Alaska has also been a magnet of sorts for those in search
of riches – sometimes monetary, sometimes perhaps more tangential.
More people have, and will continue to come in search of those
riches, before moving on, for richer or poorer, in a cycle that seems endless.
It’s easy to lose sight of civilization, or its existence,
in the mountains of Southcentral Alaska. It’s also just as easy to quickly be
reminded that despite the ease with which quiet and solitude are found in
seemingly empty valleys and ridgelines, these places have not always been so
quiet, nor empty.
That’s Alaska in general though: no collective memory.
The historical record just doesn’t go that far back. Oral
traditions tell tales through the millennia, but the written record only made
thin forays beyond the Alaskan coast a couple hundred years ago, and more
extensive history-keeping only began within the past century and a half.
This winter, for whatever reason, my appetite for
hyper-local history of the eastern Kenai spiked.
During my first winters here, I read Alaskana lit
voraciously. The books were broad, they covered the state, from the Aleutians
to Eagle, from recent history to that of the first peoples who trekked here
across a now-submerged land bridge from Asia.
This winter, I found myself specifically interested in the
men and women who lived, worked, and died in the mountains I spend much of my time
in on the Eastern Kenai during the turn of the last century.
I wasn’t completely unaware of this region’s history, or the
names and places. There was a story here and there from something I’d heard or
read, but I wanted more.
Luckily, Title Wave Books in Spenard keeps an entire Alaska
mining history sub-section, and I snapped up what I could find on the area.
It’s not so much that I was curious about mining, and it was
far from it that I was interested in broader Alaska history; I just wanted to
read about people, in places I knew, with specific references to valleys,
tarns, streams, ridges, and forests that I could still see, or at least imagine.
I got it.
By far, the best and most comprehensive account of mining
history on the Kenai comes Mary Barry’s book, “A History of Mining on the Kenai
Peninsula.”
What I liked about this work, was its unromantic, second
source format. Barry used records, and first person accounts, but generally
refrained from editorializing, except for occasionally pointing out potential
gaps or exaggerations of stories.
At times, the book is almost tedious, with year-by-year
accounts of each mine’s activities.
At the same time, it’s a relief to step away from the
constantly overhyped, overly weapy, obsession with Alaska and its grandeur.
Indeed, Alaska is a beautiful place, but how many ways can
you call the sky blue?
There were parts to reading this history that were heartening,
but also disheartening, for sure.
I loved when I could pin point a gulch, a valley, a lake: to
know for sure, that the early pioneers saw the same thing I saw; to know how
different it must have looked and felt to them; to only have rough trails
connecting small outposts; to be made to feel alone by their surroundings, and
yet to see the area grow.
At the same time, after three crushingly warm winters in
Alaska, it stung to read of deep and persistent snow packs, of heavy ice, and
of cold, without the typical hyperbole that frequently intrudes Outside Alaskana
writing.
Pick up any magazine story, or the diarrhea description of one
of the countless shallow and vain “reality” shows on modern Alaska, and one
expects a land possibly as harsh or worse than what some faced over a century
ago. It’s a lie, and anyone wearing shorts-sleeves on a hike in March can tell
you that.
If you want evidence that Alaska’s landscape is changing, it’s
certainly everywhere: visit one of the state’s accessible glaciers and look at
the little markers showing the rate of glacial retreat, that’s understood,
sure.
Maybe I knew, maybe I didn’t, but the snout of Skilak Glacier
used to be visible on Skilak Lake?
Did Portage Lake ever freeze this past winter, or the last?
Doubtful. Many know the story of the Portage Glacier retreating out of sight
from the expensive National Forest visitor’s center that was built to take it
in during the 1980s; when the first miners arrived to the region, there was no
such thing as Portage Lake, or what there was, was a puddle.
In May of 1896, thousands of stampeders stomped about
impatiently on the beaches of Kachemak Bay, waiting for the ice to clear from
the otherwise choked Turnagain Arm. The vessels weren’t able to reach Sunrise
or Hope until the end of May that year. There was ice in the Arm for all of
about 4 weeks this past winter, quite similar the preceding two.
On the other hand, there were countless examples of places that
haven’t changed. My favorite was a picture taken on the East Fork, perhaps in
May, that showed Pete’s South in the distant background, with its same damn
glide crack that shows up there every year.
I took away something about the people too.
At first, I was really disheartened to read the accounts of
the early miners who arrived on the shores of the northern Kenai in the late
1800s.
Many were simply fools; mostly men who were either duped, or
desperate enough, they gave up what savings they had or went into debt to trek
north to a land they’d probably hardly heard of, for riches that were
apparently plentiful.
You still see this today: the idea that Alaska’s treasures
are both bountiful and easy for the taking.
Incredibly unbelievable stories about mountain streams
filled with big golden nuggets waiting to be scooped up drove these men to a
point of frenzy, buying up a season’s worth of expensive supplies and gear,
storming ships and demanding passage north.
Upon arrival, most were greatly disappointed.
While we often think of the early pioneers as tough,
resourceful, and enduring in the face of hardship, the reality was, a lot of
those who came up in the first rushes of the late 1890s were anything but, and truthfully,
had no business being in this wilderness.
They reminded me of that skier, flush with a brand new
$1000+ backcountry ski set up, bright new goretex wear, but struggling like
hell to make even a kick turn within sight of their car.
The blue bird, blower pow, the “AK velvet” so eagerly hyped and
promised by the industry, does require a little work, and it doesn’t oft come
easy. The truth is though, your average first timer AT skier, fresh out the
doors of REI, is probably more prepared and motivated than some of those early
miners were.
Many of the first stampeders sought passage back on the
first boats for Seattle when they realized that riches were going to come the
same way they did anywhere else: damn hard work and time.
As is well known, the people who fared best from the early
days of the rush, were those who purveyed the goods, who sailed the ships, and
who ran the mule trains and the lumber mills.
The miners who did strike it rich were often just lucky
above all else.
My favorite case was that of A.W. “Jack” Morgan. In his memoires,
Morgan explained how he was duped by a seemingly trustworthy doctor in Oregon who
claimed to have traveled up the Susitna River to a rich claim. Morgan traveled to
Alaska with a group including the doctor to their jumping off point in Tyonek. After
three days, they hardly made it upstream of the mouth of the big sandy river before
they realized their leader had never been to Alaska, there was no claim, and
that they best part ways. Broke, Morgan bounced around Turnagain Arm a bit prospecting
and working, before taking some work at a so far relatively unsuccessful mine
on Lynx Creek. A turn of events lead Morgan to become a part owner, and the
chief operator of the claim. He spent his first Alaskan winter at the mine, watching
over his own and the adjacent claims, high in the mountains, hunting and
trapping. Not long after Morgan took over, the mine hit its “paystreak” and
Morgan cleaned up well. Morgan continued to live in Alaska for a number of
years, before eventually returning south, but he seemed to be one of the few
who came away richer in more than one sense of the word.
As I read deeper into the history of the region, I found,
that, as time wore on, those who actually wanted to be in the area, were
willing to stick it out, and like Morgan, found riches beyond the gold.
The Kenai was obviously not a great place to get rich.
It quickly thinned those who were there to make a quick buck. Unbelievably, many
of those same fools followed myth and rumor to the next rush. Those who stayed
though, became the founders of the modern Kenai, establishing the communities
of Hope, Sunrise, Seward, and Girdwood. The names of those men and women still
stick to the sides of mounts or along seemingly forgotten claims and streams on
USGS maps, or, for others, deep in obscure pages of history.
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