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On March 30, 1867, U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward and Russian minister to the United States Edouard de Stoeckl exchanged copies of the Treaty of Cession, whereby America agreed to pay Russia $7.2 million for the territory of Alaska. The formal transfer of the territory did not happen until several months later, but Seward had been wanting Alaska for years before he finally succeeded in obtaining it. "Standing here and looking far off into the northwest, I see the Russian as he busily...
After brief stints in Skagway and Whitehorse, one Kansas girl swirled her way into gold rush history when she stepped on stage at the Palace Grand in Dawson City in 1900. Kathleen Eloisa Rockwell, better known as "Klondike Kate," delighted audiences of miners with her song-and-dance routines. She wore an elaborate dress covered in red sequins and an enormous cape in one dance that made her famous. Kate would take the cape off and start leaping and twirling with a cane that had yards of red...
Many images come to mind when one thinks of gold rush days in Alaska: bearded prospectors swishing pans filled with water as they search for specks of gold; saloons beckoning the hardworking boys to forget all their troubles with a slug of whisky and a game of chance; and ladies known as "Lil" leaning against pianos, offering to help miners lighten their leather pokes. An image that doesn't usually come to mind is that of four nuns mingling with the masses on the virtually lawless streets of...
Some adventurous souls who came to Alaska didn't search the creek beds and mountains for golden riches. Instead they chose to make their fortunes through trapping furs. From early in the fall to the close of trapping season in April, many trappers traveled miles and miles of trap lines with no company but that of their dogs. It was no job for a "Chechako." Trappers like Ed Ueeck covered around 80 miles a week, checking to see if any animals had been caught in hidden traps. "About 14 miles a day...
As hordes of prospectors streamed into Alaska and Canada in the 1880s and 1890s, crime like thefts and claim jumping became more common. The Canadians had not yet established a law and order presence in their remote territory and the Americans' only established civil government was hundreds of miles away in Sitka. In 1893, miners in the camp of Fortymile formed the fraternal Yukon Order of Pioneers to enforce correct moral behavior. The order's motto was "Do unto others as you would be done...
Not only does Alaska have a history steeped in fur trading, whale harvesting and gold mining. It also has drawings on rocks usually associated with primitive people in exotic faraway lands. Petroglyphs, the Greek word for rock carvings, are among many enigmas of science. Because their true meanings are elusive, they remain a mysterious link to a people who inhabited the world a long time ago. Many of Alaska's petroglyphs, which are in abundance in the Southeastern part of the state, are unique...
A three-hour stopover in Skagway in July 1923 by President Warren G. Harding turned into a booming business for one Alaskan sourdough. Martin Itjen, an immigrant who came north from Florida in 1898 to join the stampede in search of riches in the Klondike, took the President on an excursion in a painted coal truck. After seeing how much Harding enjoyed the tour, the mustached Itjen figured he could make a living off tourism in the famous gold rush city and started the Skagway Streetcar Co. The...
When Land Office chief Andrew Christensen opened the auction for townsites above Ship Creek on July 10, 1915, bidding became so brisk that prospective lot owners couldn't hold down prices. After sales closed a week later, 655 lots had sold for almost $150,000 (more than $4 million in today's dollars). Christensen claimed the sale had "injected confidence in the people of the town" that soon would become Anchorage. But that confidence may have been tempered somewhat when the residents realized th...
Some courageous pioneers saw the possibilities of the Yukon Basin years before the Klondike Gold Rush. And a few stand out above the rest, including Leroy Napoleon "Jack" McQuesten, Alfred Mayo and Arthur Harper. Had they not seen the need to establish supply centers, it is possible that gold rushes to the Yukon and Alaska would not have boomed during the late 1890s. These men met up in British Columbia in 1873 and continued on to Fort Yukon together. The first winter, Harper went prospecting...
Seventy-four days after Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his Confederate forces at the Appomattox courthouse in Virginia, and almost two months after the Confederate Army stopped fighting on land, the last gun of the Civil War was fired in the Bering Sea of Alaska. Not knowing the war had ended, the commander of English-built Confederate vessel CSS Shenandoah fired upon several whalers near Saint Lawrence Island on June 22, 1865 (although some credible sources say it was on June 28). Commanding of...
As news of gold spread through America in the mid-1890s, hundreds of people flooded onto Seattle docks seeking transportation northward. Among the 100 passengers who packed onto the Cook Inlet-bound steamship Utopia was a man whose name would become synonymous with an Alaska ski resort. James E. Girdwood traveled to Kachemak Bay in early May 1896, where he hopped aboard the small steamer L.J. Perry, run by "Cap" Austin E. Lathrop. Girdwood made his way through the ice-filled Cook Inlet to...
In 1911, near the village of Tikigaq, Howard Rock's shaman grandmother predicted he would become a great man. More than 50 years later, the prophecy came true. Rock, small in stature, did indeed become a giant among men. Raised in the traditional Eskimo way, Rock learned to hunt with his father and embraced his culture. But he also had a foot in the western world. Like many Native children of the time, Rock had to leave his village at the age of 15 to continue his education past the eighth...
In March, Alaskans celebrate Seward's Day in honor of the man who succeeded in persuading the United States to buy Alaska from the Russians. And there are many landmarks named after President Lincoln's Secretary of State William Henry Seward. However, when Seward was chosen for the name of the town on Resurrection Bay, it took the personal intervention of President Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt to make it possible. By 1902, John Ballaine, originator and promoter of the Alaska Central Railway and...
As a young man, famous American novelist Rex Ellingwood Beach struck out from Illinois in 1897 in search of his fortune in the gold-filled Klondike. Along with others who had some money and time, he chose to travel the all-water route. Hopeful prospectors like Beach hopped onboard steamships leaving Seattle and other West Coast ports bound for St. Michael, where they connected with flat-bottom sternwheelers for the 1,500-mile trip up the Yukon River to Dawson. However, many travelers discovered...
Fired with the romance of the undertaking and inspired by exciting rumors, thousands thronged to Nome's beaches in 1900 after gold nuggets were found in the sand. Lured by the siren's cry of "gold," prospectors who'd not had luck elsewhere in Alaska came in the hopes that Nome's sand would become their pay dirt. But several adventurers, like A.F. Raynor, swarmed to the Seward Peninsula to mine the gold-mad prospectors. Raynor, a port steward for the Blue Star Navigation Co., was working in...
Capt. James Cook reported seeing a tall, sail-like rock about 60 miles west of Dutch Harbor in 1778. Unbeknownst to him and his crew, a 6,000-foot volcano lay beneath the conical mountain and its crater sat just below sea level. At various times throughout Alaska's history, navigators' logs recorded changes in the volcanic island's shoreline from season to season. Sometimes it was said to have disappeared into the ocean, only to emerge later in other locations. The mystery island, named...
Anchorage's first mayor, elected on Nov. 29, 1920, bore the responsibility of governing a railroad town of 1,856 people after five years of Alaska Engineering Commission management ended. When Judge Leopold David became Anchorage's mayor, he helped the new city council develop ordinances to provide law and order. They included establishing a 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew for youth under 16, setting a speed limit of eight miles per hour in town and outlawing spitting in public places. David, an...
One of Anchorage's now-closed department stores can trace its roots to the Gold Rush days of the Klondike when a young Swede hunkered down with pick and ax and chipped out a small fortune. John W. Nordstrom arrived in New York City from his native Sweden in 1887. With $5 in his pocket, and not a lick of English on his tongue, the 16-year-old made his way to Michigan where he labored in an iron mine. He eventually migrated to the West Coast. While making $1.50 a day as a logger and sawmill hand...
Prospectors searching for gold in the Wrangell mountains during the early 1900s found a mountain of copper instead. That discovery brought the famous Guggenheim-Morgan Syndicate into the history of Alaska, along with chicanery of the highest order. The Syndicate, which owned the copper mines, needed a transportation system to haul its lucrative cargo. It planned a railroad line in the Copper River valley that ran 196 miles from Cordova to the site of what became the Kennecott Copper mines. The...
George Washington Carmack and his two inseparable friends, "Skookum" Jim Mason and Tagish Charlie, had wandered up and down the Yukon for several years before their gold discovery electrified the world in August 1896. Carmack traveled over glaciers, through marshes, among forests, lakes, rivers and mountains in search of his destiny. He seemed a misfit in a land where every man was looking for gold. He only wanted to live like the Natives among whom he'd made his home since coming north in...
Hair-raising experiences, hardships and back-breaking toil were common to the lives of those who struggled to take from Nature her wealth of precious minerals. Few emerged victorious, thousands failed. But the lure of gold continued to draw prospectors on to new fields in the 1930s. Prospectors did not work alone. Many relied on horses to help them mine claims along the rivers, beaches and mountains of the North, according to an article written by F.W. Gabler titled "Horse Power for Unuk Gold,"...
Long before the Matanuska Valley became one of the fastest-growing communities in the nation, Russians tried to establish agricultural settlements on its fertile soil. They taught the Dena'ina how to grow crops like potatoes, carrots, radishes and turnips. In 1844, Russians founded settlements at Matanuska and Knik, as well as Kachemak, Kasilof and Kenai. Russian Alexander Herzen wrote in 1859: "A handful of Cossacks and a few hundred homeless mujiks (peasants) crossed oceans of ice at their...
When news reached Seattle of gold discoveries in Cook Inlet in 1896, every available vessel was pressed into service. With ships scarce, those heading north were filled to capacity with prospectors and their supplies. And Capt. Johnny O'Brien's steamship Utopia, which set out with100 passengers that spring, was no different. In early May, it arrived close to Kachemak Bay, but couldn't continue on up Turnagain Arm because of ice in Cook Inlet. Although this turn of events didn't really bother...
Six years before World War II broke out, Anthony J. Dimond, Alaska's delegate to Congress, started asking for military planes, airfields, army garrisons and a highway to link the Lower 48 to Alaska. When the war actually began in September 1939, rumors ran rampant around Anchorage that his pleas had been heard and military bases soon would be built to protect the northern front. Congress finally appropriated funds for Alaska in 1940, and the military started making plans for the construction of...
In the Koyukuk country, two rivers and a lake are named after a grizzled old Scottish prospector who explored the Copper River Valley. Not much is known of John Bremner's life before he arrived in the North Country, but his death triggered a very exciting chapter in Alaska's history. The hijacking of a Yukon River steamer, a wild chase on the Koyukuk, a miners' trial and frontier justice for Bremner's murderer make a story that could have been written by Rex Beach or Jack London. His stay at...
