Canvas Tents

The July-August issue of Alaskan History Magazine includes a collection of early photographs of the ubiquitous white canvas tent which housed thousands of Alaskan pioneers, from prospectors to doctors and from explorers to families. A few are shared below, and several which didn’t run in the issue are also shown here.

E. P. Pond, ca. 1897. [Winter & Pond photo. ASL-P87-0722. ]

Rear view of Marshal’s tent & barricade on Western Railway Company’s grade, Lowe River, Keystone Canyon, north of Valdez, September, 1907. Two men were shot in a dispute with Home Railway men. [Photographer P.S. Hunt, UAF-1980-68-44]

Glacier Creek Roadhouse, Nome, Alaska, July 13th, 1906. [photo by F.H. Nowell]

There are several signs in this photograph. The most prominent one reads: “Law office. Martin, Joslin & Griffin. Lawyers and mining brokers.” The sign on the tent to the left of the law office reads: “Bank of British North America.” Another smaller difficult to read sign on the law office appears to read: “Lots in A [illegible, possibly: 1/2] days addition [illegible].” Another sign on the law office appears to read: “Martin, Joslin & Griffin, mining brokers.” The last sign reads: “Office of Yukon Exploration Co. Falcon Joslin, manager. Mines, real estate, loans, investment.” The signs indicate this is in the Yukon Territory. Falcon Joslin lived in Dawson, Y.T., from 1897 to 1902. [UAF-1979-41-438. Falcon Joslin Papers]

Photographers Winter and Pond at the Taku Glacier.

Chatanika, Alaska, Fairbanks Mining District, 1912. [Photo by Basil Clemons. Harold and Leila Waffle Collection, Alaska State Library. ASL-P281-073]

Tent roadhouse, sign: “BEDS”, Ruby, Alaska. Undated. [ASL-P68-057.
Basil Clemons Photograph Collection, 1911-1914. ASL-PCA-68]

A tent at Twelve-Mile, June 12, 1898. Four men and a dog pose in front of tent on rocky beach. Two hold saws, one a pickaxe. A clothesline with shirts stretches from tent. Photographer’s number 30. [ASL-P201-030. Neal D. Benedict Collection, ca. 1900. ASL-PCA-201]

Tent store, Shushanna (Chisana), Alaska, June, 1914. Hand-written note across photo reads, “In God I trusted, Here I busted, Be God;” man sits in front of tent with sign reading “Store, Louis K. Schonborn.” [ASL-P178-149. Lorain Roberts Zacharias Collection, ca. 1903-1921. ASL-PCA-178]

U. S. Mail at Eldorado, Chisana, Alaska, June 22, 1915.

White Pass & Yukon Railroad hospital tent, Skagway, Alaska. Several men in hospital beds and in attendance. Photographer’s number 88. [photographer Harrie C. Barley, ASL-P75-020. Paul Sincic. Photographs, ca. 1898-1915. ASL-PCA-75]

A photograph from Alaskan photographer P. S. Hunt shows travelers gathered at a tent roadhouse at the north end of the Valdez Glacier, on the gold rush trail to the Klondike, 1899.

 

 

 

World Traveler Frank Carpenter

The July-August issue of Alaskan History Magazine includes an article about the venerable world traveler, Frank Carpenter (1855-1924), a photographer, journalist, and lecturer whose writings helped popularize world geography and cultural anthropology. With his daughter Frances (1890-1972), Frank Carpenter photographed Alaska and collected the images of other Alaskan photographers between 1910 and 1924. The article in Alaskan History Magazine tells of a trip he and Frances made across the Kenai Peninsula in 1916, from Seward to Sunrise, a gold mining camp near Hope, on Turnagain Arm.

First working as a journalist for the Cleveland Leader, Frank Carpenter became a correspondent for the American Press Association in 1884. By 1878 his writings were being widely syndicated in newspapers and magazines, and in 1888 he and his wife embarked on a trip around the world, describing life in the countries they journeyed through. Carpenter’s real estate holdings in Washington made him a millionaire, and he was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, the National Press Club, and numerous scientific societies. In 1898 the Carpenters traveled 25,000 miles in South America, and from the mid-1890s until he died, Frank Carpenter traveled around the world almost continuously, authoring nearly 40 books and hundreds of magazine articles about his extensive travels. Carpenter wrote standard geography textbooks and lectured on geography, and he wrote a series of books called Carpenter’s World Travels which were very popular between 1915 and 1930.

First hospital in Anchorage [Library of Congress Carpenter Collection]

In 1893 The San Francisco Morning Call wrote “He stands at the head of the syndicate correspondents of the United States.  What he writes is read every Sunday in twenty of the biggest cities of the Union, and his newspaper constituency must at the lowest amount to a million readers every week.”

A collection of over 5,000 images were donated to the Library of Congress by Frances at her death in 1972. The Frank G. Carpenter Collection at the Library of Congress totals approximately 16,800 photographs and about 7,000 negatives.

Frank Carpenter (right) with Jafet Lindberg, one of the founders of Nome, Alaska.

The Library includes this notation about the prints: “Within the albums, English captions accompany most images, but dates are not consistently indicated. The Carpenters may have taken many of the images, especially those made 1910-1924, but the albums also include images that they collected, and the origin of such images is not always noted.”

An excerpt from Carpenter’s 1923 book, Alaska, Our Northern Wonderland:

“The biggest thing in Alaska is the government railroad. By that I do not mean so much its five hundred miles of tracks, its cars and equipment, or the number of tons and passengers it will haul, but what it stands for in the future of the territory. It means the building of feeder wagon and motor roads and the construction of other railroads. It means cheaper coal, lower freight rates, lower living and mining costs. It means more lands and resources flung open to the settler and the prospector. It means a new era of development and prosperity for Alaskans. “

Frank George Carpenter

Carpenter died of sickness in 1924 while in Nanking, China, on his third trip around the world, at age 69. The Boston Globe obituary observed he “always wrote fascinatingly, always in a language the common man and woman could understand, always of subjects even children are interested in.”

More photos and excerpts from Frank Carpenter’s travels and writing can be found in this book:

 Alaska & the Klondike, Early Writings and Historic Photographs, by Helen Hegener, published May, 2018, by Northern Light Media. An engaging journey through the literary history of Alaska and the Klondike, and an introduction to some of the most compelling books ever written about the North. $24.95 (plus shipping), 320 pages, over 100 b/w photos, ISBN-13: 978-1717401991. Click here to order.

The First Bush Pilots

The July-August issue of Alaskan History Magazine features an article on the early bush pilots of Alaska, spanning the years between 1911 and the 1930s, a time when the pioneer pilots, utterly fearless and a breed apart, totally dedicated to their work, soared over the Last Frontier. They crossed an incredibly immense and all-too-often hostile landscape which tried to kill them as frequently as it left them in awe of its towering mountains, endless rivers, and pristine lakes. And yet the fliers stayed the course, wresting information about the inhospitable landscape and the hostile weather at every turn, information which helped their fellow pilots adapt and learn and persevere, for while the hardships were many, there was magic in the air over Alaska.

The article opens with the somewhat amusing observation that the first airplane in Alaska never left the ground:

Professor Henry Peterson, an accomplished pianist, piano repairman, and music teacher in Nome, fabricated the first airplane ever built in Alaska. Intrigued by the idea of flying, he ordered an engine and a set of plans and constructed a biplane of muslin cloth, light wood, and – rather fittingly – piano wire. The “Flying Professor,” as he was fondly known, named his plane the Tingmayuk, Eskimo for bird, and scheduled its first flight for May 9, 1911, near Nome. Unfortunately, as the Nome Nugget later reported, the good professor was “unable to defy the laws of gravity,” and his carefully crafted Tingmayuk faded into obscurity.

Carl Ben Eielson, 1924

Two years later, in July, 1913, some businessmen in Fairbanks hired pioneer British aviator James Martin and his wife Lily to provide the first aerial exhibition in Alaska with their Gage-Martin tractor biplane, which they freighted to Alaska via the White Pass & Yukon Railway to Whitehorse, where it was loaded onto a barge for the trip down the Yukon River to Dawson City, Eagle, Circle City, Fort Yukon, Rampart, and finally up the Tanana River to Fairbanks, a trip of over 2,500 miles. They put on an impressive airshow, but once they re-crated their plane and headed south, it would be seven years before another airplane graced the northern horizons.

That was the famous Black Wolf Squadron in June, 1920, selected by U.S. Army Brigadier General William “Billy” Mitchell and tasked with making a historic flight to demonstrate how the East Coast could be linked to Siberia and the Far East via an airway crossing Alaska.

Black Wolf Squadron, 1920

The article tells of Charles Hammontree and his Boeing C-11S, dubbed the ‘Mudhen,’ the first model designed by W.H. Boeing himself and the first plane to soar over the skies of Anchorage; Roy F. Jones, of Ketchikan and his biplane ‘Northbird;’ Carl Ben Eielson, who learned to fly in the U.S. Army Air Corps; James S. “Jimmy” Rodebaugh, a senior conductor on the Alaska Railroad who saw the potential of aviation in Alaska earlier than most; and Noel Wien, who spent several decades building a pioneer airline with his brothers, Ralph, Fritz, and Sig, and watched it grow to provide flights to most of the world.

Joe Crosson and his sister Marvel, Russell Merrill, famed aviator Wiley Post – the first pilot to fly solo around the world – and the humorist Will Rogers, and even the legendary Charles Lindbergh and his equally legendary wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, all played roles in the early aviation history of Alaska. You can read the article, illustrated with over a dozen historic photographs, in the July-August issue of Alaskan History Magazine.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER THE ISSUE OR SUBSCRIBE!  

Other articles in this issue: Alaska’s first newspaper, The Esquimaux, which was published a little northwest of Nome; the Alaska Steamship Company, which became an Alaskan shipping monopoly; a 1916 horseback trip across the Kenai Peninsula by the dauntless world traveller Frank G. Carpenter; Alaska’s first commercially successful novelist, Barrett Willoughby, whose every book was about or set in Alaska, and two were made into movies; and an exciting childhood in the gold rush town of Nome by Irving Kenny, who saw it all first-hand!

Alaskan History Timeline

The Sept-Oct issue of Alaskan History Magazine includes a new feature, a timeline of Alaskan history putting the articles which appear in that issue into historic order. Seeing the dates and how events occurred in relation to each other gives a new understanding and perspective to Alaskan history.

The dates in the Sept-Oct issue only cover the articles featured in that issue, from the 1896 explorations of Josiah Edward Spurr in the Birch Creek Gold Mining District to the beautiful pastel watercolor portraits of sled dogs which Josephine Crumrine painted for the Alaska Steamship Company beginning in the 1940s. A larger timeline, incorporating articles from the first three issues of Alaskan History Magazine, has been added to this website, and the timeline will be updated with the publication of each new issue.

In addition to the Alaskan History Magazine Timeline, there are links to several other timelines at the bottom, including timelines from eReference Desk, the Alaska Historical Society, Cook Inlet Historical Society’s Legends & Legacies, Timelines of History’s Alaska timeline, and one for the younger generation at AlaskaKids, by LitSite Alaska. Check out the link above to visit them all.

 

July-Aug Digital Issue

The July-August issue of Alaskan History Magazine is available to read online, download, or share via email, Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest at the digital magazine site issuu, an electronic publishing platform which was named one of Time magazine’s 50 Best Websites.

The 48-page July-August issue, which carries no advertising in its 8.5” x 11” full-color format, shares the history of the aviation pioneers known as bush pilots, from the first attempt to climb into Alaska’s skies in 1911 to 1935, when the future of flight in the Last Frontier was well-established and looking bright!

Other articles in this issue explore Alaska’s first newspaper, The Esquimaux, which was published a little northwest of Nome; the Alaska Steamship Company, which became an Alaskan shipping monopoly; a 1916 horseback trip across the Kenai Peninsula by the dauntless world traveller Frank G. Carpenter; Alaska’s first commercially successful novelist, Barrett Willoughby, whose every book was about or set in Alaska, and two were made into movies; and an exciting childhood in the gold rush town of Nome by Irving Kenny, who saw it all first-hand. Wrapping up this issue are brief highlights about Alaska’s early missionaries, the ubiquitous white canvas tent, a half dozen classic books on Alaska’s history, and a guide to some of the sources and resources used in researching this issue.

To help readers become familiar with the online format, the first three digital issues will be free to view by anyone. Digital issues after November 1, 2019 will be available only to subscribers and anyone who purchases a print issue of the magazine. For more information and to subscribe or purchase a single issue (also available at Amazon), visit the Alaskan History Magazine ordering page.

To read the first two issues of Alaskan History Magazine online at issuu, click here.

 

1935 Matanuska Colony

A typical Colony scene.

The 1935 Matanuska Colony Project, developed near present-day Palmer, Alaska, was part of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal for America, an unprecedented series of economic programs designed to provide aid to people reeling from the Great Depression. Nearly one hundred new communities were designed and developed by Roosevelt’s planners, but the largest, most expensive, and most audacious of them all was to build a government-sponsored farming community in Alaska’s Matanuska Valley.

A Northern Light Media website presents the detailed history of the Colony, as written in the 2016 book by Helen Hegener, “A Mighty Nice Place,” The History of the 1935 Matanuska Colony Project. The site combines the history of the Matanuska Valley and the government’s Colony Project with the remarkable photographs of A.R.R.C. photographer Willis T. Geisman, who was charged with documenting every aspect of the venture and recording the events surrounding the Matanuska Colony Project.

The site currently presents the first six chapters of the book, from ‘A History of the Land,’ to ‘Bound for Alaska,’ when the 200 families departed for their new northern homes. The second half of the book, detailing the construction and development of the Colony itself, will be posted this fall, making the entire book available to read free online.

Click here to visit the website.

“A Mighty Nice Place,” The History of the 1935 Matanuska Colony Project, by Helen Hegener. Published in November, 2016 by Northern Light Media. 276 pages, 120 photos, 6″ x 9″ b/w format. Print book: $24.95 plus $5.00 shipping. Click here to order the book via PayPal

The Esquimaux

Only published for one year, 1866-1867, The Esquimaux was Alaska’s first newspaper, edited by a Western Union Telegraph line man named John J. Harrington. The July-August issue of Alaskan History Magazine shares the story of this unique publication, and the little-known history behind it.

Twenty miles south of present-day Teller, Alaska, on a sand spit separating Port Clarence Bay from the stormy Bering Sea, a Western Union telegraph cable construction camp named Libbysville was the site of Alaska’s first bona fide newspaper.

There were around forty men stationed at Libbysville, part of an ambitious Western Union project to lay an electric telegraph line from San Francisco, California to Moscow, Russia. The route would run up the west coast of the United States through northern California, Oregon, and Washington; then 850 miles through the colony of British Columbia (the project would be known in B.C. as the Collins Overland Telegraph) and cross into what was at that time Russian America, traversing 1,800 miles across the land which would later become Alaska before dropping under the Bering Strait, coming back to land at Plover Bay, Siberia, and then crossing Siberia to Moscow, where lines would connect to Europe. The project would be an alternative to the deep-water Trans-Atlantic Cable under construction at the same time by the Atlantic Telegraph Company.

The U. S. Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, has made The Esquimaux available to read online, and it records much history of early Alaska, such as the death of Robert Kennicott, who had been the Expedition’s naturalist: “Kennicott.––Died at Nulato, R.A. May 13th, 1866, Maj. Rob’t Kennicott, aged 32 years, a native of Louisiana, U.S.” The second issue would carry a lengthy front-page obituary for Maj. Kennicott, whose reports on the geology, flora, and fauna of the territory were among the earliest recorded, and may have precipitated the U.S. purchase of Alaska.

The July-August issue of Alaskan History Magazine, which includes the history of the newspaper, and the history of the trans-Alaskan telegraph cable project which was its reason for being, can be ordered here.