. If they wish to help the Indians, the natives, that is the best thing the Government could do for us.…”

Then there is much discussion of boarding schools, and also of doctors and job opportunities for the Native peoples. Paul Williams interprets the words of Chief Ivan, of Crossjacket, to Delegate Wickersham: “He wants you to understand that he thinks it is very simple for the Government to do anything when it wants to, because the Government has a good people and citizens to support it, but the chiefs have people who cannot support them if they want to accomplish anything so they cannot do these things, but the Government can. So they came all the way up here at their own expense to show you how anxious they are to have the Government help them.”

To which Delegate Wickersham replies: “Paul, you tell them I say I think it has done a great deal of good. We have seen them now and know them and are acquainted with them, and have written down all they said and will send it to the Secretary of the Interior, and a copy of their pictures too, so that the Secretary of the Interior will look at their picture and look into their faces and see what kind looking men they are, and he will read here about what they want, about them wanting schools and work and that they want to make homes and want to become like white people and want to learn to talk the white man’s language, and to work like the white men. The Secretary of the Interior has charge of all these matters you have brought up. He has charge of the railroad and of the lands and I think he will feel very friendly to you. But you tell them, Paul, that it all depends finally upon the Indians themselves. If they work good they will be employed. If they work bad they won’t be employed. So it all lies with the Secretary of the Interior and the Indians.” ~•~ Read and/or download the entire 33-page transcript of the Tanana Chiefs Conference at: https://vilda.alaska.edu/digital/collection/cdmg22/id/162/

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Esther Birdsall Darling with her racing dogs Tom (middle), Dick, and Harry, “the famous Tolman brothers, who were the Veterans of Alaska Dog Racing, and so had a standing in the Kennel that none dared question.� ~from the book, Baldy of Nome

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January-February 2020 "A sport unequalled in history for excitement, speed, and endurance . . ." ~Esther Birdsall Darling

Sacramento Union, April, 1912

Esther Birdsall Darling Author of ‘Baldy of Nome,’ Kennel Partner to A. A. “Scotty” Allan On the front page of the Los Angeles Herald, April 2, 1911:

Society Woman Enters Dog Team in 408-Mile Dash Canines Will Race from Bering Sea to Arctic for Purse of $5OOO [Special to The Herald] SAN FRANCISCO, April 1. The great dog race of the north—one of the greatest sporting events in the world’s history—is to be run April 8. A woman of California's exclusive society circles has entered a team of fourteen dogs and hopes to capture the $5000 purse. The woman is Mrs. C. K. Darling of Berkeley. She was Miss Etta Birdsall of Sacramento, sister of Senator Birdsall of Placer. The Birdsalls have always been welcomed in the foremost society of California. Mrs. Darling is the intimate friend of Mrs. William H. Crocker, Mrs. George Sperry, Mrs. Mountford Wilson, Mrs. C. O. Alexander and other society leaders. The race is the All-Alaska Sweepstakes—a contest for dog teams over a course 408 miles long, from the

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January-February 2020 Behring Sea to the Arctic Ocean and return. The race was won last year by the Earl of Dalhousie. with the Earl’s brother in a parka driving the second team. Mrs. Darling owned the third team, and this year she is determined to win the first place. Her fourteen picked dogs are ready for the start. Her driver is Scotty Allan, "King of the Trail.”

Esther Birdsall was born into wealth and privilege, the daughter of Frederick and Esther Stratton Birdsall, natives of New England, who were prominent in the early history of northern California. Born in 1868, and known as Etta when she was younger, Esther grew up in a fine home, tended by three live-in servants, in the state capitol of Sacramento. A respected businessman, her father had interests in a store, a narrow gauge rail line, a silver mine in Nevada’s famous Comstock Lode, and he was an organizer and director of the Sacramento Bank. He was the owner of a water distribution network known as the Bear River Ditch, originally used to supply water to the mining camps for prospecting, and he later turned that into the first agricultural irrigation system in the county.

In the mid-1870s, ranchers in the southern part of the state were enjoying success in growing olive trees, and pioneering horticulturists - including Birdsall - decided to add olives to their new fruit-production industry, as state agriculturists felt olives would do well in the moderate climate of the Sierra Nevada foothills. Frederick Birdsall purchased 70 acres overlooking the nearby American River Canyon and built a ranch which would become known as Aeolia, for the mythological Greek god of the winds, Aeolus.

Esther’s father purchased 70 acres overlooking the American River Canyon for his olives.

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Franklin Birdsall traveled to Europe to learn about olive growing, then planted thousands of olive trees at Aeolia Heights. Over time, his Aeolia Olive Oil would win many awards.

When Etta was a young teenager she accompanied her father to Europe, where he learned about the olive oil industry. Birdsall returned to his California ranch with several thousand highquality olive varieties, and he and his wife had a beautiful home built near the top of the mountain, with the willowy olive orchards fanning out around them, and raised their five children.

In 1922 Esther wrote about life at Aeolia Heights for the Placer Herald newspaper, describing the menagerie which came into their possession by various means: “…in addition to our two collies and two cats, a monkey, a disabled blue-jay, a mud turtle, an orphaned lamb, an abused and abandoned water spaniel, and a white rat…”

Many years later Esther would dedicate her most famous book, Baldy of Nome, to her mother: “To My Mother, whose unfailing kindness to all animals is one of my earliest and happiest memories.”

By 1890 the Birdsalls had built an olive oil processing plant on their land, and the Birdsall company's "Pure California Olive Oil" won numerous awards at agricultural fairs and exhibitions.

Etta attended Mills College in Oakland, the first women’s college west of the Rocky Mountains.

After graduation she spent a number of years traveling, visiting London, Paris, Constantinople, the Sahara Desert, Mexico, Hawaii and the Orient. Her brother, Ernest Stratton Birdsall, took over management of the family ranch and olive oil company when their father died in 1900. He also became a leader in government, winning election to the state assembly in 1907, and serving as a state senator from 1909 to 1917. Today there is a quartz monument at a local intersection recounting the Birdsall family's history and their contributions to the community.

In 1907, at the relatively late age of 38, Esther married the co-owner of the Darling & Dean Hardware business in far-off Nome, Alaska. The frontier town had been established only a few

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January-February 2020 The sled dogs of the Stefansson Expedition had formerly carried the mail to Nome. C. E. Darling, ‘Scotty’ Allan, and Vilhjalmur Stefansson are among the men seen here at Darling & Dean. years before, when gold was found in 1898. Its rough edges were still evident, but by the turn of the century Nome had a population of over 10,000, making it the largest city in the Alaska Territory, yet only accessible by foot, dogsled or steamship.

Charles Edward 'Ned' Darling was born in Ireland in 1871. He was working for a west-coast based paint company in 1900 when he decided to transport a supply of fireproof paint to the Nome gold camp for fire-proofing the miners’ tents. After looking things over he determined that a hardware store could prove profitable, and by 1915 his store, the farthest north hardware store on the American continent, would boast a $150,000 inventory of hardware, ship chandlery, roofing, dredging supplies, and mining and mill supplies. Darling & Dean Hardware outfitted several Arctic expeditions, including explorer and anthropologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who in 1913 purchased $21,000 in supplies for a three-year scientific study of the Arctic.

Charles Darling was also a musher, and in February of 1906 he set a world’s record for long distance mushing when he drove his dog team from Nome to Seattle—via Valdez and ship—in

Ned Darling posing on Front Street in Nome with his sled dog team before departure for Seattle. The trip took him 42 days and set a new record. Photo by Frank Nowell, February 2, 1906.

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January-February 2020 only 42 days. Dog teams were held in high esteem, for a string of strong huskies was the most reliable mode of transportation over winter trails. The secretary of Darling & Dean Hardware, a Scotsman named Allan Alexander Allan, known as “Scotty,” partnered with Charles Darling in a dog kennel, and when the new Mrs. Darling met the furry residents of this kennel it was love at first sight, and that love would blossom into a literary legacy.

Scotty Allan played a key role in the founding of the Nome Kennel Club in 1907, and Esther would later serve as president of the organization. The club organized the first sled dog race with official regulations, held in Nome in 1908, running 408 miles, north to the mining camp of Candle and returning to Nome. The course traversed the forbidding Seward Peninsula, a land so remote and treacherous that few travelers dared cross the wide and wind-blown expanse. But Scotty Allan, who had been one of the first mail carriers over the route between Valdez and Nome, thrived on the challenges presented in the Sweepstakes race. He won the race in 1909, 1911 and 1912, with the inimitable Baldy leading. Scotty had acquired Baldy from a boy named Ben Edwards, who he gave a job in the kennel, and the dog would become so famous that his race wins were reported in The New York Times and other national newspapers.

The First World War interrupted the All Alaska Sweepstakes races, and an article in a 1918 edition of the trade magazine Hardware World, which grandly profiled the Darling & Dean Hardware store, explained a little of the ‘rest of the story’ regarding the dogs: “….Operating the fartherest [sp] North and most Western hardware store is not the only claim for recognition which Mr. Darling admits.

Rather it is he is fortunate in being the husband of Mrs. Esther Birdsall Darling. His business requiring most of his attention, he gave to her his interests in the Allan-Darling Alaskan dog team.

“We can only briefly refer to a few things, but if you want to hear someone put the ‘human touch’

In a 1916 booklet Esther shared the history of the Great Dog Races of Nome: the All Alaska Sweepstakes, the Solomon Derby, the Ruby Derby and the Fort Davis Races.

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Esther’s name was often in the newspapers, as shown by these news clippings from the Los Angeles Herald, 1911; Sacramento Union, 1911; and the San Francisco Call, 1912. and tell the story of the wonderful work of Alaskan dogs, Mrs. Darling can give you a true and vivid picture. Her addresses and lectures are most interesting. Someone has said, ‘money can buy everything except the wag of a dog’s tail.’ He instinctively knows who is his friend. Mrs. Darling has been the friend of many wonderful Alaskan dogs.

“It will be surprising to most of our readers to know that in France 10,000 dogs are now serving the cause of the Allies. The start was first made by securing 450 Alaskan dogs and shipping them to France, and their number has been increased and other dogs have been purchased, so valuable have the first proved. In fact, Mrs. Darling has the Croix de Guerre awarded to her dog team in recognition of relief and rescue work they have accomplished. The work the dogs are doing as carriers or sled dogs, pulling ambulances, doing Red Cross relief work, guarding munitions and prisoners, and serving as messengers and carriers, is probably given little thought. They seem never to tire, and it is only death or a serious wound that can stop them. In their war work the dogs are used in teams of fifteen to twenty each. The AllanDarling Alaskan dogs have had their pictures painted and hung in the Museum of War in recognition of the wonderful service rendered. They have their regular camps and keepers and are an important unit.”

The article then turns to the Alll Alaska Sweepstakes, and notes, “The man who is the most careful and takes the best care of his dogs stands the best chance of winning and that is the reason why the Allan-Darling dog teams have won the race more times than all competitors put together. It was this training and education that first attracted the French government to their work and which has since proved such a wonderful help in this world conflict.

“Mrs. Darling did not think at the time she began devoting attention to Alaskan dogs that they would play such an important part in saving human lives, but now that they are on the battlefield, she is devoting her time, both with spoken and written word, contributing to various

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January-February 2020 charitable and patriotic institutions. Her book, Baldy of Nome, named after one of her famous dogs, has had a wide sale, and is one of the most interesting books of the year.”

Baldy of Nome, published in 1912, was kept it in print by popular demand for more than forty years. It was filled with exciting true stories such as the time during the 60-mile Solomon Derby when Scotty, leaning over his sled to look at a broken runner, hit his head on an iron trail marker and was knocked unconscious. Baldy stopped the team, returned to his injured driver and roused him with nudges and howls, and then led the team to win the race. Stories of Baldy’s descendants followed, including Boris, Grandson of Baldy; Navarre of the North, and collections of prose and poetry about Alaska.

Charles and Esther Darling left Alaska in 1918 and moved to Berkeley, California, and so also did Scotty Allan, taking along his old friend and trail mate Baldy. When Baldy died in 1922 Esther Darling and Scotty Allan obtained a special permit from the city to bury the famous dog in the back yard of the Allan home in Oakland, overlooking San Francisco Bay. A rose bush was planted over his grave, and a lengthy obituary ran in The New York Times.

Charles Darling died in May, 1923, after which Esther lived alone in an apartment on Durand Street with pictures of Alaska on all of the walls, and several big silver cups won by Baldy. There was one rare photograph which Esther reportedly cherished. Taken August 15, 1935, it was a photo of the famed humorist Will Rogers, the noted airman Wiley Post; famous Alaskan bush pilot Joe Crosson, and champion musher Leonhard Seppala, another three-time All Alaska Sweepstakes winner and a hero of the 1925 Serum Run to Nome. The four friends were standing on a dock near Fairbanks in front of Wiley Post's floatplane, shortly before it crashed into a pond near Barrow, killing Rogers and Post.

Esther Birdsall Darling spent her later years as a popular speaker at civic, charity, and other social events, describing life in Alaska during the heyday of the All Alaska Sweepstakes to her attentive audiences. She was justifiably proud of her partnership with A. A. “Scotty” Allan, who she always described as the best dog man in Alaska, and their champion leader Baldy. Esther passed away June 2, 1965, at the age of 96, in Auburn, California, near her childhood home.

She was buried in the Sacramento City Cemetery, close to her parents and her husband. ~•~

Many of the classic children’s books written about Alaskan sled dogs by Esther Birdsall Darling are available as digital editions at the Gutenberg Project [gutenberg.org] and other online sites.

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January-February 2020 There’s a land where the mountains are nameless, And the rivers all run God knows where; There are lives that are erring and aimless, And deaths that just hang by a hair; There are hardships that nobody reckons; There are valleys unpeopled and still; There’s a land—oh, it beckons and beckons, And I want to go back—and I will.

from The Spell of the Yukon

Robert W. Service, c. 1912

Robert Service Robert William Service (1874–1958) was a British-Canadian poet and writer, best known for his colorfully vivid descriptions of the land and the people of the Yukon Territory. Although he did not arrive in Dawson City until ten years after the great gold rush of 1898, his poetry and writings of the era helped shape the romantic ideals of the Klondike.

He was born in Preston, in the English county of Lancashire, on January 16, 1874, the first born child of a Scottish bank clerk who married the daughter of a wealthy distillery family. He would have nine siblings, six brothers and three sisters, and his parents apparently felt the stress of his father’s work not going well. At the age of five, Robert and his younger brother John were sent to live with an uncle, the postmaster of Kilwinning, Scotland.

In 1883, when Robert was nine years old, his mother received a legacy and the Service family moved from Preston, Lancashire to Scotland's largest city, Glasgow, and Robert and his brother rejoined the large family. At school his sense of humor and his easy facility with words made his company enjoyable. By the age of thirteen he dreamed of going to sea, but his parents did not approve, so he took his first job, in a shipping office. After that company failed, Robert, then 14, accepted a position as an apprentice at the Commercial Bank of Scotland, which would become the Royal Bank of Scotland.

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In 1909, when his Dawson bank wanted Robert Service to return to Whitehorse as a manager, he decided to resign. After quitting his job, he rented a small log cabin, built in 1897, and became a full-time author.

In 1893 Robert Service attended the University of Glasgow, taking to the formal study of English Language and Literature so well that after mid-year examinations he stood fourth in a class of two hundred. However, for the final class project Service wrote an essay on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, focusing on the character of Ophelia, which was not received well by his professor. Miffed, Robert issued a challenge to a round of fisticuffs, but it went unaccepted and he left the university, disenchanted and disappointed. He spent the next two years working, saving his money, and dreaming of being a cowboy in Western Canada.

In 1895 Robert turned 21 years of age, resigned from his job at the bank, and announced his intentions to be a cowboy to his family. His father, apparently understanding, bought his son a Buffalo Bill Cody-type outfit complete with hat, high leather boots, and a fringed leather jacket.

Robert sailed to Montreal, took the train across Canada, and went to work for a Scottish family in the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island. He learned to milk cows, ride horseback, and do farm chores. After several months he moved to a more remote place to live and work with a rugged loner he calls Hank in his autobiography, Ploughman of the Moon. Hank ran about 20 head of cattle on his place, and Robert kept Hank company and helped with chores.

Hank taught Robert to bake bread and told him stories about travels in California.

After a year Robert left Hank to become a farm hand on a large dairy, but in 1897, at 23 years of age, he set off to by ferry to Seattle and south to San Francisco and the Barbary Coast, where he took up rambling, became a self-described hobo, or bindlestiff, and drifted,

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Robert Service in his beloved log cabin on the hill overlooking Dawson City, 1909-1911.

occasionally working, picking oranges or washing dishes, and for a spell, as a gardener and handyman at a house of ill repute where someone gave him a six string guitar. He returned to British Columbia and eventually became a storekeeper, a position he kept for four years.

One day in 1903, in Victoria, while Robert was standing outside the Canadian Bank of Commerce, an acquaintance hailed him and after some discussion encouraged him to go into the bank and apply for a job. He did so, using his references from the Scottish bank, and was hired. He was soon transferred to the town of Kamloops, in the desert-like interior of British Columbia, and in 1905 he was transfered north to the branch in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory.

Whitehorse was a frontier town, begun in 1897 at the White Horse Rapids on the Yukon River, as a camping site for prospectors on their way to Dawson City to join the Klondike Gold Rush. The railroad that Robert Service rode into town on from Skagway, the White Pass and Yukon Route, had been built over the mountains from the coast only five years before.

In Whitehorse Service listened to stories of the great gold rush, and he took part in the active social life of the town. As was popular at the time, he entertained at concerts and church socials by reciting Rudyard Kipling poems and singing songs to banjo accompaniment. Hearing him, the editor of the Whitehorse Star, E. J. "Stroller" White, suggested he write something original about life in the Yukon. Soon after this, as he was returning from an evening walk, the sounds of men celebrating in a nearby saloon inspired him, and by the next morning Service had penned the lines to one of his most famous poems, The Shooting of Dan McGrew.

The noted Canadian author and journalist Pierre Berton interviewed Robert Service in 1958 in Monte Carlo—the last interview Service ever gave. Berton had crossed paths with Service since childhood; in his book, Prisoners of the North (Carroll & Graf, 2004), Berton wrote, “My

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January-February 2020 mother knew him when she was a young kindergarten teacher in Dawson City; he even asked her to a dance—the kind of social affair he usually avoided. His original log cabin stood directly across from my childhood home under the hill overlooking the town.”

In the Monte Carlo interview, recently uploaded to YouTube (see Resources, page 48), Robert Service describes writing The Shooting of Dan McGrew after one of the churches asked him to do a bit in a program. Thinking it over on one of his long walks, he decided to take his friend Stroller’s advice and write something original: “….I heard sounds of revelry, and the line just popped into my head, ‘A bunch of the boys was a whoopin’ it up,’ and there I got my start.

I felt quite excited about it, I ate scarcely any supper, and after supper I went to my teller’s cage and I started to write. Well, believe it or not, I wrote on almost continuously through that ballad, and finished it, oh, around about two in the morning. I wrote it as it stands now, scarcely a line has been changed, and finally I went to bed, my job was finished. I put it away in a drawer and forgot all about it.”

Pierre Berton asks him, “You didn’t recite it at the church social?”

Robert Service: “Oh no, the cuss words in it was something that they wouldn’t stand for!”

Pierre Berton picks up the story in his book, Prisoners of the North. “One evening, he encountered a big mining man from Dawson, portly and important, who removed his cigar long enough to remark, ‘I’ll tell you a story Jack London never got,’ and spun a yarn about a man who cremated his pal. A light bulb flashed in Service’s mind: ‘I had a feeling that here was a decisive moment of destiny.’ He left and went for a long, solitary walk. On that moonlit evening, his mind ‘seething with excitement and a strange ecstasy,’ the opening lines of The Cremation of Sam McGee burst upon him, and soon ‘verse after verse developed with scarce a check.’

“After six hours, the entire ballad was in his head, and on the following day, ‘with scarcely any effort of memory,’ he put the words down on paper.”

Several of Robert Service’s poems and novels were made into Hollywood movies, from silent films to the the visually impressive “Trail of ’98,” filmed in California and Colorado.

With a $1.5 million price tag, "The Trail of '98" was one of MGM's most expensive and ambitious projects to date.

Service even portrayed himself —with Marlene Deitrich—in the movie based on Rex Beach’s novel set in territorial Alaska, “The Spoilers.”

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At Fort Simpson Robert Service bought a fine birch bark canoe from a veteran canoe-maker and christened her ‘Coquette.’ He paddled her down the great Mackenzie River, up the Peel, hitched a ride up the swift Rat River on a scow, carried her over the pass to the Bell River and, “in placid peace … I drifted down my river of dreams.” He folllowed the Bell to the Porcupine River, which took him into Alaska, and at Fort Yukon he boarded the sternwheeler Tanana for the trip up the Yukon River to Dawson City and his log cabin home.

Walking along the Yukon River from his Whitehorse cabin, often to the rock cliffs above Miles Canyon, Robert Service penned more poems, ‘bubbling verse like an artesian well.’ He collected enough poems for a book, and sent them, along with his Christmas bonus from the bank, to his father, who had emigrated to Toronto. The elder Service oversaw the publishing of Songs of a Sourdough, which was an immediate success, going through seven printings even before its official release date. Service eventually earned in excess of $100,000 for Songs of a Sourdough, equal to about $2.6 million today. In the United States, the book would be titled The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses.

When the bank transferred Service to Dawson City in 1908, he met veterans of the Klondike Gold Rush who loved to reminisce, and Service used their tales to write a second book of verse, Ballads of a Cheechako (1908), which also became an overwhelming success.

In 1909, when his bank wanted Service to return to Whitehorse as a manager, he decided to resign. He rented a small two-room log cabin in Dawson City and began his career as a full-time author. Like his two volumes of poetry, his first novel, The Trail of '98, also became an immediate best-seller, and Service, newly wealthy, was able to travel widely. But he felt that he still had a score to settle with the north.

Robert Service had long felt that he was a bit of a fraud, for while he wrote compellingly of the Yukon and the gold rush era, he had not ‘paid his dues,’ so to speak. He hadn’t trekked over the Chilkoot Pass, nor risked his life in the perilous journey down the Yukon in a flimsy craft.

Seeking to earn his sourdough stripes, he made a decision to return to Dawson City the hard way, via the notorious 2,000-mile Edmonton Trail, by birch bark canoe down the Mackenzie River, over the Mackenzie Divide via the Rat River and down the Bell and the Porcupine to the

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January-February 2020 Yukon River, then up the Yukon to Dawson City. It was a properly arduous—and dangerous— journey, and by the end of it he felt vindicated. Happily returning to his log cabin on the hillside, he wrote his third book of poetry, Rhymes of a Rolling Stone.

Robert Service left Dawson City for the last time in 1912, taking the last boat of the season.

He moved to France, purchased a villa on the Emerald Coast of Brittany which he named Dream Haven, and married Germaine Bourgoin in 1913. He was 41 years old when World War I broke out; he lied about his age and tried to enlist, but was refused. He became a war correspondent, and volunteered for duty as a stretcher bearer and ambulance driver with the American Red Cross, but when his health broke he found himself convalescing in Paris, where he wrote a volume of war poetry, Rhymes of a Red Cross Man, in 1916. It became a critically acclaimed best-seller. The book was dedicated to the memory of Service's brother, Lieutenant Albert Service, Canadian Infantry, Killed in Action, France, August, 1916.

In January, 1917 Germaine gave birth to twin girls, Doris and Iris. The following winter, when the family traveled to the Riviera, little Doris caught scarlet fever. She died in February, 1918.

In the fall of 1921 Service received a check for $5,000 for the film rights to The Shooting of Dan McGrew, and the family traveled to Hollywood, where Robert’s mother joined them from Alberta. That winter Robert traveled alone to Tahiti and Moorea for two months before returning to France. For the next ten years the family spent much time traveling, north to Brittany in the summers, south to Nice in the winter. They travelled to Spain, North Africa, Denmark, Finland, and Robert visited Germany, Poland, and the U.S.S.R. for two months, among other places.

During World War II, Robert Service returned to California, playing himself in the movie The Spoilers (1942), working alongside John Wayne, Randolph Scott, and appearing in a scene with Marlene Dietrich. After the war, Robert Service and his wife returned to their home, Dream Haven in the town of Lancieux, Brittany, to find it in ruin from the German occupation. They had it rebuilt, as Robert Service had a deep affection for the town and its scenic seaside. On many occasions, he made monetary gifts to the town, including for the school and for a war memorial.

Robert Service spent winters at his Villa Aurora in Monaco on the French Riviera, overlooking the warm Mediterranean, but during the summers he returned to Dream Haven. He wrote prolifically during his last years, publishing two volumes of autobiography, Ploughman of the Moon (1945) and Harper of Heaven (1948) and nine original books of verse (1949 to 1955).

Robert Service, The Bard of the Yukon, passed away at his beloved Dream Haven on the coast of Brittany, in September, 1958, and was buried in Lancieux. He was eighty-five. ~•~

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FOCUS ON

Antique Maps 1764 A New Map of the North East Coast of Asia, and North West Coast of America, with the late Russian Discoveries. Published in the London Magazine in 1764. The Explorations of Captains Behring and Tschirkows, on the St. Peter and St. Paul, from Kamtschatka on the Russian mainland to the northwest coast of North America, from 1728 to 1741.

1784 Chart of Norton Sound and of Bherings Strait made by the East Cape of Asia and the West Point of America. Captain Cook's exploration of the northwest coast of America and the northeast coast of Asia, one of the most significant voyages of discovery of the late 18th Century, representing a great leap forward in the understanding of the coastline of Alaska.

1825 Carte Geographique, Statistique et Historique Des Possessions Russes. By cartographer Jean Alexandre Buchon, 1825, published in Paris, France. One of the earliest antique maps of Russian America, forty-two years before the sale of the territory to the United States in 1867.

Most of the coastline above the Bering Straits is still unexplored; note the indications of interior mountains.

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January-February 2020 1867 The Territory ceded by Russia to the United States. Compiled for the U.S. Department of State in 1867, by Adolph Lindenkohl. The earliest printed map of lands acquired from Russia and the first appearance of the name ‘Alaska’ on a printed map.

Published after the Treaty had been signed, but some months before the actual transfer of Alaska to the U.S. took place.

1869 Alaska and Adjoining Territory 1869, United States Coast Survey,

by Henry Lindenkohl. Results from the earliest American explorations of the region purchased, showing the Yukon River, mountain ranges, Norton Sound and many features of the interior from a reconnaissance by W. H. Dall, director of the scientific c o r p s , o f t h e We s t e r n U n i o n Telegraph Expedition of 1865-1868.

1897 Rand McNally & Company map

by Andrew B. Graham, published in Chicago, 1897. After the discovery of gold in the Klondike in 1896, many companies rushed to provide reliable maps for the hordes of hopefuls going north. Rand McNally & Company would soon become a major publisher for guidebooks and maps to the new goldfields in Alaska and the Yukon.

Visit the Alaskan History Magazine website: alaskan-history.com

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Classic Alaskan History Books

The Cruise of the Corwin John Muir (1917) Subtitled ‘Journal of the Arctic Expedition of 1881 in search of De Long and the Jeannette.’ G. W. De Long was a U.S. Naval officer who led an expedition to find a way to the North Pole via the Bering Strait.

The Jeannette was never found, but Muir's account of his voyage through northern waters on the revenue cutter Corwin conveys the excitement of exploring little-known horizons. The great naturalist was on board as a correspondent for the San Francisco Daily Bulletin, and his account is filled with colorful details of the arctic environment and its inhabitants. Available to read online at Bartleby: https://tinyurl.com/r3shmg5

Through the Yukon and Alaska, Thomas Arthur Rickard (1909) In the summer of 1908 the author, a professional geologist with impressive c re d e n t i a l s , j o u r n e y e d through the Yukon Territory and Alaska and made an excellent in-depth survey of gold-mining activity from Juneau to Whitehorse and Dawson, down the Yukon River to Fairbanks, and then to Nome and Ophir. His detailed and informative descriptions, not only of the mining activity but of the land, the people, and re l a t e d d e v e l o p m e n t s , are enhanced by dozens of clear photographs and several maps. A rare book, but it can be read online at the Internet Archive: https:// tinyurl.com/uylvpjn

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The Glaciers of Alaska George Davidson (1904) The full title of this book is ‘The Glaciers of Alaska that are Shown on Russian Charts or Mentioned in Older Narratives.’ Includes glaciers in many areas of Alaska. Describes the glaciers shown by Capt.

Tebemkov of the Russian Imperial Navy in his Atlas of the Northwest Shores of Alaska (1852). Davidson was a surveyor for the US Coast Survey. In 1867 he was sent to Alaska to ascertain the advisability of adding it to the Union, and his explorations resulted in his recommendation that the U.S. purchase the territory. He would become a widely known geodesist, astronomer, geographer, surveyor and engineer.

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Current Alaskan History Books Island of the Blue Foxes, by Stephen R. Bown (2017) Subtitled ‘Disaster and Triumph on the World's Greatest Scientific Expedition,’ Bown’s book is an engaging account of the singular events in 1741 which resulted in the discovery of Alaska. Decades before Captain Cook's famous voyages, the 10-year venture launched by Peter the Great, led by the legendary Danish mariner Vitus Bering, with his naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller, was one of the most ambitious and well-financed— and arguably among the most important—scientific voyages in history.

Joe Quigley, Alaska Pioneer, by Cheryl Fair (2020) In 1884, at the age of 15, Joseph Buffington Quigley left his parents’ farm in Pennsylvania, crossed Chilkoot Pass at the age of 22, and landed in the Yukon five years before the Klondike Gold Rush. He spent the next 50 years prospecting in Alaska, making and losing a fortune, marrying a woman who would become a legend in her own time, and making another fortune from the sale of his Kantishna prospects. By his greatgrand neice Cheryl Fair, published by McFarland Publishing, Jan., 2020.

The Life I've Been Living, by Moses Cruikshank (1986) The biography of Athabaskan Indian Moses Cruikshank, born in 1906, who spent nine years at St. Mark's Mission in Nenana. A naturally skilled storyteller, Moses blends descriptions, opinions, advice, and humor to tell about mushing dogs with the ministers on their winter circuits of the villages, working on construction of the Alaska Railroad, prospecting for gold, hunting and trapping for a living, and serving in World War II. Recorded and edited by UAF Professor Emeritus William Schneider.

Alaska in the Progressive Age, by Thomas Alton (2019) The Progressive Era (1890s to 1920s) was a period of social activism and political reform in the US, the main objectives addressing problems caused by industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and political corruption. Alton’s book looks at how this national movement affected Alaska, for while many say Alaska was neglected and even abused by the federal government, Alton argues that from 1896 to 1916 the territory benefited richly. Published by the University of Alaska Press.

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Sources & Resources As noted on page 5, the Resources now reflect the sources used in this issue more directly, and include reference books, videos, and other media for those seeking to learn more. Lengthy website URLs have been shortened.

ELLA HIGGINSON • Dr. Laura Laffredo, authority on Higginson http://faculty.wwu.edu/laffrado/index.shtml • Alaska, The Great Country at the Gutenberg Project https://tinyurl.com/wakq3gb THE DAVIDSON DITCH • Davidson Ditch, Ned Rozell, Anch. Daily News, Sept. 27, 2013. https://tinyurl.com/r3ax8v7 • Construction in Cold Regions, by Terry T. McFadden, F. Lawrence Bennett (pages 504-511) • Alaska Mining Hall of Fame https://alaskamininghalloffame.org/inductees/davidson.php THE CHILKOOT TRAIL • The Chilkoot Trail: Cultural Landscape Report for the Chilkoot Trail Historic Corridor, Nat. Park Service, 2011. http://www.npshistory.com/publications/klgo/clr-1.pdf • Klondike. The Chicago Record’s Book for Gold Seekers, 1897. https://tinyurl.com/tbt9o3d • Klondyke facts, by Joseph Ladue, 1897. Library of Congress: https://lccn.loc.gov/01015731 • Explorenorth, A comprehesive guide http://explorenorth.com/alaska/dyea.html • Klondike Gold Rush National Park https://www.nps.gov/klgo/learn/historyculture/dyea.htm

1915 TANANA CHIEFS CONFERENCE • The Tanana Chiefs: Native Rights and Western Law, William Schneider, UA Press, 2018 • Tanana Chiefs Meeting by William Schneider, at Alaska Historical Society, 2015:

https://alaskahistoricalsociety.org/the-1915-tanana-chiefs-meeting/ • Transcript of the meeting, at the Alaska State Library, ASL-MS-0107-38-001 • National Register of Historic Places nomination form George C. Thomas Mem. Library, 1976

https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NHLS/72001542_text ESTHER BIRDSALL DARLING • Alaskan Sled Dog Tales, by Helen Hegener, Northern Light Media, 2016 • Placer County Historical Society article: https://tinyurl.com/v5omdnw • Darling & Dean Hardware profile in 1918 Hardware News: https://tinyurl.com/t8q99s9 ROBERT SERVICE • Robert Service https://robertwservice.blogspot.com & http://www.robertwservice.com

Two extensive websites, with extended biographies, chronologies of his life, and many

photos, newsclippings and other material from descendants of Robert Service.

• Pierre Berton’s interview with Robert Service, Monaco, 1958: https://tinyurl.com/qtqoj3n • Prisoners of the North, by Pierre Berton. Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2004 • Vagabond of Verse: A Biography, by James A. Mackay, Mainstream Pub. Co., 1996 • On the Trail of Robert Service, by G. W. Lockhart, Luath Press, 2004 GENERAL RESOURCES • Alaska & Polar Regions Collections & Archives http://library.uaf.edu/apr • Alaska’s Digital Archives https://vilda.alaska.edu • Google Books https://books.google.com • Gutenberg.org https://books.gutenberg.org • Library of Congress https://www.loc.gov • UAA/APU Consortium Library https://archives.consortiumlibrary.org • Wikipedia https://wikipedia.org

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