Hotel Holman, Blix Roadhouse

" 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]

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.

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.”

Looking up the Klutena from Copper Center, 1898.

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.

Hotel and Post Office, Copper Center, 1898. Alaska State Library, Neal D. Benedict Collection. ASL-P201-091

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 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.

D.T. Kennedy's stages leaving Copper Center for Fairbanks.

Photographer: P. S. Hunt.

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….”

An advertisement for Holman & Blix’s company in a travel guide

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.

Blix’s Roadhouse, Mt. Wrangle [sp.] in Background, Copper Center, between 1905 and 1915.

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.

Ringwald Blix arrived in Alaska in 1898.

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:

“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 dIning room in the Hotel Holman/Blix’s Roadhouse.

“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.”

The office and sitting room in the Hotel Holman/Blix’s Roadhouse.

P. S. Hunt photograph

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. ~•~