May-June, 2021
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Alaskan History
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May-June, 2021 Lantern Slides for 1923 Alaska Railroad Circle Tour
In 1923 the Alaska Railroad was newly completed, the golden spike having been driven at Nenana by President Harding, and to promote ticket sales the ‘Great Circle Tour’ was given plenty of press and publicity. Color photographs of sights along the route enticed visitors: From tidewater and the beginning of the railroad at Seward, through the new town of Anchorage, north to what was then known as Mt. McKinley National Park, to Fairbanks and then south to Valdez o n t h e R I c h a rd s o n H i g h w a y, Alaska’s first major road. The Great Circle Tour is still a popular route for today’s Alaskan travelers.
In this issue: • Knik - At one time the largest community on Cook Inlet, founded to serve the Willow Mining District in the Talkeetna Mountains. Being on the Iditarod Trail, it became the chief outfitting point for much of western Alaska. • Alaska Villlages, Eskimo, Indian, Aleut, 1937 - An unusual look at the villages of Alaska, from the perspectives of students boarding at the Eklutna Vocational School. • An Alaskan “Mush” to Presbytery - The Reverend Samuel Hall Young was known as “The Mushing Parson,” and here he details one trip over the Iditarod Trail. • Historic Alaskan Hot Springs - From the Panhandle to the Seward Peninsula, and from the Arctic Slopes to the Aleutian Islands, thermal hot springs are found all across Alaska. • Hotel Holman / Blix’s Roadhouse - From a roadhouse in a tent beside the Copper River to one of the most respected establishments on the Valdez-to-Fairbanks Trail. • Trading Cards: Captain Cook’s Third Voyage - Small colorful and informative, commercial trading cards from the Arbuckle Coffee Company told of Captain Cook’s final voyage. • 1923 Alaska Railroad Tour Lantern Slides - Presented as a promotional program for the then-new Alaska Railroad, these colorful slides share scenes of Alaska’s Great Circle Tour.
www.alaskan-history.com www.northernlightmedia.com
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Alaskan History May-June, 2021 VOLUME 3, NO. 3 ISBN 9798738210426
Published bimonthly by Northern Light Media
MEMORABLE PHOTOGRAPHS • ABOVE: SITKA, 1909 INTERESTING SCENES FROM AROUND THE NORTH - 6
ALASKAN HISTORY
1923 Alaska Railroad Tour Lantern Slides In the Alaska State Library’s Historical Collections there is a series of 85 glass lantern slides selected for showing to promote interest in the then-newly constructed Alaska Railroad and what was known as The Great Circle Tour. The route began in Seattle with a steamship trip to Seward, then over the new Alaska Railroad to Fairbanks and down the Richardson Highway to Valdez - or a branch trip to Cordova via Chitina. Article begins on page 40
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Looking for sheep on east Toklat Range. [Alaska State Library, The Alaska Railroad Tour Lantern Slide Collection, 1923. Identifier ASL-P198-40]
May-June, 2021 KNIK
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“…A TRANSSHIPMENT POINT FOR WATERBORNE FREIGHT…” By 1915, the peak year for the town, it was the chief outfitting point for the Matanuska and Susitna Valley gold mines, and there were four general merchandise stores, two hotels, three saloons….
ALASKA VILLAGES, ESKIMO, INDIAN, ALEUT, 1937
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FROM STUDENTS AT EKLUTNA VOCATIONAL SCHOOL If you were looking for Kokrines you would look between Ruby and Tanana. There are hills almost all around it. The town itself is built on a big hill. It is about 402 miles from Eklutna. There are about 98 people in Kokrines. AN ALASKAN “MUSH” TO PRESBYTERY
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REV. S. HALL YOUNG “There are fewer hardships in Alaska than in any other country I know. The people live an exuberant life there with wealth and all that goes to make up the externals of happiness. And as to the heroism, that is all nonsense.” HISTORIC ALASKAN HOT SPRINGS
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SUPPORTING GARDENS, RESORTS, HOSPITALS AND MORE The U.S. Geological Survey identifies 79 thermal springs in Alaska, almost half of which occur along the volcanic Alaska Peninsula, extending out into the Aleutian chain. Hot springs are scattered throughout the Interior and western Alaska. HOTEL HOLMAN/BLIX’S ROADHOUSE
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COPPER CENTER Andrew Holman established a temporary roadhouse in July, 1898, comprised of two tents, one serving as the Hotel Holman and the other as a makeshift post office for the prospectors making their way over the glaciers. CAPTAIN COOK TRADING CARDS
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THE THIRD - AND FINAL - VOYAGE Trading cards were a popular promotional item for commercial businesses. Small and easily inserted in almost any commodity, trading cards encouraged return business and customer loyalty to a brand.
In a single visit, Cook charted the majority of the North American northwest coastline on world maps for the first time, determined the extent of Alaska, and closed the gaps in Russian (from the west) and Spanish (from the south) exploratory probes of the northern limits of the Pacific Ocean. ~page 36
Cover Notes, In this Issue . . . . . . . 1
Memorable Photographs . . . . . 6 - 7
Table of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . 2 - 3
Articles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 to 39
Publisher’s Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Special Feature . . . . . . . . . . . 40 - 47
Magazine Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Resources used in this issue . . . . 48
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Alaskan History
Alaskan History
Publisher’s Note
M•A•G•A•Z•I•N•E
The Second Anthology
May-June, 2021
Alaskan History Magazine 2020
Volume 3, Number 3
As this magazine enters its third year of publication, editing has begun on the second anthology of articles, covering the first full year, 2020. There were many outstanding articles in those six issues, from an in-depth history of the Chilkoot Trail to the story of the S.S. Dora, “a tough little marine bulldog” which became one of the most recognized and respected steamships in the territory for her dauntless trips through the Gulf of Alaska and along the Aleutian Islands. 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/HistoryAlaskan Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ akhistorymagazine/
Other articles which will appear in the second anthology include the history of Fort Yukon, the story of Wells Fargo in Alaska, an unusual stone warehouse in Hyder, and biographies of notable Alaskans such as Charles Christian Georgeson, Esther Birdsall Darling, Robert Kennicott, Nellie Cashman, Mottram Dulaney Ball, Alexander Hunter Murray, Ray Mala, Ernest De Koven Leffingwell, Gavriil Andreevich Sarychev, Mary Joyce, Stephen Birch, Hudson Stuck and many others. The 2020 Anthology of Alaskan History Magazine will include almost all of the articles which appeared in the magazine, and most of the photographs and images which accompanied them. Scheduled for release in the fall of 2021, pricing and other details of the book will be available soon. The 2019 Anthology is still available at Northern Light Media, see below for the website link.
Helen Helen Hegener, Publisher • Northern Light Media ~ http://www.northernlightmedia.com • Alaskan History Magazine ~ http://www.alaskan-history.com • Newsletter ~ http://www.substack.com/alaskanhistory • Digital magazine ~ https://issuu.com/alaskanhistorymagazine
ISBN 9798738210426
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May-June, 2021 Notes and News • Email Newsletter Alaskan History Magazine offers a twice-weekly email newsletter, free to everyone, or a $5.00/month subscription includes updates, all of the articles from the magazine, full access to the back issue archives, and other features. A weekly book excerpt and all of the articles from the first two years of the magazine (2019-2020) are available for anyone to read free at www.substack.com/alaskanhistory
Inspiring Alaskans
• Resources used in researching the articles for each issue are shared on page 48, with links to the websites, PDFs and video and digital media. • The Facebook group for Alaskan History Magazine provides more access to the history of our great state, with links to the current issue, the website, the newsletter site, and interesting articles from other sources sharing an interest in northern history. Check it out at www.facebook.com/groups/AlaskanHistory/ • Social Media Alaskan History Magazine is active on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. For information visit the website at www.alaskan-history.com • Back Issues of Alaskan History Magazine are always available, and every bimonthly issue is 48 pages, full color, and ad-free. See the Northern Light Media website for details about ordering a single issue or a complete set. www.northernlightmedia.com • Books from Northern Light Media focus on the history of the North: • The Alaska Railroad: 1902-1923 • Alaskan Roadhouses • The 1935 Matanuska Colony Project • Matanuska Colony Barns • Alaskan Sled Dog Tales • The Beautiful Matanuska Valley • The First Iditarod • The All Alaska Sweepstakes • The Yukon Quest Trail Other titles at the website www.northernlightmedia.com
Addison M. Powell Second from the left in the photo above, Addison Monroe Powell was an adventurer, prospector, hunter, and a guide for Cpt. William R. Abercrombie’s 1898 Copper River Exploring Expedition, organized to explore the interior of the new territory of Alaska. His book, Trailing and Camping in Alaska, subtitled Ten Years Spent Exploring, Hunting and Prospecting in Alaska, 1898 to 1909, was republished by Northern Light Media in September, 2018. Powell’s sub-report, published in A b e r c r o m b i e ’s 1 8 9 9 Government Report on the Copper River Exploring Expedition, appears as chapters of his book.
The spirit of Addison Monroe Powell inspires every issue of Alaskan History Magazine! For information visit:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/AlaskanHistory/ https://twitter.com/HelenHegener https://www.instagram.com/akhistorymagazine/
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www.alaskan-history.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
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Alaskan History
Memorable Photographs Capturing Alaska’s History on Glass Plates and Film
The Alaska Almanac was published from 1905 to 1909 under the auspices of the Arctic Club, a Seattlebased fraternal men's club for businessmen with Gold Rush or Alaskan connections, formed in 1908 by successful veterans of the Klondike Gold Rush. The existing Alaska Club was merged into the Arctic Club at that time. The Alaska Almanac, an extensive compilation of useful and interesting information about early Alaska, included maps, photographs, history, geography, resources, government, ethnology, distance charts, mail services, land and sea freight prices, industrial developments, a directory of territorial officers and much more. Four photographs from the 1909 Alaska Almanac are shown here with the original captions, no credits or photographers are given in the book. The 1909 Alaska Almanac is available to read online at the University of Fairbanks website and at many other locations: https://tinyurl.com/AKalmanac
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Alaska’s Digital Archives: https://vilda.alaska.edu
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Alaskan History
Three images showing Knik’s seaport past. The photograph above, titled Knik Beach and dated October, 1906, is by Orville G. Herning, who arrived in Knik in 1900 and built a large store. Right: George Palmer’s first ship, the C. T. Hill, at the Knik pier, 1914. Below: Knik, Alaska, undated.
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Above: Vintage postcard: “Knik, Alaska.” Right: Main Street, 1914. Pioneer Roadhouse and Knik Pool Room; photograph by Phinny S. Hunt.
Knik “…a transshipment point for water-borne freight…” In July, 1973, the National Register of Historic Places received a nomination form for the Knik Site, at mile 20 of the Knik Road, for two buildings, listed as the Knik Museum, owned by the Matanuska-Susitna Borough; and a small log cabin owned by Joe Reddington, Sr. (incorrect spelling of Redington is on the paperwork), listed as a private residence: ”Only two structures remain from the era when Knik was the largest community on Cook Inlet. These are what is now the Knik Museum, a two-story balloon frame building that once served as a roadhouse and later a store, and a small log cabin. The first floor of the museum is furnished with period objects, while the second is used to display equipment, etc., associated with sled dog transport and racing. The cabin is used as a storage building by a Knik resident. Both buildings have been altered a little but still reflect their period of construction. The area of the site has, however, been considerably altered by recent road construction which now cuts the museum and cabin off from the shore of Cook Inlet and the old cemetery.” The form goes on to note Knik’s importance as a distribution point for water-borne freight to the towns of Sunrise and Hope on the Kenai Peninsula, to the Moose Creek mines up the Matanuska River valley, to Susitna Station, and to the gold and coal mines in the Talkeetna Mountains. In 1911 Knik also became a way station on the Iditarod Trail between Seward and Nome, and the form notes: “Travel was so heavy that in one week in 1911 more than 120 mushers
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Alaskan History
Three sled dog teams at Knik, March, 1920; you can clearly see Knik Arm behind them. The mushers are Irving Reed, George Glass, and his son Ophir Glass, traveling the Iditarod Trail from Wasilla. In a magazine article, "Rainy Pass by Dog Team" Reed wrote, "George had modestly set our first overnight stop at the town of Knik, fourteen miles from Wasilla. Knik was still the main gateway on the coast for travel to the Innoko and Iditarod gold fields, with a hotel and large restaurant..." (Alaska Sportsman, Oct. 1965). [Reed Family Papers, UAF-1968-21-214]
passed through Knik and out from Iditarod. Inbound freight and gold seekers to the Innoko-Iditarod gold fields passed outbound shipments such as the 1916 ‘Iditarod Gold Team’ with 3,400 pounds of gold hauled by 46 dogs.” The first permanent white resident of the Matanuska Valley, and the first white resident of Knik, was George W. Palmer, who befriended the local Dena’ina and lived with them as he developed the first privately owned stores in the Valley. Originally the manager of the Alaska Commercial Company store at Knik, George bought them out in 1901 when they closed several of their stores in southcentral Alaska, and he then established his own trading post. He added more buildings to his first store, sorting them into one for groceries, one for hardware, one for clothing and dry goods, a few designated as warehouses, one for storing dried salmon for dog food, etc., ending up with over a dozen in all. He sailed Cook Inlet in his schooners, the C. T. Hill and the Lucy, making purchasing trips to San Francisco for his stores, and in October, 1904 he became Knik's first postmaster. In 1900 Orville G. Herning arrived in Knik, by which time the white population had risen to 100. Herning was hired to open a trail to the Willow Creek Mining District, opened the Knik Trading Company in 1905, and became another successful businessman and civic leader in Knik, and later in the new railroad town of Wasilla.
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May-June, 2021 By 1905 Knik had two stores, a roadhouse and several cabins. In an article titled "Seward Trail for Winter Route," the Iditarod Pioneer reported on August 10, 1910: "From the mouth of the Yentna to Seward the trail will be traveled all winter and many roadhouses are located at convenient distances. The Susitna Station is quite a new town where the A.C. Co. has a large store and supplies can be had. Then the trail passes by Knik, another town and post office where there are three restaurants and two good stores..." By 1915, the peak year for the town, it was the chief outfitting point for the Matanuska and Susitna Valley gold mines, and there were four general merchandise stores, two hotels, three saloons, a fuel company, a movie house, barber shop and pool room, a law office, three qualified doctors and two dentists, and a newspaper, The Knik News. There were also farms and gardens. As early as 1900, George Palmer had been experimenting with the seeds he received from the Sitka Agricultural Experiment Station, and he would write to Prof. C. C. Georgeson, the Special Agent in Charge, detailing his efforts at Knik. In her small classic, Old Times on Upper Cook’s Inlet, Louise Potter printed a list of 132 people who had homesteads near Knik by 1915, noting, “That such a list is possible at all is apt to come as a surprise to many who have been encouraged to believe that 1935, the date the ‘Colonists’ arrived in the Matanuska Valley, marks the beginning of the history of agriculture in the Upper Inlet Region.” When the federal railroad chose to route their line about 15 miles north of Knik, through the area which later became Wasilla, the astute businesspeople of Knik moved to the new mid-valley trading center, some bringing their buildings with them, and the once-vibrant town of Knik began an inexorable fade into history. ~•~
Waterfront at Knik, Alaska, circa 1914, by Phinny S. Hunt. This photograph, with a negative number prefixed with “J,” may have been taken as part of Hunt’s work prior to the beginning of construction work on the Alaska Railroad.
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Alaskan History
Top: Main school building at Eklutna. [Photo by Walter W. Hodge, Univ. of Alaska Fairbanks, Walter W. Hodge Papers, ca. 1925-1948. UAF-2003-63-61] Right: Cover of Thompson’s manuscript, available to read online. [Alaska State Library, ASL-MS4-08-004]
Alaska Villages, Eskimo, Indian, Aleut, 1937 From Students at Eklutna Vocational School during 1937 At the Alaska State Library online archive is a photograph of the cover of a manuscript with descriptions of 58 Alaskan villages by various students attending the Eklutna Vocational School. Available to read online, it was assembled in the Fall of 1937 by Paul E. Thompson, who went to Ektutna Vocational School as a teacher and spent summers at the Knik Arm fish camp for the school. The villages described by the students include Afognak, Alitak, Anvic, Attu, Barrow, Beaver, Bethel, Cantwell, Chignik, Circle, Diomede, Eagle, Egegik, Elim, Flat, Fortuna Ledge (Marshall), Fort Yukon, Galena, Haycock, Karluk, Kenai, King Cove, Kivalina, Kokrines, Kotzebue, Koyuk, Koyukuk, Long Beach, Manley Hot Springs, Metlakatla, Nash Harbor, Neelik, Noatac, Nome, Noorvik, Nulato, Nunapitchuk, Perryville, Pilot Point, Pilot Station, Point Hope, Point Lay, Rampart, Ruby, Selawik, Shishmaref, Snag Point, Stevens Village, St. Mark's Mission, Tanana, Tatitlek, Teller, Unalakleet, Unalaska, Wainright, White Mountain, Wiseman, and Yakutat. Paul E. Thompson went to Cordova in 1931 as a warden for the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, and returned to Cordova each year as a seasonal fish warden through 1937, when he went to
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May-June, 2021 Eklutna. In spring, 1941 he went to Juneau as District Chief for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, until February 1942 when he transferred to Washington, D. C. as assistant chief for the Division of Alaska Fisheries. Mr. Thompson retired from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as Chief of Fishery Research in March, 1971, and moved to Alexandria, Virginia. Paul Thompson’s photograph collection in the Alaska State Library contains black and white photographs of adolescent students and student activities at the Eklutna Vocational School, where he taught during the late 1930’s, and most of the students are identified. The photo collection is not available online, but the manuscript is. A few excerpts: • Afognak: My home is located among the first islands on the Aleutian chain, on Afognak Island, near Kodiak. It is on the coast so that means there are lots of boats that travel back and forth, some from outside and others from almost all parts of Alaska from Seward to Unalaska. Our only way of travel is by boats. For a living the men fish in the summer and hunt in the winter. • Circle is up along the Yukon River; it isn't a very big town, with a population of about 100 people. In the winter the weather is so cold that the thermometer sometimes goes down as far as 70 below or more. In the summer it doesn't get so very hot—only once in a while. It rains and blows a good deal in the summer. • Fortuna Ledge, or Marshal [Marshall], as it is generally called, is located on the Yukon River about one hundred miles from the mouth or this mighty river. Traveling is done by boat, dogteam or airplane. The latter is used mostly for long distance traveling in winter. The dogs play a great part in carrying our mail from St. Michael after the Yukon has frozen. • The small rather thickly populated town of Ft. Yukon is situated on the Yukon River. It faces the river and is flat and unprotected from wind due to the mountainless scenery. The winter is extremely dry and cold but undaunted the majority of the male populace goes ahead with the fur trapping, hunting, woodcutting and hauling. The young people in the meantime attend school. • Kivalina is located on a little island surround, by the ocean and a lake. The climate is very cold in the winter—down to 60 below in the winter around January; it never seems to get so warm there as it does at Eklutna. Travel is mostly done by dogteam in the winter and boats in the summer. In summer when the men are inland where they are rounding up the reindeer, they have to walk on foot for miles. • If you were looking for Kokrines you would look between Ruby and Tanana. There are hills almost all around it. The town itself is built on a big hill. It is about 402 miles from Eklutna. There are about 98 people in Kokrines. They cut wood for the steamboats, traders, school , and Northern Commercial Company down at Ruby. They sell dried fish, meat, all kinds of berries, moccasins, boots, and many other things to earn money. • Noorvik: In the winter the people work and hunt for a living. The women cook, make mukluks, parkas and mittens. They use wood for fuel instead of coal. In the Spring nearly all the people scatter out for their muskrat camps and hunt for the next three months. In summer they move to their fishing camps and fish for smelts, sheafish, white fish, pickerel, mudsharks, trout and salmon. The most important fish are the salmon and the whitefish. They sell these to the traders and get what they need in exchange. Most of the time the women pick berries and store them away for the winter. ~•~ Manuscript: http://library.state.ak.us/hist/fulltext/ASL-MS-0004-08-004.htm
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Alaskan History
An Alaskan “Mush” to Presbytery Rev. S. Hall Young The Reverend Samuel Hall Young looms large in the history of the North. “In the summer of 1879 I was stationed at Fort Wrangell in southeastern Alaska, whence I had come the year before, a green young student fresh from college and seminary–very green and very fresh–to do what I could towards establishing the white man’s civilization among the Thlinget Indians. I had very many things to learn and many more to unlearn.” These are the opening words of Reverend Samuel Hall Young’s classic book, Alaska Days with John Muir (Fleming H. Revell Co., New York, 1915). The first missionary in Alaska, Young recounts a six-week voyage through southeastern waters he undertook in a great cedar canoe with the great naturalist John Muir, with a half-dozen Thlinget Indians as scouts and crew. Visiting villages along the route, Young noted: “I took the census of each village, getting the heads of the families to count their relatives with the aid of beans,—the large brown beans representing men, the large white ones, women, and the small Boston beans, children. In this manner the first census of southeastern Alaska was taken.” Sharing many adventures, Reverend Young and John Muir remained lifelong friends. During the ten years he lived and worked in Wrangell with his family, Rev. Young established several southeastern missions and became a man of some standing. In 1897 he was strongly considered for appointment as governor of the territory of Alaska by President McKinley. Instead he traveled over Chilkoot Pass and down the Yukon River at the height of the Klondike gold rush, and established the first Presbyterian church in Dawson City in 1898. Continuing down the Yukon River over the next three years, he organized missions at Eagle, Rampart, Nome, and Teller. In 1901 he was appointed superintendent of all Alaska
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May-June, 2021 Presbyterian missions. He lived at Skagway in 1902-1903, at Council in 1903-1904, at Fairbanks from 1904-06 and again 1907-08, at Teller in 1907, at Cordova in 1908-10, and Iditarod in 1911-12. During those years he gained a ‘Doctor of Divinity’ designation and became known as “the mushing parson” because of his many long journeys by dogteam. In 1913 Dr. Young wrote an article for the church publication The Continent (Vol. 44, No. 7, Feb. 13, 1913) in which he shared his story of a journey via dogteam from Iditarod to Seward over the Iditarod Trail, and then by steamer to Cordova, for an important General Assembly of the church. He was accompanied by a young Scotchman and experienced dog musher named Breeze; the few photographs accompanying the article are to treasure, and his colorful first-hand descriptions of the trail are a delight to the reader.
NOW, IF I am to tell you this story, I hope you will rid your mind of all hardship and hero gush. There are fewer hardships in Alaska than in any other country I know. The people live an exuberant life there with wealth and all that goes to make up the externals of happiness. And as to the heroism, that is all nonsense. I am in Alaska as I write because I like it, because it is the most comfortable, pleasant land to live in and to work in that I know of anywhere and, however insane you may consider the statement, I would rather take a journey like that I am about to describe than go around the world or have a million dollars. I can read all about a journey around the world, and the million dollars would fill my life full of care and trouble; but I cannot read about the region I traversed last spring, and there is no anxious care in simply making your journey day by day, from roadhouse to roadhouse, or to a camp in the snow. Your blood leaps in your veins. The struggle, which Emerson says is the best thing in life, is yours, and the daily victory. Nature sings overhead and underneath and all around you. Pessimism and gloom and homesickness are impossible on the trail. The time was last March, beginning with the 5th; the occasion was the meeting of presbytery at Cordova, on the coast. It was a very necessary meeting, for we must send a
Photo of his dog team sent for The Continent article, by the Rev. S. Hall Young, 1913.
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Alaskan History delegate to General Assembly. We must assert ourselves again as the biggest presbytery belonging to that body— in space I mean. I was at Iditarod, 720 miles from Cordova. Dr. Koonce was at Cordova and Dr. Condit at Fairbanks, 442 miles inland from Cordova. There was no other way for me to get to presbytery but to take my dogs and "mush." To those ignorant people who do not know the meaning of that term, I will condescend to explain that the word "mush" is a corruption of the French marchez, which the coureurs du bois shout at their dogs as they urge them along. It is the word now universally used to describe a journey over the trail, and when we drive our dogs or wish to chase them out of the house, we shout "mush!" The journey is to lead across three high ranges of mountains and two great valleys, the Kuskokwim and the Susitna. The trail has been but recently laid out by the government and is little used, but there are roadhouses here and there at irregular intervals and we will take enough provisions with us for emergencies. As to its being an at all formidable undertaking, why, the prospectors, miners and hunters of Alaska take far harder and longer trips constantly and break the trail for their dogs the whole way in unexplored territory. I anticipate the pleasure of that trip across new country with keen delight. A young Scotchman from the north of Ireland, William Breeze, known far and wide as an experienced "dog musher," is to be my companion. He is bound for Susitna, 300 miles from Iditarod, on a prospecting trip, and will take care of my dogs, boil their feed at night and do the heaviest part of the work. And now let me introduce you to my team. It is one of the finest teams in all the North. They are five pups of the same litter now 6 or 7 years old. They are a cross between the MacKenzie River husky and the shepherd dog, and have the long hair and hardy endurance of the former and the sagacity, intelligence and affection of the latter. Being brothers, they know each other and are taught to work together, although this fact does not hinder them from engaging in a general mixup now and again. However, if attacked by strange dogs, the whole five work together beautifully, centering their forces with Napoleonic strategy and beating the enemy in detail. The leader is black, white and tan. marked like a shepherd dog. He had been named "Nigger," but I have changed his name simply to "Leader." It sounds enough like the original to please him and set him going. The sled is a basket sleigh with handle bars and brake at the back and a "gee-pole" in front, with an extra rope when we have to "neck it" to help the dogs. My wolf robe, given me by Third church of Pittsburg and my old church at Cedar Falls, Iowa, is spread on the floor of the sleigh for my accommodation in the brief intervals of riding. For "dog mushing" in Alaska does not mean luxuriously riding in your sleigh wrapped up in your fur robe while the dogs haul you along the trail. When Egbert Koonce sledded 1,200 miles from Rampart to Valdez in 1902 on his way to General Assembly, I told the Assembly of his feat. A good old doctor of divinity said: "It must be, after all, a really luxurious way of traveling, wrapped up in your furs and reclining in a comfortable sleigh behind your dogs." I turned to Koonce and asked him how much of that 1,200 miles he rode. He replied, "About two miles."
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Two images from the 1913 article
I shall ride more than this on my way to Seward, but there will not be many places where I can ride half a mile without getting out and running behind the dogs. The beauty of dog mushing is that you are compelled to work as hard as the dogs. You are not on a beaten boulevard, but are wending your way around trees and stumps, over hummocks, up and down hill, along the sides of the mountains, and must keep your hands on the handle bars, lifting the sled on the trail where it runs off and often breaking the trail ahead with your snowshoes. When the dogs are on fairly good roads, they swing along uninterruptedly and you run your best behind. If there are two of you, one holds the handle bars and the other sprints on alone, either in front or behind the sleigh. You will get pretty tired the first two or three days, but after your muscles become hardened and you get your second wind you can run at your keenest gait two or three miles at a time. On the Trail Through the Wilderness But let us get started. The trail is well beaten from Iditarod to Flat City, seven and a half miles, and I get aboard, Breeze at the handle bars. My huskies leap into the harness at the word and we make a flying start. I ride perhaps half a mile, then jump off without stopping the team and run ahead of the dogs up the hill. 1 soon find my fur "parkie" too heavy and discard it for the lighter one made of drilling, in which I do the rest of my mushing to the end of the trail. Moccasins are on my feet, for the trail must be taken flat-footed if one is to have reasonable comfort. A brief halt at Flat to bid friends there good-by, and off we go again.
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Alaskan History After two or three miles we leave the broad road and strike the trail .through the wilderness. We soon begin to labor up the first divide. No more riding now. The trail is hard enough to dispense with snowshoes, but heavy enough to make us both walk and labor. I strike the trail ahead, leaving Breeze to the handle bars. I begin to feel the joy of it. The keen, dry air is like wine. The trail winds through the woods, along the edges of gorges and then up a steep mountain. Now the timber ceases and we have rounded wind-swept summits. I leave the little dogs far behind, for it is heavy pulling up the steep. Their bells twinkle faintly from below. I gain nearly a mile on them before they round the summit. I strike my lope down the farther side, but soon hear the bells as they charge down upon me and pass me swinging on toward the roadhouse. We make only twenty miles the first day, for it was nearly noon when we started, and we are glad to stop at Bonanza roadhouse when dusk is coming on. How good the moose meat tastes! How sweet the beds of hard boards and blankets! The luxury of rest we enjoy to the full. The dogs are fed, our moccasins and German socks hung up to dry and we crawl into our bunks with sighs of relief. There is no floor in the roadhouse, all the lumber has been whipsawed by hand, the furniture manufactured out of boxes and stumps and the utensils are the rudest. But the luxury of splendid meat and good sour-dough bread and coffee makes us feel that we have all that goes to make life desirable. An early start is necessary every morning. We eat our breakfast by candle light, fill up our thermos bottle with hot coffee, take a big hunk of roasted meat for lunch and "hit the trail" by daylight. Twenty-six miles today to Moore Creek roadhouse. Snow begins falling in the morning and soon the trail is obliterated by the fast coming feathery flakes. Now the snowshoes must be unstrapped and one must break the trail ahead. We take turns and swing along at a three and a half mile gait. This is real work, and we reach the roadhouse in the middle of the afternoon, really not so tired as on the preceding day.
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May-June, 2021 These are samples of the journey throughout, but, oh, the variety—no two miles alike— and the panorama of beauty that unfolds before us! Notice the beauty of the frost sparkles on the trees. The wonderful law that gives its own distinct varieties of frost crystals to each species of tree; fir, spruce, birch, cottonwood or alder, is exemplified so plainly here that after the first examination you can tell the kind of tree under the frost crystals by the shade of silver. The mountains tower above you, wind- swept, waving snow banners. The vastness of that white hush awes and thrills you. A rough sound would be blasphemy in the solemn silence. The whole landscape is a poem. The third day we make a "long leg," as the sailors say, from Moore Creek roadhouse to Big Creek, thirty-six miles, every foot of which we have to break trail with snowshoes. I strike ahead on my light "trailers" and Breeze wallows along behind. The fresh snow is so light and deep that it is difficult for him to keep the sled on the trail, and I often mislead by veering a little to right or left. When this occurs, down goes the sled in the deep snow beside the trail, and it has to be lifted up again and the dogs urged on. I get far in advance of him again and again. When I get weary snowshoeing, Breeze takes my place and I his at the handle bars. But in spite of the heavy trail and the weary work for dogs and men, we make the thirty-six miles. The coming day we have but fourteen miles and a half to make to the village of Tacotna, but it is the hardest mush so far and it takes us nearly all day. The poor little dogs burrow through the snow like gophers. Sometimes from my snowshoes ahead or alongside I can see only their ears and the stumps of their tails. It is joy indeed when on approaching the wilderness village an old friend, Dr. Green, who combines the offices of postmaster, magistrate, physician, dentist and miner, comes across the Tacotna river to guide my tottering steps to his hospitable door, and Mrs. Green's roasted wild chickens are the best viands on earth. Another hard mush of fourteen miles brings us to another dear old friend, or a pair of them, Mr. and Mrs. Elmer Smith. It is a cheering fact that on this trail through the wilderness I only stopped at one roadhouse where the people were all strangers. There is nothing so fine in all the world as the fellowship of the wilderness. There is a bond between men who have conquered the same mountain difficulties, lain under the same blanket in the snow and helped one another over the trail, that is stronger than death. Elmer Smith used to lead the choir when I preached at Nome, and Mrs. Smith was superintendent of the Sunday school there. They are choice and refined people, fit for any society. Mrs. Smith is the only white woman in a radius of fourteen miles, but the happiest and cheeriest person you ever saw. We are now in the valley of the Kuskokwim. The snow is deep. With Breeze doubletracking ahead, I work for four hours to get my dogs along seven miles. Then going suddenly across a divide, we strike shallow snow and hard trail and swing gayly into the Berry roadhouse, twenty-three miles from Tacotna. The Indian landlady cooks some grouse and caribou, for by this time we hardly touch bread or potatoes, eating vast quantities of wild meat. To those who have mushed along those trails and eaten this wild game it seems the
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most desirable food possible. The king of all the game is the ovis dalli, the white mountain sheep of Alaska. There is no other meat that compares with this. From Berry's on, across the McKinley range of mountains 150 miles, we have pretty good roads, fine, clear, sunny weather and no fresh snow. Through the sparkling woods, along the river beds, we hurry, and over rounded and jumbled foothills covered with scraggly trees, the range of the caribou, up deep gorges where moose tracks are plentiful. We always steer a little to the right of majestic Mount McKinley, which lifts its mighty shoulder 20,350 feet in the sky, and the nearer Mount Foraker. We bend after three days down to the South Fork of the Kuskokwim, right under the twin mountains Egypt and Pyramid. Here we stop with a typical man of the wilderness, "French Joe." He has built his log roadhouse with his own hands, whipsawing the lumber for the floor and for his tables. He is a hunter and trapper, and his walls are hung thick with pelts, all perfect and beautiful; silver, red and cross fox; lynx, wolverine, gray wolf, marten, mink and other furs. He is king of the wilderness and independent of the whole world. Native jams, cranberries and blueberries put up in sugar, currant wine, home-grown potatoes and turnips and a great variety of choice meat were spread in profusion before us. The banks of the world might all break, and its governments go to smash and its crops fail, but Joe would live at the foot of Mount Egypt his cheery, independent, carefree life. In spite of the strenuous mushing, I am gaining in flesh, my muscles hard as nails, my spirit buoyant.
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May-June, 2021 Seized by Lumbago on the Trail The day out from Joe's I meet with my first disaster. We have nineteen miles of absolutely clear ice on the south fork of the Kuskokwim. The river is full of air holes and open riffles. The dogs swing along at a ripping pace, digging their toenails into the hard ice, the sled slipping sideways and sliding dangerously near to open places. Breeze often has to run ahead at full speed to choose a route, for there is no trail on the ice. Half way up the river I "get gay," as Breeze says. I leave the handle bars to find a route, and fall down hard on the smooth ice. A sharp pang strikes through the small of my back as if from a spear thrust. I get up and go along, thinking the pain will cease, but soon I realize that I am in the grip of an old enemy—lumbago. From this point on to Seward I cannot make a move without pain, sometimes so great that I gasp for breath. At night in the roadhouse I have great trouble getting into my bunk, and sometimes Breeze has to lift me out in the morning. Were I at home I would be in bed for a couple of weeks, with doctors and nurses fussing over me, but it is just as well that I cannot stop. I take the philosophy of an old fellow in the Rainy Pass roadhouse, near the summit of the range, who says the best cure for a lame back is to "keep on a-mushin'!" I think of Edmund Vance Cook's verse, and it does me more good than all the horse liniments they rub on me. Did you tackle the trouble that came your way With a resolute heart and cheerful? Or hide your face from the light of day, With a craven heart and fearful? Oh! A trouble's a ton or a trouble's an ounce, Or a trouble is what you make it, And it isn't the fact that you're hurt that counts, But only, how did you take it? We drop into the canyon of Happy River and here we have our famous moose hunt. Soon after we enter this gorge, we come upon its track—a big bull moose. Now here comes this big. blundering beast to poke our trail full of deep holes and excite our dogs. He is running ahead of us. The snow is five or six feet deep and he goes in almost to his back every step. The walls of the canon are sheer and he cannot escape up its side. The river turns and winds and here and there are little patches of level ground thick with large spruce trees. For three miles we do not catch sight of the moose, but our dogs show that he is close ahead. In spite of my lame back I have to struggle ahead of them and bat Leader in the face with my cap. Breeze is standing on the brake to keep them from running away. The moose tracks fill our trail for a while, smashing it all to pieces, and then veer sideways to a little patch of woods, and the dogs will go pell mell in the moose's track, burying our sled out of sight in the deep snow. Then we have to haul them around and lift the sled on the track again and try to get them along the trail.
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Alaskan History Trying to Overtake a Bull Moose Three miles down the river we catch sight of the big moose and the dogs go wild. Being from Pennsylvania, I have the kindliest feeling toward this moose; I do not want to hurt him at all, but only, like Taft, wish he would keep out of the running, and like Woodrow Wilson, want to go by him. But our bells are jingling and our dogs barking and we are shouting at them and it is a fearsome thing to the bull moose, this animated machine that is charging down the river at him. So on he struggles through the deep snow, spoiling our trail and filling my companion's mind with blasphemous thoughts that occasionally break out in spite of his self-restraint. Four miles of this moose hunt, with the big brute growing more tired and we more anxious to pass him. Instead of our hunting the moose, he is haunting us. At last, around a little point of woods we see him lying down in the middle of the river right ahead of us. The dogs break bounds and almost upset me as they dash down the trail, with Breeze standing on the brake and yelling "Whoa!" The weary bull moose staggers to his feet again and makes the edge of the woods, but there lies down again. The trail veers right up to him. I run ahead and take Leader and Ring, one in each hand, and Breeze does the same with Teddy and Sheep. Mose is more tractable and we can control him with our voices. We drag the dogs, with the sled behind, pass the big brute, his long face not a rod from us, and then, setting Leader on the trail again, we urge them down five miles farther to the Happy River roadhouse. Ben Atwater and the Wilderness Brotherhood At Halfway roadhouse we catch up with old Ben Atwater. We have been hearing of poor old Ben all along the trail. He is an old miner and prospector whom I had known thirty-four years ago at Wrangell. He had been living on the Kuskokwim river not far from Tacotna. Three months before we found him Ben did a very foolish thing. He was hunting wild chickens and got up on a log to "view the landscape o'er." He rested his double barrel shotgun on the log, put the palm of his left hand over the muzzle and rested the wrist of his right hand over that. The butt of the gun slipped on the slippery log, the hammers caught, the gun went off and blew both poor Ben's hands off. At Iditarod, a hundred miles distant, we heard the news and promptly sent $100 to Ben's aid. Soon other streams of money began to pursue him. The Yukon pioneers at Dawson heard of it and sent an order by wireless for another hundred. Then $200 came from the Alaska pioneers of Fairbanks. But Ben had struck the trail before any but the sum from Iditarod could reach him. He could not dress himself or feed himself. He was helpless as a baby, but these rough men of the wilderness were caring for him. At one roadhouse and another they had fed and sheltered him, sometimes for days, and then hitching up their dogs, they would haul him on to the next roadhouse, fifteen to forty miles along the trail. Then another would pass him on. When I found him he was chipper as a cricket and told me that he had gained twenty pounds since striking the trail. He had still 150 miles to go, but was in the best hands in all the world. The kindly brotherhood of these men of the wilderness excels that of all other people, I think.
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Alaskan contract mail carrier Ben Atwater and his sled dog team.
At Knik we find another warm welcome. We hoped to find a boat here that would take us to Seward. Knik is on a so-called arm of Cook's inlet, but it is only an arm of the sea for two or three hours twice a day, for the tides here are tremendous. A boat is daily expected, but it disappoints us. The second night here I gather all the people of the village into the roadhouse and have "church." I do not think that I ever took greater pleasure in a service than in this one. Knik has been a town since 1895. There are a number of families here and some interesting children among them, but they have never had a school, and I preached the first sermon that has ever been heard in all that region. There are eight or nine other towns and villages scattered around the head of Cook's inlet and many mining camps, but no preacher of the gospel has ever come to bring these strong people of the wilderness the word of life. Everybody turned out to the service. There were two Christian women in attendance, one of whom has been there fifteen years and the other ten, without having a chance to hear the gospel preached. Finding that no boat is coming and the time for presbytery approaching, I must mush on. The worst mountain pass of all is before us: Crow Creek pass over the high Alaska range. Fearsome tales are told me of this pass, but there is nothing to do but to try it. Breeze leaves me here and I hire a young prospector. Fred Taulnian, to take me to Seward. Were it not for my lame back I would go alone, but they all say that the pass is too dangerous to be traveled singly even by a strong and vigorous person. So on March 21 we hitched up our eager dogs, whose three days' rest has put them in high spirits, and hit the trail again around the head of Knik Arm. Over dangerous ice, sometimes through the salt water that covers it, with now and then a stretch of good trail, we come to Old Knik. It is only a seventeen mile stretch, but my back is so bad that when I arrive at the roadhouse I am in convulsions of pain. A hot drink and hot applications soothe me, but there is little sleep for me that night.
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A Five-Mile Advance in Six Hours Now hard climbing up a steep road to the base of the pass at Raven Creek roadhouse. A storm is blowing. The snow banners on the mountains that overlook the pass and the fast falling snow make it impossible for us to go on, so we spend a day at this fine roadhouse, kept by three men who are hunters, prospectors and hotel keepers as occasion requires. The second morning they hitch up four big dogs as large as Shetland ponies to supplement our five smaller ones, and a sturdy mountaineer with "creepers" on his feet comes to pilot us over the summit. From daylight until noon we struggle before reaching the summit, making only five miles in six hours. The descent from the summit is almost sheer for 2,000 feet. I have vivid recollections of the trip down that steep place. We turned the dogs loose to follow after the sled. Then two men tied ropes to the back of the sled, and with their creepers hung on behind to let the sled down. They started it gingerly over the edge of the summit, and I, looking on from above, saw a confused jumble of men, dogs and sled rolling and tumbling down that path, the snow gathering around and on top of them until when they reached a more level spot they were out of sight in the body of the avalanche, not so deep but that the men emerged laughing and waving their hands. For myself, it took me an hour to get down to them. I would take my snowshoe, strike the end into the snow ahead of me, and slide down against it, a foot at a time, repeating the operation again and again. Sometimes coming to too steep a place, I would have to edge along some distance with great care for fear of stumbling over the precipice and wrenching my poor back. But when at last I got to the sled, it was righted and we went gayly on our journey. Not long before we passed this summit two men had lost their lives there, taking chances on a stormy day. One avalanche that would have buried us under fifty feet of snow had it got us thundered into our trail an eighth of a mile behind us.
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May-June, 2021 Down to the town of Glacier on Turnagain Arm we come at nightfall. Here we bargain with a boatman to set us across the next morning to the old town of Sunrise City, twelve miles away, on Kenai peninsula. Another hard day's work brings us to a roadhouse up this river, and then, a cold night hardening the crust of the snow, we swing gayly over another high summit, that of the Kenai range, and down to the Seward railroad and along it to » roadhouse twelve miles from Seward. I had telephoned from Glacier to Rev. Mr. Pederson, the Methodist pastor at Seward. At 9 o'clock in the morning of the 28th Brother Pederson, just starting out to meet us, greeted us with a shout as we swung up in front of his house. The trip of 520 miles had taken me twenty-three days, but four of those I was lying in camp. I had broken trail with snowshoes over a hundred miles. I had tested my mushing powers and had not found them wanting. I had seen two great valleys for the first time and had prospected them for agricultural possibilities, game, lumber, mining resources and human souls. In spite of my lame back, I never took a journey that afforded more of instruction and inspiration or more of true enjoyment than this one. A few days' rest and I took a steamer 200 miles farther to Cordova, where Brothers Koonce and Condit were awaiting me with their wives, and we had a joyful meeting of presbytery. Mrs. Young, whom I had left a year before at Seattle, greeted me at Cordova, having traveled 1,500 miles to have a five days' visit with me. For I must hit the trail again the Monday after my arrival and mush on to Fairbanks, 442 miles inland, holding the fort there until Dr. Condit returned from the General Assembly. If the Presbyterian ministry could see Alaska as I have seen it, and know it as I know it and the joy of service there, the Home Mission Board would be besieged by applications for that service. We are not to be commiserated but to be congratulated. With joy I again turn my steps back to— The great, big, broad land 'way up yonder, The forests where silence has lease, The beauty that thrills me with wonder, The stillness that fills me with peace. ~•~
Rev. Young’s team in Seward, at the end of the 520-mile trail, March 28, 1912.
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Historic Alaskan Hot Springs Supporting Gardens, Health Spas, Resorts, Hospitals and more In a preface to the 1917 U.S.G.S. booklet, Mineral Springs in Alaska, the geologist Alfred H. Brooks wrote, “Hot springs are widely distributed in Alaska, but they were only slightly utilized by the natives before the coming of the white man. During the Russian occupation of Alaska primitive bathing houses were built at several hot springs, notably near Sitka, and the hygenic value of the springs was recognized. In recent years more elaborate bathing establishments have been constructed at several accessible hot springs and are much used by local residents, and some hot springs that are more difficult of access are occasionally visited by prospectors as health resorts.” The U.S. Geological Survey identifies 79 thermal springs in Alaska, almost half of which occur along the volcanic Alaska Peninsula, extending out into the Aleutian chain. Hot springs are scattered throughout the Interior and western Alaska, as far north as the Brooks Range and as far west as the Seward Peninsula, but the second greatest concentration is found in the southeast’s Alaskan panhandle. Among the oldest known is Sitka Hot Springs at Goddard. According to Donald Orth’s Dictionary of Alaska Place Names, Goddard is located on the northeast side of Hot Springs Bay on the west coast of Baranof Island, 15 miles south of Sitka.
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May-June, 2021 It was reportedly established about 1800 by the Russians, who called it Teplyya Tseplitel Yuchya Klyuchi, meaning sheltered curative hot springs. The springs were visited in 1841 by Sir George Simpson, governor in chief of the Hudson Bay Co.’s territories in North America, who wrote of “three snug cottages….employed as a hospital for invalids from Sitka.” In 1908 a post office named Sanitarium was established, but the name was changed to Goddard in 1924, for Dr. F. L. Goddard, a local businessman. Bell Island Hot Springs, 50 miles by water north of Ketchikan, was homesteaded in 1902 by George Roe, who built a bathhouse and several cabins along a boardwalk, developing the springs as a resort for the medicinal use of the water. When he died in 1914 the resort continued under the management of his two brothers. Tenakee Hot Springs was reported in the 1917 USGS booklet as “one of the best-known of the Alaskan spring resorts,” noting “for 20 years or more the place has been used as a bathing resort by whites, and within the last 10 years a considerable settlement had been built up here, with post office (established in 1903) and supply stores.” The weekly steamer between Juneau and Sitka would regularly stop at Tenakee Hot Springs. Far to the northwest, Manley Hot Springs was located just north of the Tanana River, 160 miles west of Fairbanks. Discovered in 1902 by prospector John Karshner, the area became a service and supply point for miners after Karshner began a homestead and developed a vegetable farm. The U. S. Army built a telegraph station on their WAMCATS line, and farming and livestock operations in the area produced fresh meat, poultry, and produce for sale. In 1903, Sam's Rooms and Meals, later called the Manley Roadhouse, opened. In 1907 a miner named Frank Manley built the Hot Springs Resort Hotel, and the Danish polar explorer Ejnar Mikkelsen, of the 1906-1908 Anglo-American Polar Expedition, which established that there was no land north of Alaska, visited while en route to Fairbanks. He wrote, “I had heard much of this place, but I must admit that I was surprised when we came out of the forest and stopped in front of the large, well-built, two-storied log building. It was a splendid place with a Frank Manley’s Hot Springs Hotel and Natatorium, circa 1909
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Arctic Circle Hot Springs, circa 1938
nicely furnished dining room, bedrooms, and sitting rooms; a large saloon with a billiard room took up the lower story of the house, and in an annex were baths for men and women. The water came from some hot springs, the temperature of which was 108 degrees Fahr. When cooled it made splendid water to bathe in, and when hot it was used for heating the hotel, the stores, the stables, and some immense chicken-houses in which 1,200 chickens were living the life of warmer climes. Fresh eggs were no rarity at the hotel, no more than fresh chicken and potatoes (twenty tons grew in one summer); cabbages and even corn grow in the warm soil during the summer months. Mr. Manley was proud of his hotel, as in fact he had a right to be.” Farther north and east, Serpentine Hot Springs was located on the Seward Peninsula, north of Nome, and the waters there have long been sought for their healthful properties. Eskimo shamans and Native healers relied on these waters to help their followers. The Inupiaq word for Serpentine Hot Springs Springs is Iyat, which means “cooking pot” or “a site for cooking,” and for centuries the hot springs have been recognized as a place of spiritual healing and tradition, a quality that continues to be valued and respected by all who visit. South of Serpentine, near Teller, the Pilgrim Hot Springs gained prominence in the early 20th century when its thermal hot springs soothed the tired bodies of gold miners from Nome and the surrounding area, and made agricultural homesteading possible. Early log buildings, circa 1900–03, included a cabin, a barn and a chicken house. A roadhouse and saloon were built after 1903, but were destroyed by fire in 1908, after the mining boom had ended. Faced with housing orphans of the flu epidemic of 1918, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Nome built a large orphanage at the site, complete with a large church, dormitory and school, and living quarters for the staff, as well as greenhouses, all kept warm by water piped from the hot springs.
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May-June, 2021 Melozi Hot Springs is a group of 20 or so springs along Hot Springs Creek, 30 miles northeast of Ruby. A 1911 U.S. Geological Survey team reported finding a two-room cabin and two small bathhouses on the springs, today the site of a private fly-in wilderness lodge. Circle Hot Springs, about 100 miles northeast of Fairbanks, was first recorded in 1893 by prospector William Greats, but it had long been used by the indigenous Athabascan, and many gold miners wintered over at the springs when they could not work on the creeks. From the 1917 USGS booklet: “In 1909 the land, including the springs, was homesteaded by F. M. Leach, who has expended much labor in clearing and leveling ground near the springs and in developing the hot spring water for the irrigation of vegetables, especially potatoes. The springs have also been developed to some extent as a bathing resort; but as they must depend on Circle and a few small mining camps for patronage they have no great value for this purpose. The bathing facilities of 1915 consisted of a log bathhouse, containing a dressing room and a pool in an adjoining room. This pool and a similar one at the end of the building (for the use of the natives) have been excavated in the decomposed bedrock. In them the water registered 110˚ F., a comfortable bathing temperature.” There are many more historic hot springs, along with maps, photos and geologic details, described in the 115 page U.S.G.S. booklet, Mineral Springs in Alaska, by Gerald A. Waring, published in 1917 by the U. S. Government Printing Office. The booklet in PDF format is available to download or read free online: https://pubs.usgs.gov/wsp/0418/report.pdf ~•~ Our Lady of Lourdes church building, abandoned Catholic church at Pilgrim Springs, a former Catholic orphanage serving Inuit children, particularly those orphaned by the influenza epidemic of 1919. Located north of Nome and east of Teller on the Seward Peninsula, the old mission church stands amid meadows and trees, the largest on the Seward Peninsula due to the geothermal oasis. [Photograph from Wikimedia Commons]
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" Hotel Holman, Copper Center Alaska Nov 28-98." Photographer: P.S. Hunt, photo No. 100. Reproduced from a glass plate. [University of Alaska Fairbanks, Mary Whalen Photograph Collection UAF-2000-197-35]
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May-June, 2021 Hotel and Post Office, Copper Center, 1898. Alaska State Library, Neal D. Benedict Collection. ASL-P201-091
Hotel
Holman / Blix’s Roadhouse Copper Center In the year 1898 more than 4,000 prospectors crossed the steep and treacherous Valdez Glacier at the head of Port Valdez, touted as the “All-American Route” to the Klondike gold fields in the Yukon Territory, and to rumored mineral deposits in the Copper River area. The “All-American Route” was simply a scheme devised by the Pacific Steam Whaling Company, which ran a cannery at Orca Bay and a trading station at Port Valdez. Pacific Steam saw an opportunity to supplement their income by bringing prospectors to Valdez, where they could make their way to the interior via the Valdez Glacier, Klutina Glacier, and the 63mile-long Klutina River, and newspapers and outfitters of the day collaborated in grandly advertising the new route as a good alternative to the Canadian routes via Chilkoot and White Passes. The stampeders only learned the truth upon arrival at Valdez. With snowslides, glacial crevasses, and extreme physical challenges it was not an easy trip, and many lost their lives in attempting the journey. Frederick C. Schrader of the U.S. Geological Survey crossed the Valdez and Klutina Glaciers in 1898 and described the lower Klutina River as “a continuous line of whitecaps rushing at the bottom of its narrow bluffbordered canyon.” The community of Copper Center developed where the Valdez Glacier trail reached the west bank of the wide Copper River, near where the Klutina River, flowing out of Klutina Glacier and through the 16-mile-long Klutina Lake, joined the larger river, about 65 miles northeast of Valdez.
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Alaskan History The Ahtna Athabascans had long recognized the confluence of the Klutina and the Copper Rivers as a good place for a fish camp, and they occupied a large village there. Today the site is home to the Native Village of Kluti-Kaah, Tl’aticae’e, “Where two rivers meet.” An industrious soul named Andrew Holman established a temporary roadhouse near there in July, 1898, comprised of two tents, one serving as the Hotel Holman and the other as a makeshift post office for the stream of prospectors making their way over the glaciers from Valdez and down the Klutina River. Born in Norway in 1859, Holman had reached Alaska only a few weeks before, in March 1898, leading a group called the Scandinavian Alaska Colonial Association, primarily comprised of Norwegians and Swedes seeking Alaskan gold, financed by by prominent Norwegian citizens of Madison, Wisconsin. By the winter of 1899, he had replaced his tents with a substantial log hotel and trading post. Leaving a friend to run the hotel, Holman then pioneered the first mail route from Valdez to Circle City. The community of Copper Center was further established as a mining camp during the winter of 1898-99 when about 300 prospectors settled in to wait for spring. John Ringwald Blix, born in Norway in 1872, was working in Minnesota when gold was discovered in the Klondike. He joined Holman’s Scandinavian Alaska Colonial Association, and journeyed to Alaska as a passenger on steamship Protection, departing Seattle on March 13, 1898, with Andrew Holman. Over the next few years he would file location claims for several people, including Holman, by power of attorney, and in July, 1900 he made the first gold discovery on Rainey Creek, on the headwaters of the Delta River. Later that year he and
D.T. Kennedy's stages leaving Copper Center for Fairbanks. Photographer: P. S. Hunt.
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Blix’s Roadhouse, Mt. Wrangle [sp.] in Background, Copper Center, between 1905 and 1915.
Hans Torgensen were two of the first prospectors to cross the central Alaska Range between the Gulkana and Delta Rivers. The following year Andrew Holman and Ringwald Blix organized the Copper River Mining, Trading and Development Company to promote local settlement, with Holman as President and Blix as the secretary-treasurer, and in 1901 Blix was appointed the first postmaster along the new Valdez-Eagle Trail, at Copper Center. The Copper River Mining, Trading and Development Company was multi-faceted, as described in a travel guide it published: “One branch of this company’s work is devoted to furnishing guides and equipping prospecting and exploring parties with everything that is necessary for their comfort and safety.” And “This company is the sole owner of valuable maps showing the topography of the country, and by the aid of which one can easily travel through the country and ascertain his exact location.” Also: “Road houses are also owned and operated by this company for the convenience of the traveler, and an important feature of its work is the transportation of freight, packages and supplies to any part of Alaska.” And: “This company is also engaged in general mining and real estate business… contract work upon mining claims in both assessment and development work is attended to for nonresidents.” And then a word about themselves: “The managers of this company are amongst the oldest and most experienced business men in the country….” With the establishment of a post office and a telegraph station by the U.S. Army Signal Corps around 1901, Copper Center became the principal settlement and supply center in the Nelchina-Upper Susitna Region, which serviced the rich Valdez Creek mines west of Paxson.
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Alaskan History
An advertisement for Holman & Blix’s company in a travel guide, and photos of the dIning room and the office and sitting room in the Hotel Holman/Blix’s Roadhouse. Photos on right by P. S. Hunt.
In 1903 Copper Center was designated a government agricultural experiment station, but the station was closed in 1909, citing “….transportation of supplies very expensive, insufficient rainfall during the growing season, early frosts due to the proximity of high mountains, and the desire to develop the Fairbanks station where a larger population was already established.” (1910 Report on the Agricultural Experiment Stations, U.S. Government Printing Office) Blix and Holman’s business venture, the Copper River Mining, Trading and Development Company, had as one of its goals the building of a chain of roadhouses on the new government trail, and among the assets was Holman’s original Hotel Holman at mile 101.1. In 1906, noting the improvements and increasing traffic along the Valdez-Eagle Trail, Blix decided to lease the Hotel Holman from the company and began making improvements. Business was brisk, and Blix eventually purchased the property. Blix’s Roadhouse, as it became known, featured spring beds and a modern bath, was very highly regarded for its outstanding services and became a favorite among travelers in the region. In Ken Marsh’s book, The Trail, there is an excerpt from a 1910 advertising booklet which describes the Hotel Holman and notes Blix’s contributions to the Copper Center community:
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May-June, 2021 “Ringwald Blix is the leading business man of the community. He has been postmaster since the establishment of the post office in 1901. Besides being the proprietor of a general merchandise store and landlord of the Hotel Holman, he is United States Commissioner and a Notary Public. He came from Minneapolis, Minn., to Valdez in 1898, and then to the Copper River Valley, where he located the first homestead and raised the first vegetables ever grown in the district. He is the pioneer trader and roadhouse man between Valdez and Fairbanks. “The Hotel Holman is run on a regular hotel plan, and the traveler can here find solid comfort and convenience. It is well furnished and in the main living room is always kept an assortment of the latest magazines and many metropolitan daily newspapers from the United States. The dining room service is very good and sleeping accommodations excellent. Rates are low considering the high cost of transportation of provisions to the valley. You can be very well taken care of here for $4.00 per day.” In 1918 Ringwald Blix and his wife Frances sold the establishment to Hans Dittman and left Alaska to retire in Seattle. Dittman hired Florence Barnes to manage the roadhouse, and in 1923 she purchased it, changing the name to the Copper Center Roadhouse and Trading Post. In 1932 the front of the building was destroyed by fire. A new two-story log structure was built and renamed the Copper Center Lodge. When Mrs. Barnes died in 1948, she left her entire estate to the El Nathan Home for Children in Valdez, and later that year the orphanage sold the property to George Ashby. Although Ashby died in 1979, his family continued to operate the roadhouse, gaining a listing on the National Register of Historic Places. The main lodge burned on May 20, 2012, but today the Old Town Copper Center Inn & Restaurant continues the tradition of hospitality on the banks of the Copper River which began over a century ago. ~•~
Ringwald Blix arrived in Alaska in 1898.
Looking up the Klutena from Copper Center.
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John Webber. “A View of Snug Corner Cove, in Prince William’s Sound.” From A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean Undertaken by the Command of His Majesty, for Making Discoveries in the Northern Hemisphere. London: W. and A. Strahan for G. Nicol and T. Cadell, 1784. This view shows Cook’s two ships, the Resolution and the Discovery, in the background, while natives in canoes are seen in the foreground.
Captain Cook Trading Cards The Third - and Final - Voyage Colorful chromolithographic trading cards were a popular promotional item for commercial businesses in the last part of the 19th century, and the first half of the 20th. Small and easily inserted in almost any commodity, they encouraged return business and customer loyalty to a brand, qualities still being sought after by promoters today. The cards on these pages were produced for the Arbuckle Brothers Coffee Company, founded by John and Charles and Arbuckle of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the post Civil War era. At that time coffee was sold as green coffee beans which had to be roasted in a skillet over a fire, or in a pan in the oven of a woodstove, and then ground using a handheld coffee grinder. James A. Folger was among the first to provide pre-roasted, pre-ground coffee, serving the 49er’s of the California Gold Rush, and the Arbuckle brothers took coffee a step further, being the first to package their coffee in convenient one pound bags by developing a machine to
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May-June, 2021 weigh, fill, seal and label them efficiently. Their Ariosa Blend became the most popular coffee among cowboys of the old west, readily found in cowtowns such as Tombstone and Dodge City, and by the turn of the century the Arbuckle Brothers Coffee Company was the largest importer and seller of coffee in the world. Their most popular promotional program was the small trading cards included in every package of coffee, featuring a series of sports, food, zoology, historic scenes, and similar topics. Their most popular series, maps, included small illustrations portraying “the peculiarities of the history, industry, scenery, etc.,” of the region on the map. The images accompanying this article are from a series featuring the third expedition (1776– 1779) of Captain James Cook, a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the British Royal Navy. In his voyages, Cook sailed thousands of miles across largely uncharted areas of the globe, mapping lands from New Zealand to Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean in greater detail and on a scale not previously charted by Western explorers. He surveyed and named features, and recorded islands and coastlines on European maps for the first time. He displayed
Mitchell, Alaska 1881. United States Coastal Survey. “North Western America showing the territory ceded by Russia to the United States.” From the New General Atlas, Philadelphia: S. Agustus Mitchell, Jr. 1881.
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John Webber. “Inhabitants of Norton Sound, and their Habituations.” From A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean Undertaken by the Command of His Majesty, for Making Discoveries in the Northern Hemisphere. London: W. and A. Strahan for G. Nicol and T. Cadell, 1784.
a combination of courage, seamanship, superior surveying and cartographic skills, and an ability to lead men under adverse conditions. The engraved prints shown here appeared in the official account of Cook’s third voyage, and were done by John Webber, the official artist for the expedition. He was taken along to “give a more perfect idea thereof than can be formed by written description,” and upon returning to England he prepared images for the official report, published in 1784, providing the most comprehensive picture of the Pacific region from the early days of exploration. On his last voyage, Cook commanded HMS Resolution, while Captain Charles Clerke commanded HMS Discovery. The public was led to believe the voyage was planned in order to return the Pacific Islander Omai to Tahiti, but the trip's principal goal was actually to locate a much sought-after Northwest Passage around the American continent. After dropping Omai at Tahiti, Cook travelled north and in 1778 became the first European to begin formal contact with the Hawaiian Islands. He then sailed for the Pacific coast of North America and set about
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John Webber. “A Man of Oonalashka.” From A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean Undertaken by the Command of His Majesty, for Making Discoveries in the Northern Hemisphere. London: W. and A. Strahan for G. Nicol and T. Cadell, 1784.
exploring and mapping along the coast all the way to the Bering Strait, on the way identifying what came to be known as Cook Inlet and Knik and Turnagain Arms. In a single visit, Cook charted the majority of the North American northwest coastline on world maps for the first time, determined the extent of Alaska, and closed the gaps in Russian (from the west) and Spanish (from the south) exploratory probes of the northern limits of the Pacific Ocean. By the second week of August 1778, Cook was through the Bering Strait, sailing into the Chukchi Sea. He headed northeast up the coast of Alaska until he was blocked by sea ice, sailed west to the Siberian coast, and then southeast down the Siberian coast back to the Bering Strait. By early September 1778 he was back in the Bering Sea to begin the trip to the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands. It was there, in February, 1779, where Cook and four of his men were killed in a minor skirmish with the natives. Held in esteem even while tensions broke between them, Cook’s body was honored by a ritual burial by the islanders, and some of his remains were returned to his crew for a formal burial at sea. Cook's contributions to knowledge gained international recognition during his lifetime. In 1779, while the American colonies were fighting Britain for their independence, Benjamin Franklin wrote to captains of colonial warships at sea, recommending that if they came into contact with Cook's vessel, they were to "not consider her an enemy, nor suffer any plunder to be made of the effects contained in her, nor obstruct her immediate return to England by detaining her or sending her into any other part of Europe or to America; but that you treat the said Captain Cook and his people with all civility and kindness ... as common friends to mankind. ~•~
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Map of Alaska. Dept. of Interior map. 1923. [Alaska State Library The Alaska Railroad Tour Lantern Slide Collection, 1923. ASL-PCA-198, Identifier ASL-P198-4]
1923 Alaska Railroad Tour Lantern Slides In the Alaska State Library’s Historical Collections there is a series of 85 lantern slides, glass, colored, 3 1/4 x 4 inches in diameter, selected for showing to evoke interest in the then-newly constructed Alaska Railroad and what was known as The Great Circle Tour. From the description in the online archive: “This collection of 85 colored lantern slides advertised The Alaska Railroad's Tour #2 in the first year of operation for the Alaska Railroad, 1923. The slides are imprinted with "Alaska Railroad, Washington D.C." The tour began at the Alaska Steamship pier in Seattle and continued by steamship up through the Inside Passage to Seward where the passengers boarded the train. The images start at Seward and show the scenic views along the tour as the train heads to Fairbanks and then by automobile to Valdez. Tour #2 covered 4,402 miles in 22 days, and cost $240.65. The slides advertised the scenic beauty of Alaska and activities of Alaskans living along the route.” According to one of the slides in the collection, the cost of Tour No. 2 was $240.65 round trip, Seattle to Seward via steamer, meals and berth included. The Seward to Fairbanks leg via the Alaska Railroad included the fare only, and the Fairbanks leg to Valdez or Cordova via the Richardson Highway included the auto fare, apparently a rental car. The distance was 4,402 miles, time 22 days. There was also a Tour No. 1 which cost only $178.10 and covered 4,672 miles (270 miles shorter); apparently that meant a return to Seward on the Alaska Railroad.
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May-June, 2021 The photographers are not named, the photographs are all simply attributed to the Alaska Railroad. The 1923 edition of Polk’s Directory, published shortly after the official opening ceremony of the railroad in Nenana, included the following description of the Alaska Railroad’s tours: “With the completion of The Alaska Railroad, a most remarkable circular tour through the interior of the Territory is now possible. This tour included a 1,600-mile ocean voyage from Seattle or Vancouver up the Inside Passage, then across the Gulf of Alaska, through Prince William Sound, and up Resurrection Bay to Seward, touching at all Alaskan ports; then 470 miles over The Alaska Railroad to Fairbanks, then 320 miles over the Richardson Highway to Chitina, then 130 miles over the Copper River & Northwestern Railway to Cordova, and then a 1,400-mile return ocean voyage through Prince William Sound, the Gulf of Alaska, and the Inside Passage. This tour was formally inaugurated last summer by the Brooklyn Daily Eagle party of 70 people, over half of them being ladies.” The slides here are presented in roughly chronological geographic order. You can see the entire collection at the Alaska State Library online (see resources on page 48 for a link). ~•~
A 1923 Department of the Interior map showing the route of The Alaska Railroad Tours.
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Photos from top left: View of Seward from hillside. No. 74. • Upper Trail Lake, looking toward Moose Pass. No. 9. • Bartlett Glacier, view from high trestle. No. 12. • Bartlett Glacier from trestle. No. 13. • Turnagain Arm on Alaska Ry., Anchorage, where sea and railroad meet. No. 85. • Hospital in Anchorage. No. 18 [All: Alaska State Library Alaska Railroad Tour Lantern Slide Collection, 1923. ASL-PCA-198; with identifying numbers]
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From top left: Old Russian church, Eklutna. No. 20. • Knik River bridge looking southeast. No. 28. • Wasilla Lake. No. 25. • Little Susitna highway, looking up trail. No. 26. • Hurricane Gulch Bridge looking toward Susitna N. bend. No. 29. • Curry Hotel. No. 45. [All: Alaska State Library The Alaska Railroad Tour Lantern Slide Collection, 1923. ASL-PCA-198; with identifying numbers on each slide description.]
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From top left: Train on Nenana River Bridge. No. 30. • Mrs. Wm. Green; Broad Pass; only woman telegraph operator in Alaska, 1923. No. 31. • Prospectors and dogs. Morenas (?) Roadhouse. [Ed. note; at Denali Park]. No. 38. • Mount McKinley. No. 40. • Crossing Hines Creek. No. 63. • At Stoney Creek. Road Commission tent. No. 64. [All: Alaska State Library The Alaska Railroad Tour Lantern Slide Collection, 1923. ASL-PCA-198]
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From top left: Birch Lake. No. 55. • Ferry at Tanana at McCarty’s Roadhouse. No. 54. • Paxson Roadhouse and depot. No. 52. • Teckell (Tiekel) Roadhouse. No. 53. • Chevrolet (automobile) crossing glacier stream on highway near Worthington Glacier, below falls. No. 56. • On Richardson Hwy. Coast range Chugack [Chugach] Mtns. No. 57 [All: Alaska State Library The ARR Tour Lantern Slide Collection, 1923. ASL-PCA-198]
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From top left: On Richardson Highway. No. 59. • Waterfall Keystone Canyon. No. 60 • Bridge across Sheep Creek. No. 61 • Keystone Canyon and highway. No. 62. • Salmon boat at Valdez. No. 69. • Landing of S.S. Northwestern, Seward dock. No. 75. [All: Alaska State Library The Alaska Railroad Tour Lantern Slide Collection, 1923. ASL-PCA-198; with identifying numbers on each slide description.]
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From top: S.S. Northwestern at Columbia Glacier. No. 76. • Columbia Glacier from deck of S.S. Northwestern; with icebergs. No. 77. • Approaching Port Benny. No. 78. • Group of small islands between Valdez and Cordova. No. 79. • Cordova, dock and harbor. Copper concentrates from Kennecott Copper Mines, loading for Tacoma smelters. No. 80. • Ketchikan. No. 70. [ASL ARR Tour Lantern Slide Collection. ASL-PCA-198]
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Sources & Resources The links and references below reflect the specific sources used in researching the articles which appear in this issue, and include reference books, videos, websites and other media. Lengthy URLs have been shortened. Knik • Knik NRHP nomination https://tinyurl.com/KnikNRHP • Ray Bonnell: Knik https://tinyurl.com/BonnellKnik • Matanuska Valley History https://matanuskacolony.wordpress.com/tag/knik/ • Wasilla-Knik Historical Society http://www.wkhsociety.org/museums.html
Alaska Villages, Eskimo, Indian, Aleut, 1937 • Full text http://library.state.ak.us/hist/fulltext/ASL-MS-0004-08-004.htm • Cover photograph https://vilda.alaska.edu/digital/collection/cdmg21/id/2204/rec/51 • Paul E. Thompson Photograph Collection https://tinyurl.com/1937photos • Photos of Eklutna Vocational School https://tinyurl.com/EklutnaSchool
An Alaskan Mush to Presbytery • Original article, The Continent 1913 https://tinyurl.com/MushtoPresbtery • Samuel Hall Young https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._Hall_Young • S. Hall Young, Mushing Parson https://tinyurl.com/MushingParson • Autobiography of S. Hall Young https://tinyurl.com/SHallYoung
Alaskan Hot Springs • Mineral Springs of Alaska, 1917 https://pubs.usgs.gov/wsp/0418/report.pdf • Historic hot springs photographs https://tinyurl.com/HotSpringsHistory • Pilgrim Hot Springs NRHP nomination form https://tinyurl.com/PilgrimHotSprings • Circle Hot Springs circa 1920 https://tinyurl.com/CircleHotSprings
Hotel Holman/ Blix Roadhouse • Blix Roadhouse https://tinyurl.com/BlixRH • Ringwald Blix https://tinyurl.com/RingwaldBlix • Andrew Holman https://tinyurl.com/AndrewHolman • Richardson Hwy Roadhouses https://ecommons.cornell.edu/handle/1813/44285
Captain Cook Trading Cards • Arbuckle Coffee Trading Cards http://www.arbycards.info/arbmain.htm • Trade cards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_card • Arbuckle Coffee Company https://www.arbucklecoffee.com/pages/company-information • Captain James Cook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cook
1923 Alaska Railroad Tour Lantern Slides • ARR Tour No. 2 Lantern Slide Collection https://tinyurl.com/ARRslides • Great Circle Tour (at the end of the Introduction) https://tinyurl.com/ARR1902-1923 • The Alaska Railroad history https://www.alaskarails.org/ARR-history.html • The Alaska Railroad 1902-1923 (book) https://tinyurl.com/ARRbook
General Resources • Alaska & Polar Regions Collections & Archives http://library.uaf.edu/apr • Alaska’s Digital Archives https://vilda.alaska.edu • Statewide Library Electronic Doorway [SLED]: https://lam.alaska.gov/sled/history • Google Books https://books.google.com • Gutenberg.org https://books.gutenberg.org • Library of Congress https://www.loc.gov
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