At Work in the Wrangells

A Photographic History, 

1895-1966

Katherine J. Ringsmuth
Front Cover: 1950 Copper River Survey, surveyors. Courtesy 

of the Cordova Historical Museum, 02-40-10.

Back Cover: “80 lbs. Packs.” WRST History Files, “Ahtna” 

Folder, 213. Original photo is located in the Miles Brothers 

Collection, Valdez Museum, 916.

Our mission is to identify, evaluate and preserve the cultural 

resources of the park areas and to bring an understanding of these 

resources to the public. Congress has mandated that we preserve 

these resources because they are important components of our 

national and personal identity.

Published by the United States Department 

of the Interior through the Government Printing Office 

National Park Service

Wrangell-St. Elias 

National Park and Preserve

At Work in the Wrangells:

A Photographic History, 1895-1966

Library of Congress Control Number:

ISBN-10: 0-9907252-6-X

ISBN-13: 978-0-9907252-6-8

2016
At Work in the Wrangells

Katherine J. Ringsmuth

A Photographic History, 

1895-1966
Horse Creek Mary. WRST History Files, “Ahtna” Folder.
Table of Contents

Foreword.................................................................................................................vii

Acknowledgments.................................................................................................xi

Introduction: The Nature of Work .........................................................................1

Chapter One: Subsistence Lifeways....................................................................19

Chapter Two: Mining .............................................................................................43

Chapter Three: Transportation..............................................................................61

Chapter Four: Commerce and Government Services......................................79

Chapter Five: “Women’s Work”............................................................................99

Chapter Six: Aviation .............................................................................................119

Chapter Seven: Sport Hunting..............................................................................135 

Chapter Eight: Mountaineering ...........................................................................153

Chapter Nine: Science and Exploration .............................................................175

Chapter Ten: Tourism .............................................................................................199

Epilogue: Play .........................................................................................................211

List of Sources:.........................................................................................................231

Instead of hiking up the mountains, some Kennecott employees 

rode trams to their work locations at the Bonanza and Jumbo 

mines that tunneled for miles into Bonanza Ridge. Riding to 

Work. WRST History Files, “Trams” Folder.
A pack train crossing the Russell Glacier in Skolai Pass, 1914. 

WRST History Files, “Trails” Folder. Original photo located in the 

Capps Collection, Arctic and Polar Region Archives, Rasmuson 

Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 83-149-1409N.


 vii

Foreword

It is exciting to see At Work in the Wrangells: A Photographic History 1895-1966 come to fruition during a year 

that commemorates both the National Park Service’s Centennial birthday and the 50th anniversary of the National 

Historic Preservation Act. Just as these anniversaries provide opportunities to pause and reflect on what has gone 

on in the past to help inform the future, this publication provides a look back in time at the human activity that has 

taken place within Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve through a series of evocative and representational 

images. 

The vision and impetus for this photographic journey came from former Park Historian Geoff Bleakley, with 

continued support through its implementation by Greg Biddle, the Park’s Cultural Resources Manager. Geoff 

recognized the value of an all-encompassing history to be told primarily through photographs as a resource for 

management and interpretation/education staff, as well as for sharing with local communities and the broader 

public. 

A cornerstone of National Park Service management is having baseline documentation of a park’s resources. 

Historic contexts, such as this study, are a valuable piece of the process of helping a park to identify and thereby to 

better understand and manage its cultural resources. With author Dr. Katherine Ringsmuth’s experience as both 

an historian and interpreter, At Work in the Wrangells is the successful culmination of the Park’s project goals in a 

visually engaging history of the people who lived and worked in the Wrangells. 

Janet Clemens

Historian

National Park Service - Alaska Region 

(Preceding page) Henry T. Allen. 

Report of the Expedition to Copper, 

Tanana and Koyukuk Rivers in the 

Territory of Alaska, in the Year 1885. 

Washington DC, 1887.
In order to ship supplies in and ore out, 

the Alaska Syndicate constructed the 

privately run Copper River & Northwestern 

Railway, which spanned 192 miles from 

Kennecott to Cordova. Train arriving at 

McCarthy. WRST History Files, “CR&NW 

Railway” Folder, 775.

x AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

A midwinter scene showing the conglomerate milltown of Kennecott in operation in 1937, the year before it 

was shut down permanently. Kennecott’s closure adversely affected the region’s mining economy, which 

never fully recovered. WRST History Files, “Ethel Lecount Album-Kennecott” Folder.
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK xi

Acknowledgments

This book could not have been possible if not for the many people who assisted with the project. Thanks must go to 

Barbara Bundy for creating the maps and Frank Broderick for the book’s layout design. Additionally, Janet Clemens 

and Eric Ringsmuth should be recognized for making important editorial catches and critiques that strengthened 

the text’s overall continuity and accuracy. My gratitude also goes to Greg Biddle and the park’s staff at Copper 

Center for giving me space to curate the park’s photograph collection, as well as providing their time and expertise 

to review the final photo selection. Their collective contribution added significantly to the final work. Still, any 

opinions, findings, and conclusions expressed in this document are mine alone–including the errors–and do not 

necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Interior.

Not all the images appearing in At Work in the Wrangells came from the park’s files. Several historically relevant 

images came from both public and private collections, including the Alaska and Polar Regions Collections and 

Archives at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the Cordova Historical Museum, the Alaska State Library in Juneau, 

the Valdez Museum & Historical Archives, the Alaska Aviation Heritage Museum in Anchorage, the Archives and 

Special Collections at the University of Alaska Anchorage, the McCarthy-Kennicott Historical Museum, Alaska 

Airlines’ Merle Smith Collection in Seattle, Federal Aviation Administration files in Anchorage, Charles “Buck” 

Wilson of Fairbanks, Gary Green of McCarthy, Charles “Bob” Leitzell of Mokelumne Hill, California, Martin 

Radovan Collection in Chico, California, Samme Gallaher Darnall of Thousand Oaks, California, Geoffrey 

Bleakley of Maui, Hawaii, Kenny Smith of McCarthy and Johanna Bouker of Dillingham. 

Many of the Dora Keen images were provided by Dora’s descendants, including Jenny Kays and Matthew Freeman. 

Accompanying the images was a correspondence filled with family memories. In one email exchange Abigail Karin 

recalled, “I met Dora Keen when I was a young girl (six years old). She and I walked down the hill to mail a letter. 

She was remarkably short. Certainly less than 5 feet tall. She wore a longish skirt and sturdy boot like shoes. Her 

personality to me was big, sparkling and sturdy like her boots. Up to this time I only knew “mom” type of women. 

She seemed to live in a large world.” I am particularly grateful to Walter J. Freeman M.D., Dora Keen’s great 

grandnephew, who passed away in the spring of 2016. Before he passed, Dr. Freeman was kind enough to share a 

few stories about “Aunt Dodie,” but most significantly, ensured that her papers and photographs would be available 

to future researchers.

Sadly, McCarthy lost in May 2016 an advocate for history and photo contributor to this project, James “Jim” 

Edwards. Few had as much reverence for and knowledge of the history of the Wrangell region. Jim refused to waste 

anything, and thus, became an expert in historic collecting. It was in our shared belief in the power of the past that 

Jim and I found mutual understanding and respect.

Finally, to the reader, I hope that you, too, come to appreciate the faces that appear in the following pages. For even 

those whose names Time and History forgot, they all, nevertheless, seem to live in a large world—a world that they 

engaged, transformed and connected through work.

At Work in the Wrangells

Dr. Katherine Ringsmuth

June 2016 
xii AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK xiii

The stark divide between the wet-cold climate of the coast and a dry-cold of the interior combined with the 

high mountain environment to create enormous snow accumulations from which drain some of the longest 

temperate glaciers in the world. “Chisana Glacier, McCarthy-Chisana Trail, 1915.” Lewis Stanley. WRST 

History Files, “Trails” Folder, 902.
xiv AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Tosina
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK xv

The Chisana gold strike represented the last of Alaska’s famed gold rushes that occurred between 1897 

and 1914. Although miners dismantled the surrounding ecosystems to find gold, they were nevertheless, 

embedded in that natural system. “Hamshaw’s Camp,” ca. 1914. WRST History Files, “Chisana Bonanza 

Creek” Folder, 260.
 “When Nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.”

 —Ralph Waldo Emerson, Method of Nature, 1841

The confluence of the Chitina and 

Copper Rivers is a humbling reminder of 

the power of nature, 1950. Courtesy of 

Charles “Bob” Leitzell. 
 1

The Nature of Work

As the National Park Service marks its centennial in 2016, most 

visitors to our wilderness places understand that their presence 

is fleeting, they’ve come only to visit and not to stay or live; they 

leave no trace. A tenet driving modern environmentalism is that 

nature should be explored—both physically and internally—rather 

than exploited. To them, magnificent parks such as Wrangell-St. 

Elias National Park and Preserve were established to prevent the 

type of commodification and use of nature that once connected 

the Wrangells region, but left it 

permanently changed. Contemporary 

visitors tend to value the virtues of 

contemplative recreation that leave the 

Wrangells unharmed and undisturbed.1

Since the Alaska National Interest 

Lands Conservation Act established 

Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and 

Preserve in 1980, the visiting public 

has come to know the mountainous 

terrain as a sanctuary that contains 

vast picturesque vistas, snow-clad 

volcanic peaks, massive glacial rivers 

and ecologically diverse wilderness. 

These protected places provide worldclass opportunities for meditation 

and reflection, unconfined recreation 

and adventure in a remote setting that 

seems to exist outside of time itself. In 

fact, the purpose of Wrangell-St. Elias 

National Park and Preserve is: 

“To maintain the natural scenic 

beauty of the diverse geologic, glacial, 

and riparian dominated landscapes, 

and to protect the attendant wildlife 

populations and their habitats; 

to ensure continued access for a 

wide range of wilderness-based 

recreational opportunities; [and] to 

provide continued opportunities for 

subsistence use.”2

Passive musing and leisure activities are important ways to both 

engage oneself with and to contemplate the importance of the 

natural world that Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve 

was founded to preserve for future generations. But work and 

nature are also deeply connected in the Wrangells’ past, as 

underscored by the park’s recognition that the region’s cultural 

heritage also reflects fundamental economic values. According to 

the park’s Foundation Statement:

“Preserved within Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve 

is abundant evidence of more than 3000 years of cultural and 

technological development. This long history reveals a range 

of human adaptation to changing climates, environments, and 

economic circumstances.”3

Those “economic circumstances” are significant because they 

explain the Wrangells as an “inhabited wilderness,” where cultural 

encounters and economic exchanges 

took place over three millennium. At 

first these interactions occurred among 

the various indigenous communities 

that occupied areas surrounding 

the Wrangells and clustered around 

exploitable natural resources. 

Everything that the original inhabitants 

needed or traded came from their 

traditional homelands. Then, Russians 

fur traders colonizing coastal areas 

introduced foreign “economic 

circumstances” that extended the 

transactions of natural resources 

beyond Alaska. Finally, additional 

economic strategies and relationships 

developed between Alaska Natives, a 

few remaining Russians, and an array of 

ethnically diverse Americans and other 

immigrants, as the Wrangells became 

an area of interest to an industrializing 

world. 

As interactions and exchanges between 

culturally diverse groups increased 

throughout the Wrangell region, their 

varying, and often times, competing 

“economic circumstances” served 

as their primary purpose for being 

there—their raison d’être. Moreover, 

those circumstances ascribed different 

values to the Wrangell’s natural 

resource wealth. How each group 

valued nature, dictated their actions, attitudes, and relationships 

within shared spaces. The disparate values of nature, therefore, 

created a variety of lifeways in the Wrangells—or, to put it another 

way, ways in which different people worked to live. It is only through 

reminders of such “economic circumstances” that we can begin to 

understand work’s historic and cultural values in the Wrangells—

as well as its environmental costs.

The merging geological deposits of 

Nikolai Butte at Dan Creek represent 

terranes that, through the forces of plate 

tectonics, migrated from other parts of

the globe. Courtesy of the Radovan 

Family.
2 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Work in the Wrangells, then, provides a common thread that 

connects human populations and their changing “economic 

circumstances” through time and place. As a conceptual framework, 

work informs us as to how Alaska Natives came to know the 

transforming land and dealt with the transition to the fur trade 

and later, a cash economy; how humans created innovative and 

technologically impressive transportation and communications 

networks in order to adapt to and overcome natural barriers; 

how newcomers built a recognizable society in a completely 

foreign environment; and how Thomas Edison’s invention of 

the incandescent light bulb, and the subsequent development 

of electrical power, sparked a global demand for copper, which 

linked two names synonymous with Gilded Aged capitalism to the 

Wrangells—Morgan and Guggenheim. 

Even the Wrangell’s dynamic landscape and its interconnected natural 

systems are actively at work. Plant life coverts sunlight into energy. 

Glaciers move earth like bulldozers while the region’s massive rivers 

flood, erode, and ultimately rearrange the topography. Pacific salmon 

returning to Copper River tributaries transport caloric energy from 

the ocean, which fuels multiple, working components of the biome. 

Wildlife migrates, salmon spawn, plants bloom, ice reflects, climate 

shifts, seasons change, rivers converge, glaciers carve, volcanoes erupt, 

tides ebb and flow; even the land itself is on the move. 

Native children were expected to work hard. Parents and elders instructed their youth so that they 

developed the skills essential for survival. Boys played with small bows and arrows, learned to make tools and 

weapons, and at a young age accompanied their fathers on hunting trips. Girls learned to tan skins, sew, and 

cook, played with dolls, and were expected to look after smaller children. Laziness was unacceptable and 

children underwent rigorous physical training. Storytelling during the long winter months taught children the 

traditions and taboos and provided essential information about the environment (Haynes and Simeone, 114). 

Alaska E.A. Hegg, Photographer. WRST History Files, “Ahtna” Folder, 199. 
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 3

The powerful Wrangell Mountains landscape formed millions of 

years ago when northward drifting tectonic plates containing alien 

rock collided and, slowly and incrementally, extended the ancient 

North American continental margin.4 Such geological forces 

built a mountain chain and, in the process, brought molten rock 

magma containing copper closer to the surface. Besides being a 

source of wealth for Ahtna traders and American miners, copper is 

a basic building block of the universe, one of the ninety-two atomic 

elements which occur naturally on earth and from which all other 

substances are made. Copper was slowly fused in “supergiants,” the 

biggest stars in the cosmos.5 Thus, over the course of millions of 

years, massive interstellar furnaces forged the Bonanza Ridge copper 

deposits that drove Native trade and American capitalism in the 

Wrangells. From this standpoint, work is where we should begin.6 

The problem with using work as a conceptual framework for 

interpreting history—especially history that occurred within 

national parks and wilderness areas—is that the activity of work 

has often been dismissed, disparaged or confused with the modern 

notion of “conquering” nature. But according to environmental 

historian Richard White, “we have obscured and are only slowly 

recovering [understanding] that labor rather than ‘conquering’ 

nature involves human beings with the world so thoroughly that 

they can never be disentangled.”7 Therefore, instead of controlling 

the Wrangells’ natural landscape, human beings were utterly 

immersed within it. 

People came to know the commanding Wrangell landscape through 

back-breaking, and at times, deadly labor the that rivers, glaciers, 

and mountains demanded of them. They caught and killed salmon, 

harvested timber and harnessed the power of animals and water. 

They endured the relentless heat in summer and the frigid cold in 

winter. They labored against the deceptive flow of braided river 

currents and navigated the dangers of glacier crevasses and mountain 

trails. They read the landscape to find water, food and shelter. They 

A rock cairn marks the head of Golconda Creek Valley, situated in the Bremner Mining District. Sylvia Baldwin 

Collection. Courtesy of Paul White.
4 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

told time by changing tides. They hauled, pulled, and carried their 

bodies and few worldly possessions through snow, ice, mud, muck, 

and mosquitoes. They dug deep into the earth—ground they 

called “pay dirt.” They pitted themselves against the elements, and 

eventually overcame nature’s obstacles. They used industrialized 

technology to span rivers, dismantle entire ecosystems and 

domesticate the most distant and wild landscapes. They connected 

the Wrangells to a network of global markets and economies. 

Through these laborious interactions, humans created knowledge 

of the Wrangells’ world and forged a deep connection to it. As 

White writes, “It is our work that ultimately links us, for better or 

worse, to nature.”8

CREATING CONTEXT

At Work in the Wrangells: A Photographic History, 1895-1966 aims 

to illustrate the interconnected work of humans and nature, that 

together made history in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and 

Preserve. Rather than chronological, the book’s ten chapters are 

thematically arranged. The selected photographs exhibit various 

aspects—or contexts—of human work in the Wrangells: subsistence 

lifeways, mining, transportation, commerce and government 

services, “women’s work,” aviation, sport hunting, mountaineering, 

science and exploration and tourism. The epilogue recognizes the 

importance of play that gave those who labored within the Wrangells 

Pilot Harold Gillam flew the C2B biplane NC 5415, owned at the time by the Wien brothers, on the 

international search for missing pilot Carl Ben Eielson and his mechanic Earl Borland. Wein later sold the 

plane to Merritt “Kirk” Kirkpatrick, who used it to fly the Copper Belt Line for Cordova Air Service. To pilot the 

plane, Kirk hired Merle Smith, who was stationed in those early years at McCarthy. C2B Biplane tied down at 

the McCarthy airstrip, ca. 1937. Archives and Special Collections, Consortium Library, University of Alaska 

Anchorage, uaa-hmc-0138-28d.
brief moments of reprieve from their incessant working lives. Like 

nature’s workshop, these historic categories constitute a network 

of interrelated, moving parts that contribute to a broader, more 

encompassing interpretation of 20th century life in the Wrangells. 

The Wrangells’ Native subsistence cultures innately understood 

the importance of work, an ethos that persisted throughout the 

20th century and into modern times (see chapter 1). Work meant 

life. Period. To early Ahtna, Upper Tanana, Southern Tuchone, 

Yakutat Tlingit and Eyak, no luxurious choice existed between work 

and play. If Native people were prevented from laboring, severe 

consequences resulted. Through work and labor, they gained a 

highly, sophisticated understanding of the Wrangells’ riverine and 

coastal environments and the mobile prey that dwelled within those 

places. Their adaptive skills and technology perfectly embodied 

such knowledge. Competent fishermen and hunters provided 

for the village, but it was the wisdom of women, who developed 

ways to preserve and store fish and other foodstuff, that kept the 

village fed and clothed well into the winter. Native place names 

and oral testimony reveal keen awareness of seasonal rhythms and 

a deep geographic familiarity with the Wrangell landscape. Such 

knowledge served as a kind of instruction manual, informing future 

generations of Native and later, non-native subsistence users as to 

the best places to hunt animals, catch fish, pick berries—and, most 

importantly, how to engage in those activities properly. 

By the early twentieth century mining had become the nucleus of 

working life in the Wrangells (see chapter 2). Although both gold 

and copper miners left a record of unrestrained and often destructive 

exploitation of rivers and streams, they were nevertheless imbedded 

within the Wrangells’ natural world through their work. Miners 

hauled hundreds of pounds of gear over and across the rugged 

topography using nothing but their own strength, will, and luck. 

They crossed passes, endured bitter cold, and learned to maneuver 

melting ice. Miners came to know the soil, sand, rock, gravel, 

permafrost, ice, water, vegetation, forests, salmon, bears, moose 

mosquitoes, caribou, and all the other organisms that made up the 

Wrangell ecosystem. Although miners saw themselves on a journey 

away from civilization, they remained creatures of an industrialized 

economy and transported American capitalism to Alaska. Their 

mining activities opened up the territory—physically, economically, 

politically—and placed the Wrangell Mountains into the American 

consciousness.9 

The Wrangell’s remoteness and inaccessibility shaped and organized 

its work culture. It took the titanic wealth of American corporations 

to develop the rich copper deposits at Bonanza Ridge, and hundreds 

of workers to reach them. The powerful Alaska Syndicate financed 

the construction of the conglomerated mill town of Kennecott, 

INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 5

The 1950 Copper River 

surveyors called the 

remains of the Copper River 

& Northwestern Railway 

“ribbons of steel.” Courtesy 

of Charles “Bob” Leitzell. 

In the urgency of World War II, the U.S. Army 176th Engineer 

Regiment descended upon the Wrangell region to build an 

airfield at Gulkana. Within one month, the regiment had 

constructed two 5000 foot and 3500 foot gravel-surfaced 

runways, an air operations center, an Alaska Communications 

System facility, an air navigation radio range facility, a motor 

repair facility, a hospital, and five barracks buildings to house 

several hundred army troops. The problem, at least for the Ahtna 

people who were living there, was that Army engineers built the 

Gulkana Air Field squarely on their village at Dry Creek. Gulkana 

Airstrip, 1948. CAA Photo. WRST History Files, “Glennallen” Folder.
which perched upon a lateral moraine carved by the converged 

Kennicott and Root Glaciers.10 Although a technological marvel, 

the nearby peaks of Mount Blackburn, Mount Atna, and Regal 

Mountain, each bulging with ice, dwarfed Kennecott’s industrial 

landscape. Employees rode trams to their work locations at 

the Bonanza and Jumbo mines that tunneled for miles into 

Bonanza Ridge. Miners lived in bunkhouses built high above this 

extraordinary scene, sculpted by both people and nature. 

At first humans utilized the energy of both dogs and horses to carry 

provisions along well-traveled foot trails, across rivers and glaciers, 

and through the Wrangells’ mountain passes. But the discovery 

of copper at Kennecott stimulated the rise of “modern distancediminishing technologies,” which brought advanced transportation 

networks that granted access to valuable mineral deposits and gave 

mine owners the means to ship supplies in and ore out (see chapter 

3). The center of the transportation grid was the Copper River & 

Northwestern Railway, which spanned 192 miles from Kennecott 

to the coastal town of Cordova. Thanks to the expertise of highly 

trained engineers, the railway overcame nearly impossible obstacles: 

swamps of the Copper River delta, coastal glaciers, and the rocky 

cliffs of the Copper River canyon. In four years, railway workers 

chiseled roadbed from sheer rock, laid track on a moving glacier, 

and bridged the immense Copper River. After completion, nature 

continued to pose significant barriers, for winter’s snow drifts, 

ice dams and floods of spring break-up forced the building and 

rebuilding of bridges and trestles almost annually. 

The combination of railway construction and new mineral 

discoveries attracted hundreds of stampeders to the Wrangells. 

Settlements such as Chisana and Nabesna grew, while miners, 

spilling into transportation hubs like Chitina and McCarthy to 

purchase goods and supplies, perhaps even to eat a hot meal and 

sleep in a warm bed, transformed those places into commercially 

prospering towns (see chapter 4). The Copper River & Northwestern 

Railway reduced exponentially what was once an unthinkable 

expense for local businesses to transport manufacturing materials, 

processed canned foods and other consumer merchandise into the 

Wrangells. As demand—especially from Kennecott employees—

increased, commercialization linked the Wrangells to American 

industry and markets, which allowed residents to mirror the 

consumer culture being embraced by the rest of the United States.11

Besides dogged miners, corporate industrialists, and local 

entrepreneurs, another agent integrating the Wrangells through 

transportation and communication linkages was the federal 

government (see chapter 4). Rather than financial, the government’s 

interest was to increase services that facilitated permanent settlement 

in the region. The federal government shipped the mail to Cordova, 

and then, authorized Star Route contractors to carry first class mail 

With its newly-acquired Convair-Liner, Cordova Airlines commenced the 

highly popular “Golden Nugget Service” in the 1960s, which featured a 

Gay Nineties motif, accentuated by an on-board piano bar and flight 

attendants dressed as can-can girls. By 1968, Cordova Airlines merged 

with Alaska Air to form Alaska Airlines. The new company’s direction 

seemed to match Merle Smith’s own business philosophy and history 

regarding frontier Alaska and its saleability in the modern age. Merle 

Smith Collection, Alaska Airlines, Seattle, Washington.

8 
 9

by dog teams to destination throughout the Wrangell region. Routes 

radiated from populations hubs such as Chitina and McCarthy 

to connect the most isolated individuals. Sprouting up around 

the dog team mail carriers was an elaborate business system, from 

sled makers to sellers of dried salmon to feed the dogs.12 Along 

the trails, roadhouses catered to the teams, supplying overnight 

lodging, food, and dog care. Other federal projects involved the 

U.S. Army Signal Corps, which began laying a system of cables and 

telegraph lines, known as the Washington-Alaska Military Cable and 

Telegraph System (WAMCATS). In 1903, the Signal Corps began 

construction of a WAMCATS line along the Valdez-to-Eagle trail. 

This made the Valdez trail one of the most important access routes 

to the Alaska Interior. 

By extension, government services also supported the dissemination 

of mining throughout the Wrangells. Prospectors worked the gold 

streams at Dan Creek and the surrounding copper belt of the Nizina 

Mining District. From Dan Creek, prospectors could search for 

minerals up the Chitistone River and Glacier Creek, over Skolai 

Pass, and into the White River and Nutzotin Mountains or down 

towards May, Chititu and Young Creeks, and into the Bremner River 

region. In order for prospectors to move supplies into those rich 

areas from the Copper River & Northwestern Railway, the Army’s 

Alaska Road Commission built hundreds of miles of trails, wagon 

roads, and winter sled roads. Most significantly, the Alaska Road 

Commission constructed a ten mile wagon road from McCarthy and 

a sturdy bridge across the Nizina River that supported the network 

of roadhouses and the other cottage industries that materialized 

along the routes.13

The surging mining industry, as well as the ancillary businesses, 

attracted a mix of people to the Wrangells: Americans, Europeans, 

Asians, Alaska Natives, and, contrary to popular belief, women, 

too. Indeed, an assortment of the Wrangells’ workmen were women 

(see chapter 5). Women came to the Wrangells as the wives or 

partners of male miners. But others arrived on their own initiative 

and supported themselves through the work available to them. 

Women mined alongside men. They served as cooks at mining 

camps. Others found employment as secretaries, teachers, and 

nurses. Women served as missionaries, activists, and prostitutes. 

They also climbed mountains, grew gardens, patronized business 

and conducted ambitious scientific and archeological fieldwork. 

These women worked in a culture that expected them to bear 

and care for children. Their presence transformed mining camps 

into communities, but they were hardly passive. Women brought 

beauty to an industrialized landscape, shaped social systems, and 

provided a necessary and important work force. The distinctions 

among women, particularly differences in race and class, show that 

many narratives still wait to be written about women workers in the 

Wrangells. The lens of work, then, exposes a richer, more multidimensional perspective of women that can better explain how 

gender and diversity fit into the economic structure in the Wrangells 

through labor.

While mining stimulated transportation, commercialization, and 

incorporation in the Wrangells, and brought an influx of newcomers 

into the region, it also lifted aviation off the ground (see chapter 

6). Thanks to New Deal legislation that doubled the price of 

gold, air transportation became increasingly affordable to the lode 

mining industry. But when Kennecott closed and abandoned the 

railway, aviation had to diversify or face permanent grounding. As 

aviation became more commercialized, mechanical flight replaced 

The Army’s Alaska Road Commission built hundreds of 

miles of trails, wagon roads, and winter sled roads to 

encourage settlement, which also supported mining 

throughout the Wrangells. “Chitina River.” WRST History 

Files, “Alaska Road Commission” Folder, 1076.
10 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

mining as the region’s economic engine. Pilots found their niche 

hauling freight, people, and the mail to the hundreds of roadless 

communities that dotted the region. 

When the federal government deemed gold mining nonessential 

to the war effort, Wrangell Mountain flyers provided vital 

air support for the construction of the Lend-Lease airfield at 

Northway. Aviation took off as wartime engineers assembled 

an aviation infrastructure while American industry produced 

modern aircraft for the jet age. After the war, aviation created 

new economic prospects by carrying Boone and Crockett trophy 

hunters and elite mountaineers to new heights. Pilots aided 

exploration by transporting scientists to unknown regions and 

supported geologists, tasked with mapping the region, with 

aerial reconnaissance. Over the decades, Wrangell Mountain 

flyers provided isolated communities access to economic systems, 

commodities and medical care, while allowing residents to maintain 

a wilderness lifestyle. 

Environmentalists, however, increasingly began to view aviation as 

a symbol of mechanization and development that threatened the 

Wrangell’s natural world. Pilots, on the other hand, made a living 

soaring over a natural world that posed relentless threats to them. 

Sharp winds from the coast swept inland, tumbled across mountains 

and created downdrafts as rough as waterfalls. Shifting fog from 

the sea shrouded planes in blankets of mist. Wings encrusted with 

frost prevented aircraft from taking off. Temperature inversions 

made it colder at ground level, raising havoc on landing planes. 

Whiteouts, blizzards and brilliant, blinding light were commonplace 

hazards. Wrangell Mountain pilots flew in an environment where 

temperature variations ranged from 80 degrees above to 80 below 

zero, light conditions varied from continuous daylight in summer to 

near continuous darkness of midwinter. The pilots’ work required 

expertise equal to that of climatologists, biologists and glaciologists. 

To be successful, they had to become students of their environment. 

As Wrangell Mountains flyer Jack Wilson recalled, “I spent every 

minute memorizing my route.”14

Where work starts to take on attributes of adventurous recreation 

is in the affluent pursuits of sport hunting and mountaineering (see 

chapters 7 and 8). Hunting and trapping began as crucial subsistence 

activities that extended to trade during the Russian period.15 In the 

early American period, hunting expeditions to the northern flanks 

of the Wrangell Mountains supplied zoological specimens for the 

United States Biological Survey and Smithsonian habitat displays. 

The gold fields became game fields, as trophy hunters replaced 

disappointed gold prospectors along the Wrangells’ northern slope. 

Although Progressive era, upper-class sportsmen promoted fairchase etiquette, intensive and highly competitive sport hunting 

after World War II caused significant drops in sheep populations in 

hunting grounds throughout the Wrangells.16 

The majority of women who worked at Kennecott 

were either teachers or nurses. These women 

arrived at the milltown single, but, according to 

witnesses, they didn’t stay single for long. Because 

management prohibited married women to teach 

school, Kennecott kids recall that this led to the trend 

of a new teacher for practically every new school 

year. Al Nikolaus and unidentified nurse near the 

Staff House. WRST History Files, “Ethel Lecount AlbumKennecott” Folder.
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 11

Likewise, mountaineering often crossed into areas of mapping and 

surveying, prospecting, geological reconnaissance, and scientific 

exploration, but for peak-baggers belonging to Ivy League ‘clubs’ and 

who executed climbs in ‘parties,’ there was nothing blue-collar about 

their mountaineering endeavors. Their primary purpose was to make 

history by becoming the first to ascend unclimbed peaks.17 Thus, it 

is difficult to make the argument that trophy hunting and mountain 

climbing are economic necessities, and instead, are luxurious 

expression of play. As mountaineer Dora Keen observed, “No one 

in Alaska climbs mountains except for gold.”18 Not surprisingly, both 

activities would later provide figurative evidence for the modern 

notion of ‘conquering’ nature. 

Still, sport hunting and mountaineering provided work to guides, 

outfitters, horse trainers, packers, and later, aviators. Technology 

also shaped both activities, as breakthroughs in outdoor equipment, 

initially intended for the U.S. fighting soldier, supplied hunters 

and mountaineers with lightweight backpacks, insulated clothing, 

durable tents, and freeze-dried foods.19 Enthusiasts would argue that 

instead of prevailing over nature, trophy hunters and mountaineers 

often failed, and whether reaching their goal or not, they developed 

deep respect for the animals and mountains of the Wrangells 

through their pursuits. As trophy hunter George O. Young 

recounted, 

“I trust that I may be able always to retain in my mind the picture of 

that wilderness. The majestic mountains and valleys; the yawning 

chasms; the great rivers and the monstrous glaciers which feed them; 

that I will always keep fresh the memory of the Northern Lights, the 

azure skies, the glorious sunsets, and the beautiful mountain sheep as 

they grazed so peacefully on plots of green, or wound their way over 

lofty crests.”20

Outdoorsmen considered sheep hunting and mountain climbing 

admirable sports because both require specific knowledge of the 

environment, enormous physical strength, and the courage to 

risk bodily harm or even death. Simply put, trophy hunting and 

mountaineering demanded hard work.21 

But unlike the sport hunters and mountaineers, or, for that matter, 

the miners, railroad engineers, and aviators whose laborious 

relationship to nature was a bi-product of their work, it was the 

professional assignment of scientists and explorers to study the 

Wrangells’ natural world (see chapter 9). Knowing nature in its 

multiple dimensions and interconnected working parts, was, in 

essence, their livelihood. The intersect of work and nature even 

produced a special occupation that became integral to the National 

Park Service; for specialists who spread knowledge of the laws and 

forces of nature were called naturalists. 

The U.S. Army sent exploration teams into the Wrangells’ uncharted 

terrain with orders to inventory newly acquired natural assets, to 

map potential access routes, and to assess risk—which included the 

Native people they encountered. Early explorers made observations 

of the animals, volcanic activity, glaciers, the weather, and even 

speculated on the Asiatic origins of Alaska Natives. Trailing the 

Army explorers were federal geologists, who were sent to determine 

the economic potential of the region’s mineral prospects. The 

Kennecott youngsters associated their childhood with 

their parents’ workplace. But unlike their parents, kids 

used their imagination and not their work to transform 

the surrounding environment. Perhaps that is why 

children of miners were best able to embrace the 

wonder of the Wrangells—a fascination that drew them 

back as adults. “Mother with 2 young children.” WRST 

History Files, “Friends of Kennecott Collection” Folder. 
12 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

U.S. Geological Survey explorations produced reports that 

contained ‘useful information’ in ‘untechnical language’ that 

informed prospectors and business entrepreneurs alike. The federal 

government’s relationship with private investors cultivated the 

new field of ‘economic geology,’ which linked the Wrangells to the 

nation’s growing industrial and electrical markets.

Other experts quickly followed. Geologists employed by oil 

companies scoured the coastal areas for potential fossil fuel sources, 

volcanologists came to study the region’s active volcanoes, and the 

world’s largest non-polar icefield drew glaciologists. The Wrangells 

became a learning laboratory for scientists studying the theory of 

plate tectonics. Archeologists helped to shed light on the region’s 

ancient ethnographic history. The unique bird species, spectacular 

mega fauna and massive fish runs brought fisheries and wildlife 

biologists to regulate the Wrangell’s creatures for conservation and 

commercial purposes. 

Escalating tension with the Soviets and the alarming possibility 

of turning the Cold War “hot,” prompted the 1950 Copper River 

Survey to begin mapping a route that would convert the old Copper 

River & Northwestern Railway into a road. The road, although 

never built, was meant to facilitate the exploration of strategic 

minerals that powered the nation’s nuclear industrial complex. To 

prepare for an enemy invasion of Alaska, military defense strategy 

directed physiologists with the U.S. Air Force to conduct tests 

The photographs assembled throughout these pages offer a glimpse into this world of work. Many of the 

photographers who captured these moments in time were doing so as an expression of their own work. 

Filming at Jumbo Mine. Jean Jirard Collection. WRST History Files, “Kennecott-Jumbo Mine” Folder.
that would determine the effects of cold weather on the human 

body. The ability to work in high altitudes—at the top of Mount 

Wrangell—also allowed scientists to study cosmic rays, particles 

from space that connect Earth—the Wrangells—with the edge of 

the known universe.22 

But despite the intellectual bond, scientists and explorers came to 

know the Wrangells’ natural world equally through the physical 

hardships their work required. Henry Allen and his men nearly 

perished on several occasions, as they explored and mapped the 

Copper River. Every movement into the wilderness demanded 

brainpower, while simultaneously, drained muscle power. Omitted 

from USGS reports are accounts of the sweat, exhaustion, and 

energy the geologists expended in order to reach and then evaluate 

remote mining sites. To obtain and interpret meaning from oral 

testimony, archeologists had to match the agility of the Native 

people and their ability to move through the natural landscape. 

Although scientists at work atop Mount Wrangell utilized aviation, 

they still had to ski down to the drop site and haul supplies and 

equipment back to camp with sleds. Each day they endured the 

physiological effects of working at high altitudes, which could 

impair vision, memory and attention and cause dehydration, nausea, 

and lack of energy. Copper River surveyors encountered equally 

significant obstacles. They compared the Copper Canyon to “a 

monster wind tunnel” and noted the chunks of ice on the river that 

made boat use too dangerous. In his report, project director Jack 

Nimmemen described the Wrangells’ as a competitive foe, writing 

that the surveyors were “in a race with the weather.”23

The postwar years brought significant change to working life in the 

Wrangells. The 1950s witnessed the near collapse of the Wrangells 

mining industry, but the massive build-up of aviation opened new 

doors for the fledgling tourist industry24 (see chapter 10). In a report 

entitled Alaska’s Recreational Riches, economic planners for the Alaska 

Development Board declared that “Alaska is one of the great tourist 

areas of the world, and so far its recreational resources have barely been 

tapped.”25 Not only would air carriers replace miners with tourists as 

their major clientele in the postwar era, but some, like Merle Smith’s 

Cordova Air Service, would promote the sagging mining industry as 

a source of nostalgia to attract curious visitors to the ghost towns of 

the mythic “Last Frontier.”26 Smith wagered that the mystique and 

novelty generated by pioneer life on the edge of civilization would 

fascinate tourists. It turns out that Smith’s bet paid off. Although his 

tours replicated an idealized past, Alaska sourdoughs and the Wrangell 

wilderness itself would become marketable commodities that has 

shaped work in the Wrangells ever since.27

Finally, play coincided with work, albeit briefly, on the Wrangells 

economic landscape (see epilogue). Holidays were particularly significant 

because, at least in part, they gave Wrangell workers time-off from 

hard work. And during this precious time, especially on breaks like 

the Fourth of July, these workmen played. Workers throughout the 

region converged enthusiastically in camps, settlements and towns, 

where they held parades, ran foot races, and engaged in other spirited 

rivalries. Holidays, although fun, served several other purposes as 

well. Celebrations created a sense of the familiar for miners and their 

families living far from home. The gathering of communities helped 

individuals cope with the pressures of working in isolation. Whether 

Today, visitors to Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and 

Preserve feel connected to nature through recreation 

and play rather than work. But as Richard White has 

pointed out, play in nature often “mimics work,” and 

in the case of the Wrangells, our recreation mimics 

history, too. On the trail to Bonanza Mine. WRST 

History Files, “People” Folder, 862.

INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 13
14 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Cosmic Ray physicist Charles “Buck” Wilson takes a break from his work to soak in the view from the Mount 

Wrangell Observatory in 1952. Courtesy of Charles “Buck” Wilson.

it was baseball on Independence Day or ice skating at Christmas, 

managers at Kennecott used game playing and revelries as a way to 

address conflict and build camaraderie among employees. Perhaps 

most significantly, national holidays promoted Americanization, as 

flag-waving, pilgrim-honoring, pageant-performing traditions made 

their way north. Celebration and play helped cultivate isolated work 

camps into integrated communities that replicated the social and 

economic values of American culture.

With the likely exception of Native youth, one of the few groups 

who did not work in the Wrangells were children. The young used 

their imagination and not their work to transform the environment. 

Perhaps that is why children of miners were best able to embrace 

the wonder of the Wrangells—a fascination that drew them back 

as adults. Kennecott kids recognized that growing up in such an 

astonishing place made their lives special.28 And while 20th century 

society considered play virtually synonymous with childhood, these 

Wrangell youngsters associated their childhood with their parents’ 

workplace. Children of Kennecott employees understood why they 

were there, and when they abruptly departed with the mine’s closure, 

the Kennecott kids left behind more than their personal items. As 

Jean Elizabeth (McGavock) Lamb recalled:

“In early June of 1937, Mother and Jim and I boarded the 

train for our last trip to Cordova and “Outside,” leaving the 

Kennecott scene of our childhoods behind....My father followed 

us in the fall of the year, thus ending our life in Kennecott. 

Mother and Dad were never able to return, even in late years, to 

visit what has become a national relic [landmark]. But Jim and I 

are drawn by that powerful call of the North Country, to return 

again and again to visit that site of our childhoods where, for us, 

something seems still unfinished.”29
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 15

HISTORY EXPOSED

Even the photographers who captured these moments were doing 

so as an expression of their own work. Although Henry T. Allen 

brought along a camera, and made numerous glass-plate photographs 

at considerable effort, they were later lost by a messenger. Today, the 

only images representing the work from that expedition are the sketch 

drawings and maps, which were included in his important “Report 

of An Expedition to the Copper, Tanana, and Koyukuk River, in the 

Territory of Alaska, in the Year 1885.”30 Unlike most of the Wrangell 

photographers, P.S. Hunt was a professional, who took some of the 

most evocative early images the Copper Basin. His shots the Copper 

River & Northwestern Railway gained the attention of the Alaska 

Engineering Commission, which made Hunt the official photographer 

of the Alaska Railroad.31 Other early images come from U.S.G.S. 

geologist Stephen Capps, who snapped photos while assisting Fred 

H. Moffit survey the Nizina District. He returned to lead the survey 

of the Chisana-White River country in time to capture photographs 

of the Chisana gold rush. Thanks to Dora Keen’s descendent, Jenny 

Kays, several photographs documenting the first attempted ascent of 

Mount Blackburn are presented in the following pages for the first 

time since Scribner’s Magazine published them in 1912.32 

Russell Dow studied engineering and aerial photography at the 

Institute of Geographical exploration at Harvard University. 

Dow participated in Bradford Washburn’s famed expedition into 

the Wrangells, and although Washburn drew world-fame for his 

photographs, it was Dow behind the lens snapping pilot Bob 

Reeve’s mudflat takeoffs and record-breaking landing on Walsh 

Glacier. Other photographs detailing work in the Wrangells include 

those taken by anthropologist Frederica de Laguna. These images 

documenting the working life of Yakutat Tlingit were selected 

from a few hundred images gathered by De Laguna for her groundbreaking ethnographic study, Under Mount Saint Elias: The History 

and Culture of the Yakutak Tlingit. Additional images capturing 

subsistence life and economic and cultural change in Yakutat Bay 

were taken by Japanese photographer Shoki Kayamori. Kayamori 

came to Yakutat to work at the local cannery. In an atmosphere of 

wartime hysteria, the Japanese photographer committed suicide 

after being accused of spying. Though determination of his guilt or 

innocence remains inconclusive, his photographic legacy is clear: 

Kayamori’s photographs show how American economic systems 

eclipsed local custom; how commercialization, socialization and 

racism spread across Alaska; and how compared to the power of 

nature we humans are at its mercy. 

Many of the postwar photographs were also taken by scientists who 

worked in the Wrangells. Charles “Bob” Leitzell, who was a surveyor 

on the 1950 Copper River Survey, captured numerous images dating 

from 1950 to 1954. His photos depict an array of activities in the 

Wrangells, including the survey work between Chitina and the 

Million Dollar Bridge on the old Copper River & Northwestern 

Railway alignment, retro-tram crossings of the Copper River, early 

fly-in tours to McCarthy and Kennecott—even the haunting of 

Chitina’s ghosts. Charles “Buck” Wilson was a physicist assigned 

to the 1953 Wrangell Expedition.34 In 1952, the University of 

Alaska established a high-altitude research laboratory on the 

Summit of Mountain Wrangell. Wilson’s photographs illustrate the 

researchers’ scientific undertakings, including an Air Force C-124 

cargo plane air dropping two Jamesway huts and equipment onto 

the mountaintop.35 The images show the assembled two huts on 

the exposed rim of the north crater, known as Hut Ridge, and the 

cosmic ray researchers at work atop Mount Wrangell. 

The photographs assembled throughout these pages offer a glimpse 

into this world of work. A majority of these imagescame from the 

park’s “History Files,” located at Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and 

Preserve headquarters in Copper Center, Alaska. It should be noted, 

however, that many of these images are copies that were gathered years 

ago from collections housed at institutions such as the University of 

Alaska Fairbanks, the University of Washington, the Valdez Museum 

& Historical Archive, the Anchorage Museum, the National Archives, 

and the Washington State Historical Society and the Tacoma Public 

Library in Washington state. It should be the practice of users of 

these park files to seek permission from the original sources. Readers 

familiar with the park’s core history studies, authored by historians 

such as William Hunt and Geoffrey Bleakley, will find many of these 

photographs iconic and instantly recognizable. But also included 

are numerous images that reflect the park’s more recent historical 

research and associated themes. These photographs, many of which 

are published here for the first time, came from numerous repositories, 

including private collections, and introduce readers to a variety of new 

faces that formed the Wrangells’ historic landscape.

Moreover, it is important to note that At Work in the Wrangells: A 

Photographic History, 1895-1966 is not a comprehensive history. It 

is intended to point to potential research rather than to provide it. 

The year 2016 is the publication date for At Work in the Wrangells, 

and it also commemorates the passage of the National Historic 

Preservation Act of 1966. Thus, besides framing the book’s 

timeline, the selected dates, 1895 to 1966, mark the introduction 

of photographic technology into the region and the Act’s 50 year 

anniversary. Because properties are typically at least 50 years old to 

be eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places, then 

properties identified in this study that meet the national register 

criteria may potentially become nominations for future listing. 

Additionally, the ten identified themes may provide new contexts for 

historical significance, as well as contribute fresh content for park 

tours, exhibits, and visitor programs. 

Today, visitors to Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve 

feel connected to nature through recreation and play rather than 
work. But as Richard White has pointed out, play in nature often 

“mimics work,” and in the case of the Wrangells, recreation mimics 

history too. Our hikes follow the footsteps of ancient Ahtna traders. 

Back-packers labor across the land for solitude rather than mineral 

wealth. Scenic flights carry passengers over glacier routes once 

used by pack trains. RVs now travel along the old railway bed, and 

curious campers can wander through the abandoned relics of an aged 

industrial landscape and imagine what life was like back then. The 

most satisfying moments often come when we overcome nature’s 

barriers through hard work: reaching the ridgeline sweaty and out of 

breath, skiing down the face of a razor-sharp peak, and traversing a 

blindingly blue glacier on crampons.

Broken machinery, rusted tools, and skeletal remains of mines and 

technology are enduring reminders of the past that still give voice to 

those who worked in the Wrangells. Besides connecting the region 

to the larger world, these voices connect the past to the present. 

These voices tell us, through their words and photographs, that 

they valued the wonders of the Wrangells’ natural world beyond a 

monetary wealth. But work mattered to them, and through their 

laborious activities they came to know and respect the power of that 

natural world. These voices remind us that instead of ignoring or 

erasing the human marks on the land, we should interpret them so 

that future visitors can understand just how tangled the natural and 

human story of the Wrangells truly is. According to White, “We 

cannot understand human history without natural history and we 

cannot understand natural history without human history. The two 

have been entwined for millennial.” Indeed, as historian William 

Cronon confirms, “Nature alone cannot explain landscape. You 

need history too.”36

These structures, positioned atop the shield volcano Mount Wrangell to study cosmic rays, represent the 

start of the Wrangell Mountain Observatory, which became the impetus for the Geophysical Institute at the 

University of Alaska Fairbanks. The camp on Mt. Wrangell at 14,000 ft. with Mt. Blackburn in the distance, 1952. 

Courtesy of Charles “Buck” Wilson.

“We cannot understand human history without natural history and we cannot 

understand natural history without human history. The two have been entwined for 

millennial.” 

 —Richard White

16 
 17

Endnotes

1

 Donald C. Defenderfer and Robert B. Walkinshaw, One Long Summer Day in Alaska: A Documentation of Perspectives in the Wrangell Mountains (Santa 

Cruz: University of California, 1981).

2

 Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve Foundation Statement. (National Park Service, 2010), 7.

3

 Foundation Statement, 14.

4

 Gary Walker, et al., “A Geological Guide to Wrangell Saint Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska: A Tectonic Collage of Northbound Terrance,” 

Professional Papers 1616. (Washington DC: U.S. Geological Survey, 2000).

5

 Timothy J. LeCain, Mass Destruction: The Men and Giant Mines That Wired America and Scarred the Planet (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 

2009), 32-33.

6

 ‘Work’—and by extension, economic modes and circumstances—have been used as an interpretive framework for explaining human activity and relation 

to the land by many of the nation’s leading environmental historians, including Richard White, see Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River

(New York: Hill and Wang, 1995); Donald Worster, see Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas (Cambridge University Press, 1994) and Under 

Western Skies: Nature and History in the American West (Oxford University Press, 1992); William Cronon, see Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great 

West (New York: WW Norton & Co, 1991); William G. Robbins, see Colony & Empire: the Capitalist Transformation of the American West (University 

Press of Kansas, 1994) and “ In Pursuit of Historical Explanation: Capitalism as a Conceptual Too for Knowing the American West.” Western Historical 

Quarterly, Vol 30. No. 3 (autumn, 1999); Stephen Haycox, see Frigid Embrace: Politics, Economics and Environment in Alaska (Oregon State University 

Press, 2002); Kathryn Morse, see The Nature of Gold: An Environmental History of the Klondike Gold Rush (University of Washington Press, 2003; and 

David Arnold, see The Fishermen’s Frontier: People and Salmon in Southeast Alaska (University of Washington Press, 2008). 7

 Richard White, Organic Machine,), 7. 8

 Richard White, x. 

9

 A 1909 article in Colliers Magazine charged that Taft’s Secretary of Interior, Richard Ballinger improperly used his office to help the Guggenheims and 

other powerful interests illegally gain access to Alaskan coal fields. Although subsequent scholarship has shown that the charges were unjustified, at the 

time, Chief Forester Gifford Pinchot began to criticize openly both Ballinger and Taft, claiming they were violating the fundamental principles of both 

conservation and democracy. Taft immediately fired Pinchot, inspiring yet another round of scandalous headlines.

10 According to former park historian Geoffrey Bleakley, the spelling of Kennecott varies according to author, subject, and context. USGS geologist Oscar 

Rohn named the Kennicott Glacier in 1899 for Smithsonian naturalists Robert Kennicott, who died while working in Alaska in 1866. Local residents 

later applied that name to the Kennicott River. Both the river and glacier are spelled with an “i.” The Kennecott Mines Company and Kennecott 

Copper Corporation took the name from the glacier as well, but spelled it with an “e.” Although the USGS chose to spell the site’s name with an “I” on 

its topographical maps, the National Park Service adopted the opposite standard, choosing to recognize Kennecott’s rich human history by restoring the 

company’s spelling. Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve therefore, spells the site’s name with an “e.” Geoffrey Bleakley, Contested Ground: An 

Administrative History of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska, 1978-2001 (Anchorage: Alaska Regional Office, 2002), 10. 11 See Kathryn Morse, The Nature of Gold: An Environmental History of the Klondike Gold Rush (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003). She 

discusses the role of modern distance-diminishing technologies in the Alaska rush.

12 Jim Rearden, Alaska’s First Bush Pilots, 1923-30 (Missoula, Montana: Pictorial Histories Publishing Company Inc., 2009), 10-11. “Del. Dimond Fighting 

for Airmail Service in Alaska,” Cordova Daily Times, February 12, 1934. 13 Board of Road Commissioners for Alaska, “Annual Report of the Alaska Road Commission, Fiscal Year 1923, Part II,” Juneau, Alaska, 1923.

14 “Jack Wilson—Glennallen,” H95-71-10, Project Jukebox, University of Alaska Fairbanks.

15 Hunting and trapping remain critical activities to this day for those residents living in or near Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve.

16 Edward C. Murphy and Frederick C. Dean, Hunting Activity and Harvest in the Wrangell-St. Elias Region, Alaska, 1973-1977, Final Report for National 

Park Service, CX-9000-6-0154 (Fairbanks: University of Alaska, 1978), 27-34.

17 Robert Bates, The Love of Mountains is Best (Portsmouth: Peter E. Randall Publisher, 1994), 71.

 “Walter Wood’s First Ascent of Mount Steele,” Life Magazine (November 30, 1936). Stan Cohen, Flying Beats Work: The Story of Reeve Aleutian Airways, 

(Missoula: Pictorial Histories Publishing Company, 1988), 30.

18 Dora Keen, “Arctic Mountaineer by a Woman: Mount Blackburn.” Scribner’s Magazine, July-December 1912. 19 Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 276. 20 George O. Young, Alaskan-Yukon Trophies Won and Lost (Huntington, W.V.: Standard Publications, 1947), 273. 21 Jim Rearden, Hunting Alaska’s Far Places (Missoula: Pictorial Histories Publishing Company, 2008), 131. 22 In 1952, University of Alaska Fairbanks president Terrence Moore, along with his friend and colleague, Bradford Washburn, established a high-altitude 

research laboratory on the summit of Mount Wrangells to study everything from cosmic rays to the interactions of glaciers and active volcanoes. The 

Wrangell Mountain Observatory became the impetus for UAF’s Geophysical Institution, which helped secure the one-time mining college as a world-class 

research facility. For a concise history see Daniel Solie, “Icing on the Fire: A Season on the Summit of Mount Wrangell.” Alaska Journal (Autumn 1984).

23 Virgil Kauffman, “It’s Rugged In Alaska!” Aero Service Corp Newsletter, December, 1950.
18 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

24 The introduction of the helicopter and a few minor interests in Kennecott copper revitalized mining on a small scale until the 1970s.

25 “Alaska’s Recreational Riches,” Alaska Development Board, Juneau Alaska, July 1946.

26 Lone E. Janson, Mudhole Smith: Alaska Flier (Anchorage: Alaska Northwest Publishing Company, 1981), 115-116. 27 Roderick Nash, “Tourism, Parks and the Wilderness Idea in the History of Alaska,” Alaska in Perspective, Volume IV, Number 1 (1981):1-27. 28 In June 1990, the National Park Service hosted the Kennecott Kids Reunion, which brought together many of the people who were school-age children 

when the mines and mill operated in the 1920s and 1930s. The attendees shared their memories stories and experiences and twelve of the twenty one who 

attended the reunion expressed their views in formal interviews, in which the transcripts were published the Kennecott Kids Oral History Project.

29Ann Kain (ed), Kennecott Kids Oral History Project: Jean Elizabeth (McGavock) Lamb. Alaska Regional Office: National Park Service, 1991), 9.

30 Robert E. King, “Alaska’s Lewis and Clark Expedition.” Alaska Frontiers, Bureau of Land Management, summer 2004.

31 Geoff Bleakley, Selected Residents of and Visitors to the Wrangell-St. Elias Mountain Region, 1796-1950. (Wrangell St. Elias National Park and Preserve, 

National Park Service, 2006.

32 Keen, 1912.

33 Margaret Thomas, Picture Man: The Legacy of Southeast Alaska photographer Shoki Kayamori. (Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2015). 34 Carl S. Benson and Roman J. Motyka, “Glacier-Volcano Interactions on Mt. Wrangell, Alaska,” Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks 

(1978): 8.

35 Daniel Solie, “Icing on the Fire; A Season on the Summit of Mount Wrangell” The Alaska Journal (autumn, 1984): 12. 36 White, ix; William Cronon, “The Riddle of the Apostle Islands,” Orion (May/June 2003).
Five distinct cultural groups traditionally 

inhabited different areas of the 

Wrangell-St. Elias region. The Ahtna 

controlled the upper Copper River 

and its tributaries; the Upper Tanana 

held the Nabesna and Chisana 

River Valleys; the Southern Tuchone 

occupied the White River drainage; 

and the Yakutat Tlingit and Eyak 

dwelled along the coast. Everything 

that these original inhabitants needed 

or traded came from their traditional 

homelands. 

As newcomers filtered into the 

Wrangell region, they brought with 

them new technologies, which Alaska 

Native people adopted and absorbed 

into their own work activities. Likewise, 

some of the newcomers—who may 

have originally come to the region 

to prospect, fish, or work on the 

railroad—incorporated elements of 

subsistence into their daily routine, 

and ultimately made the Wrangells 

their home. Today, Native and nonNative residents living in and around 

Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & 

Preserve continue to embrace a 

subsistence lifeway.

CHAPTER 1

SUBSISTENCE 

LIFEWAYS
20 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 
Subarctic Athabascans recognized the importance of 

protecting and conserving natural resources, and relied on 

the accumulated experience of their own lifetimes and the 

lessons passed along from earlier generations to maintain 

healthy animal populations (Nelson 1986: 212). Copper 

River, 1903. WRST History Files, “Ahtna” Folder.

Game in the Wrangell-St. Elias region was never plentiful 

enough to support large concentrations of people, 

so Ahtna populations remained small and scattered. 

Villages, usually located where a major tributary entered 

the Copper River, rarely contained more than twenty to 

thirty members of a familial clan. A denae, who headed 

each village, was the principal hunter, trapper and trader 

(Bleakley, 2006). Permanent houses were constructed 

with poles, bark, and skins. Builders used moss to fill chinks 

between poles and keep the home warm during the 

winter. Ahtna homes maintained storage space and 

provided specific areas for women, children and dogs. 

Good-La-Taw family at Kotsina, 1904. WRST History Files, 

“Ahtna” Folder, 219.
22 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Ahtna people were highly mobile and made temporary shelters for use on seasonal excursions. The Ahtna 

hunted, fished and gathered berries seasonally and at discrete places. For an oral based culture, conveying the 

intimate knowledge contained in these places was reflected in the names themselves. The Ahtna say: Nts’e ye 

hwdi’aandze’ hw’el ts’etnes, meaning that a specific or important site is remembered “by how it was named” (Kari 

2010, ix). A Siwash Camp on the Kotsina River. WRST History Files, “Ahtna” Folder, 190.
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 23

Born around 1840, 

Chief Nicolai (second 

from left) was the lower 

Ahtna’s leading denae

from 1884 until his death 

about 1900. Nicolai is 

noted for having assisted 

several early exploring 

parties, including Henry 

T. Allen in 1885 and 

Frederick Schwatka in 

1891. Local prospectors 

named several important 

geographical features 

in his honor, including 

Nikolai Creek and Nikolai 

Butte (Bleakley 2006). 

Chief Nicolai, Mrs. Chief, 

Mrs. Chief, “Woodland.” 

WRST History Files, 

“Ahtna” Folder. The 

original image is located in the Francis A. Pope Collection, Archives, Alaska and Polar Regions, Rasmuson Library, 

University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Born in the Copper 

Basin about 1844, Doc 

Billum (second from 

left, in tophat) was an 

Ahtna “sleep doctor” or 

shaman who lived near 

the mouth of the Tonsina 

River (Bleakley, 2006). The 

Ahtna considered the 

shaman a powerful leader 

because he was tasked 

with conducting hunting 

and other traditional 

ceremonies and healing 

the sick. “Doc Billum and 

two Klutches. Copper 

River Native,” 1906. Tiekel 

Roadhouse. P.S. Hunt, 

Photographer. WRST 

History Files, “Ahtna” 

Folder, 25.
Hanagita became the head 

of the Lower Ahtna following 

the death of his brother, 

Chief Nicolai about 1900. 

He is remembered as one of 

the Ahtna’s most important 

20th century chiefs. The 

United States Geological 

Survey named Hanagita 

Peak in his honor (Bleakley 

2006). “Natives at Hanagita 

House at Taral near mouth 

of the Chitina.” WRST 

History Files, “Ahtna” Folder. 

Original image is located 

at the Anchorage Museum, 

23.1.152.

The Ahtna say: Nts’e 

ye hwdi’aandze’ hw’el 

ts’etnes, meaning 

that a specific or 

important site is 

remembered “by how 

it was named”

 —Linguist James Kari
 25
Born about 1875, Goodlataw was Chief Nicolai’s maternal nephew. He became the primary leader of the lower 

Ahtna following the death of Nicolai’s youngest brother, Chief Eskilida, in 1918. The U.S. Geological Survey named 

Goodlata Peak in his honor (Bleakley 2006). Note Goodlataw’s use of dogs. Dogs were so important to the Native 

people of the Wrangells that it was taboo to eat them, even during the “starving times” (Haynes and Simeone 

2007:27). “Goodlatau (Goodlataw) of Chitina Alaska--one of the few remaining full-blooding Coper River Indians.” 

WRST History Files, “Ahtna” Folder, 842.
In 1797, Dimitri Tarkhanov was one of the 

first newcomers to describe the Ahtna’s 

subsistence practices: “The livelihood 

they have from the Copper River is red 

fish [salmon] which come from the sea 

[to spawn] during the month of June, and 

they catch [them] in nets, a gill net bound 

with animals sinews, and dry on racks the 

yukola; fresh fish they sour in pits, heads and 

intestines they heat with stones in wooden 

troughs, they dig roots, and hunt rabbits 

in fall and spring [they catch] squirrels in 

summer with snares” (Pierce and Donnelly 

1979: 54-55). “Dipping Salmon.” WRST 

History Files, “Ahtna” Folder.

CHAPTER 1: SUBSISTENCE LIFEWAYS 27
The Ahtna adapted new technologies from various groups they encountered. Most notably, the introduction of the 

fish wheel (seen here tethered to shore), which made gathering great numbers of salmon for preservation easier 

(Hunt 1996: 18). Fish Wheel at Chitina. WRST History Files, “Ahtna” Folder.

(Following page) In the Ahtna language, the Upper Ahtna are called Tatl’ahwt’aenn, the “headwater people” (Kari 

1986). Archeologists believe that the Ahtna’s dependency on salmon dates back nearly 2,000 years. Overtime, the 

Ahtna developed a fishing culture predicated upon sophisticated methods for harvesting and processing salmon, 

rules that governed the treatment and use of salmon, and an oral tradition that explained the origins of Copper 

River salmon (Simeone, et al. 2011: 2). Cleaning Fish, WRST History Files, “Ahtna” Folder, 192.
 29
30 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Oral accounts suggest that Mary, born 

about 1840 at Taral, was the daughter 

of the last Russian trader at Copper Fort. 

Mary had four children, one of whom 

was briefly married to Doc Billum. All 

her children died in early adulthood, 

leaving Mary to face old age alone. 

Mary was frequently photographed by 

tourists traveling on the Copper River 

and Northwestern Railway. Artist such as 

Eustace Ziegler, Jules Dahlager, and Ted 

Lambert, also used her as a subject in 

their paintings. The location of her death 

is uncertain, but she seems to have died 

in 1923 (Bleakley 2006). “Horse Creek 

Mary,” ca. 1910. WRST History Files, 

“Ahtna” Folder, 1093.
The Lower Ahtna controlled much of the fur trade. They did some trapping, but mostly traded furs from the upriver 

Ahtna to take to the coast on winter and spring trips. The regional fur trade introduced western commodities 

beginning as early as the mid-1800s. According to anthropologist Stephen Strong, the earliest transactions probably 

involved the exchange of furs for three categories of trade goods: 1) Items of western manufacture that replaced 

Native aboriginal means of production, such as firearms, gunpowder, and iron or steel tools. 2) Trade goods that 

were consumed and considered “minor luxuries,” including tea, sugar, tobacco, blankets, cloth, and clothing. 3) 

Goods that became part of the Native “prestige economy” and were used as potlatch gifts, such as dentalium 

shells and glass beads (Strong 1976: 160-161). The Copper River Trading Post at Lower Tonsina, 1903. Courtesy of the 

Valdez Museum, P1986.117.52
32 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

By the 1920s, a few non-Native individuals had embraced a subsistence lifestyle. Clyde C. “Slim” 

Williams spent three decades in the Wrangells as a trapper, hunter, and dog breeder. He and his 

wife Aileen Gallaher made a living operating trap lines along the base of Mount Sanford. Such a 

life demanded hard work. Knowledge of the land was vital, as was acquiring the skills to build a log 

cabin or a temporary shelter in bad weather. Also essential was expert marksmanship, the ability to 

make or adopt proper clothing, and the physical endurance to travel long distances that spanned 

difficult terrain. Still, the everyday tasks were equally important. There were harnesses to mend, and 

keep in constant working order. Trees had to be cut, dragged in from the forest, then sawed into 

stove-length logs and split. According to Gallaher, “Just getting the wood stacked in was a big job” 

(Gallaher & Gallaher 2004: 41). Slim and Aileen cross Slate Creek Pass, fall 1927. Samme Gallaher 

Darnall Collection. Courtesy of Geoffrey Bleakley Collection, Makawao, HI.
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 33

Non-Native subsistence users also valued the work of dogs. Pack dogs carried supplies in canvas packs 

that fit over their backs, with big pockets on each side. The packs were tied in such a way that the ropes 

kept the pack balanced and steady but prevented chafing the animal. Big dogs could carry about 

fifty pounds each. According to Samme Gallaher, “Dogs covered the trap line, hauled wood, freighted 

supplies, moved fur and managed to do all the work required of them” (Gallaher & Gallaher 2004: 56). 

“Samme and Beaver carrying packs.” Samme Gallaher Darnall Collection. Courtesy of Geoffrey Bleakley 

Collection, Makawao, HI.
34 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS “I loved the whole atmosphere of Caribou Creek, Mount Sanford, the intense cold, the 

log cabin, the snow, the dogs, the wolf, and most of all the puppies.”

 

 —Samme Gallaher 

Samme Gallaher, Aileen 

Gallaher’s sister, poses with 

her puppy Paxon. Samme 

Gallaher Darnall Collection. 

Courtesy of Geoffrey 

Bleakley Collection, 

Makawao, HI.

Samme Gallaher, Aileen 

Gallaher’s sister, poses with 

her puppy Paxon. Samme 

Gallaher Darnall Collection. 

Courtesy of Geoffrey 

Bleakley Collection, 

Makawao, HI.

Samme Gallaher, Aileen 

Gallaher’s sister, poses with 

her puppy Paxon. Samme 

Gallaher Darnall Collection. 

Courtesy of Geoffrey 

Bleakley Collection, 

Makawao, HI.

Samme Gallaher, Aileen 

Gallaher’s sister, poses with 

her puppy Paxon. Samme 

Gallaher Darnall Collection. 

Courtesy of Geoffrey 

Bleakley Collection, 

Makawao, HI.
Samme Gallagher visited Clyde and Aileen in 1927, and gained an appreciation for her older sister’s new lifeway. 

During her stay, the three ventured to Slim and Aileen’s trapping cabin on Caribou Creek. The cabin was only nine 

by twelve feet. The bunk alone took up half the floor space. A little Yukon stove kept them warm and one small window provided their only light. “To a fifteen-year-old city girl, it was a glorious camping trip,” Samme later recalled. “I 

loved the whole atmosphere of Caribou Creek, Mount Sanford, the intense cold, the log cabin, the snow, the dogs, 

the wolf, and most of all the puppies” (Gallaher & Gallaher 2004: 100). “Samme with puppy Paxon.” Samme Gallaher Darnall Collection. Courtesy of Geoffrey Bleakley Collection, Makawao, HI.

A handful of residents supplemented their subsistence lifeways fox farming. 

Frenchmen George Bellefontaine owned and operated the Sanford River Fox Farm 

between 1910 and 1933. The Sanford River Fox Farm was probably no different 

from the other farms that dotted the Copper River Valley between Chitina and 

Gulkana. Such farms were situated within close proximity to the Richardson 

Highway and the Copper River & Northwestern Railway for easy transportation. 

This allowed for a pelt buyer to come through the Valley to purchase fox furs each 

season. 

The region’s short temperate summers and long extremely cold winters provided 

ideal climate conditions for producing high quality furs. Fashion trends dictated 

demands from European and American markets, which valued a fox pelt at over 

$300 dollars in the 1920s. By 1933, the Great Depression sapped demand and 

pelt prices plummeted from a peak of $500 to under just $20 dollars. Wrangell 

Mountain fur farmers discontinue their operations, and Bellefontaine abandoned 

the Sanford River Fox Farm (Bleakley, Sanford River Fox Farm DOE, 2005). “A Fox.” 

Samme Gallaher Darnall Collection. Courtesy of Geoffrey Bleakley Collection, 

Makawao, HI.
36 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

To construct an airfield at nearby Gulkana in 1942, 

the U.S. Army appropriated the Ahtna’s village at 

Dry Creek, and ordered people who had lived in 

the shadow of the Wrangell Mountains since time 

immemorial to vacate. “They had a big war there, 

down in Germany or somewhere,” recalled Annie 

Ewen, an Ahtna Athabaskan whose family had 

lived at Dry Creek Village for generations. “With 

the big war came soldiers, to build an airfield. 

They told us eight families to move. One house 

was burned down. We moved into a tent for two 

years and then down to Copper Center.” After 

completing the Gulkana Airfield, the Army forbade 

the Dry Creek Ahtna to return (Haycox 1989:202-

226). Indian Village, Gulkana, Alaska. WRST History 

Files, “Gulkana” Folder.

“They had a big war there, down in Germany or somewhere... With 

the big war came soldiers, to build an airfield. They told us eight 

families to move. One house was burned down. We moved into a 

tent for two years and then down to Copper Center.”

 —Annie Ewen
In Under Mount Saint Elias: 

the History and Culture 

of the Yakutat Tlingit, 

anthropologist Frederica 

de Laguna writes that 

“The story of Yakutat is 

in many respects of the 

whole Gulf of Alaska from 

Cross Sound to the edge 

of Prince William Sound. 

This is not because the 

inhabitants of this narrow 

coastal strip were alike 

in speech and culture, 

or had a common origin; 

indeed, they spoke at 

least three or four different 

languages, and traced 

their origins to different 

homelands. But they 

became united through 

trade, war, potlaches, 

and intermarriage; and in 

the last chapters of their 

history, which is all that we 

at present can hope to 

reconstruct, they came to 

share a common destiny” 

(De Laguna 1972:17). 

Joseph Abraham (1867-

1917) in his song leader’s 

costume, ca. 1900. Ray 

W Moss Photograph 

Collection, 1907-1909. 

ASL-P11-076. 
38 38 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 39

Spruce and hemlock dominated the local forests along 

the coast. Yellow and red cedar could be found in the 

form of drift logs on the ocean beach. Before contact, 

trees were felled and canoes hollowed out by means of 

carefully controlled fires which charred the wood so that it 

could be adzed (or chipped) away. The tools men used to 

cut down trees were comprised chiefly of greenstone and 

green chert, especially for adz blades, which were lashed 

to the handles with sealskin thongs. Rituals were performed 

to observe the obtaining of these essential rocks, reflecting 

the vitality of wood to the Yakutat Tlingit. With the increase 

of American businesses, canneries and towns by the end of 

the 19th century, Yakutat Tlingit began to harvest trees for 

the commercial logging industry (De Laguna 1972: 414-415). 

Logging Crew in Forest near Yakutat, Alaska. Men stand by 

tree stumps in forest with saws wedges and sledge hammers; 

Situk Harry, Samson Harry, Dick Harry, Tom Cox, Olaf Abrams, 

Peter L. Jimmie Jackson, Alex, Dick Nelson, Charlie Gudson, 

and Bill Miton. Shoki Kayamori Photographs, ca 1912-1941. 

ASL-P55-125.

 39
40 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

At the end of the 19th century, harbor seal skins and seal oil had a commercial value, which furnished a major 

source of income to the Yakutat Tlingit. By the 1950s, the harbor seal’s nose was also ardently pursued for the 

bounty, placed by the federal government’s Bureau of Fisheries. In early days, seals were harpooned or clubbed. 

The Yakutat hunter wore sealskin as both disguise and to honor his prey. In 1891, U.S. Army Officer Frederick 

Schwatka observed a seal hunt, noting that “The Yakutats catch them by shrouding the bows of their craft with 

white cloth so as to resemble ice. In this way they are able to approach close enough to the seals to harpoon 

them.”... “I was told,” continued Schwatka, “that men in a canoe could get close to a seal by imitating its cry” (De 

Laguna 1972: 375). Seal hunters with a load of seals in a dugout Canoe. Shoki Kayamori Photograph. ca. 1912-

1941. ASL-P55-653.
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 41

During the Harriman 

Expedition in 1899, George 

Bird Grinnell witnessed a seal 

hunter return, “When the 

village is reached women 

help unload the canoe and 

carry the seals up the beach, 

while the men take the boat 

up above high-water mark” 

(De Laguna 1972: 376). 

According to De Laguna, 

“When the carcass of the 

animal has been brought 

to the beach, then the 

processing of these becomes 

almost exclusively the task of 

women” (De Laguna 1972: 

391). Men might work on the 

bones or teeth, but women 

prepare the sinew, and 

intestines. They prepared the 

flesh of the creatures for food, 

and their skins for clothing 

or other articles. Sea oil was 

also essential for preserving 

many kinds of foods and 

formed an important part 

of the diet. Seal oil was 

also used in a number of 

native medicines and was 

burned in stone lamps (De 

Laguna 1972: 398). Minnie 

Johnson Cutting Holes in raw 

Sealskin, 1952. McClellan 

photo. Frederica de Laguna 

Photograph Collection, 

ASL-P350-52-41-04.

“When the carcass of 

the animal has been 

brought to the beach, 

then the processing of 

these becomes almost 

exclusively the task of 

women.”

 —Frederica de Laguna
Native people living along the coast enjoyed a rich and varied diet. Often, it was the Native women who prepared 

a number of native foods and dishes that are still made today. The main staples were meat and fish, richly 

supplemented by eggs, plants, berries and the “beach food,” such as marine invertebrates and seaweed, of low 

tide. Many foods were subjected to long and complex treatments involving cutting, pulverizing, drying, smoking 

and fermentation. Procured foods were preserved for later consumption. The abundance of wild foods attracted 

settlement in the area (De Laguna 1972: 403). Minnie Johnson’s preserves including canned salmon, jarred salmon 

and salmon eggs, seal oil and meat, wild rhubarb, berries, clams, urchins and dried salmon from Yakutat Bay. 

Frederica de Laguna Photograph Collection. ASL-P350-52-5-20.

42 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 
By the turn of the 20th century, 

miners had come to the Wrangell 

Mountain region to prospect for gold 

and copper. Within two decades, 

the U.S. Geological Survey had 

established five mining districts, in 

which the growing industrial and 

financial sectors of the American 

economy fueled prospecting and 

mining activity. The districts included 

Chitina District, the Nizina District, the 

Nabesna District, the Chisana District, 

and the Bremner District. 

CHAPTER 2

MINING
44 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Long before Euro-American miners arrived to the Wrangells region, local Native groups utilized copper as a 

significant resource and trade good. In Under Mount Saint Elias, anthropologist Frederica de Laguna recounts a story 

in which the ancestors of the Yakutat Tlingit brought copper with them from the Interior, when they first settled along 

the Gulf Coast. Trade networks formed with exchanges of copper between Tlingit and Ahtna, possibly moving from 

the Nabesna via the Southern Tutchone on the headwaters of the Alsek River. Native copper was made into knives, 

awls, scrapers, small nails, arrowheads and other weapons. Ornaments such as bracelets, necklaces, pendants 

and rings were also produced from copper. Copper was said to have been beaten into plates and according to 

tradition, old people were believed to know “how to handle soft native copper to make it as hard as steel,” but the 

knowledge was lost over time. In 1940, a Native informant explained to De Laguna why they valued native copper: 

“Some places in the mountains you see green spots there; that is a sign of copper. We used to find pieces 3 feet 

long, and 1 inch think. Old natives dug for it. If you got a foot long piece you are a rich man and can buy 4 or 5 

slaves; you don’t have to do anything” (De Laguna 1972: 412-413). Ton Nugget of Native Copper on bed of Nugget 

Creek, 1903. WRST History Files, “Kuskulana Nugget Creek” Folder, 70. Original photo is located in the Miles Brothers 

Collection, Anchorage Museum.

44 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 
Some stampeders heading to the Canadian goldfields 

came by way of an “all-American” route. Hazards 

such as glaciers, braided rivers, and extreme cold 

prevented most from getting to their destination. 

Alternatively, a few prospectors sought paydirt from 

the Copper and Chitina river tributaries. Working 

streamside, miners filled wide, shallow pans with 

sand, gravel and water on their search for gold. Fred 

Stevenson Panning for Gold, Copper River. WRST 

History Files, “People” Folder, 858. Original photo is 

located at Valdez Museum, P1987.132.3.

William E. “Billy” James and Nels P. Nelson reached 

Chathenda Creek on May 13, 1913. Nelson walked 

about a hundred yards up a nearby stream, and tested 

the underlying gravel. To his surprise, his first pan yielded a 

dollar’s worth of gold. Staking a discovery claim, Nelson, 

in the tradition of placer miners everywhere, christened 

the stream “Bonanza” Creek. James and Nelson began 

sluicing Little Eldorado No. 1 on July 4. When news of 

the discovery reached the outside world in 1914, it soon 

elicited a rush of prospectors to the Chisana District 

(Bleakley 2005: 11-13). Chisana District, WRST History 

Files, “Chisana Bonanza Creek” Folder. Original photo is 

located in the Stephen Capps Collection, U.S. Geological 

Survey Photographic Library. 

Participants in the Chisana Gold Rush were often 

aging veterans of the Klondike rush. Some may have 

seen this stampede as a last grand adventure. Others 

viewed Chisana as their final opportunity to make 

a stake. Most stampeders spent the remainder of 

their lives in the Chisana District, eking out small but 

consistent incomes while continuously searching for 

that one last strike (Bleakley 2005: 7). Chisana District 

Bonanza Creek. Margraff’s Camp on Bonanza No. 10, 

1914. WRST History Files, “Chisana Bonanza Creek” 

Folder.
46 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Needing additional gear, Nels P. Nelson’s partner, Fred Best, returned to Dawson City from Chisana about the middle 

of July. While there, he provided the local newspaper with a current description of the strike. Best’s account in 1914 

of the Chisana Mining District electrified the Yukon, Alaska, and eventually much of the Pacific Northwest (Bleakley 

2005: 11-13). The ensuing stampede represented the last wave of Alaska’s great Gold Rush. “Chisana Stampeder 

(unidentified) on Trail, 1914.” WRST History Files, “Chisana-Other” Folder, 327. Original image is located in the 

Stanley-Mason Collection, Tacoma Public Library. 
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 47

The Cordova Daily Alaskan proclaimed the Chisana strike as the richest since the Klondike, provoking defections 

which virtually emptied the Nizina gold camps and even briefly jeopardized the operation of Kennecott’s copper 

complex (Cordova Daily Alaskan, July 18, 1913). Prospector off for the Wilds of Alaska,” ca. 1914. Outfit includes a 

rifle, pick, shovel, gold pan, waders.) WRST History Files, “Chisana Bonanza Creek” Folder, 257. Original photo is 

located in the Stanley-Mason Collection, Tacoma Public Library.
48 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Chisana miners extracted gold from the surrounding sediments by using a sluice box. A sluice box is essentially a 

man-made river channel with riffles set in the bottom. Miners placed the box in the stream to catch water-flow. 

When the gold-laden gavels were dumped into the upper end of the sluice, the flow of water carried the material 

down the length of the box. The lighter gravels or tailings would travel down the entire length of the sluice and then 

discharge into the river. The heavier gold material would quickly drop to the bottom of the box, where they became 

entrapped by the riffles. Once the riffles collected a large quantity of concentrated black sand, miners implemented 

a “cleanup,” which meant that the many tons of gravel had to be tediously panned. Gold Run, 1914. Note use of 

sluice fork (upright pitchfork in sluice box, middle-foreground) to catch larger stones. WRST History Files, “ChisanaOther” Folder, 337. Original photo is located in the Stanley-Mason Collection, Tacoma Public Library.
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 49

The sluice box method of separating the gold from the mud and muck required the use of gravity and a constant 

water flow. Chisana miners dammed nearby streams to contain a usable source of water. When opened, a 

boomer dam discharged a large volume of water, flushing away surface materials from the flood plain. It was then 

the back-breaking labor at the sluice box began. Because water was so vital to placer mining, seasonal droughts 

often had an adverse impact on the Wrangells’ gold miners. Boomer Dam Discharging, 1914. WRST History Files, 

“Chisana Bonanza Creek” Folder.
50 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 51

(Previous page, top) Norwegian Ole Berg placer mined at Dan Creek for several seasons before locating property 

in the Kuskulana drainage in 1907. Although staked as a copper prospect, it was the deposit’s high gold and silver 

content which ultimately drove its development (Bleakley 2006). In winter, hardy miners like Ole Berg thawed shafts 

through the frozen ground to the lucrative bedrock by building underground fires. Once the upper strata was 

thawed, it was removed and deeper fires started. This method was called “drift mining” in reference to the mining 

shafts that extended horizontally (or drifted) from the initial vertical excavation. Boulder Creek. Ole Berg (right). 

WRST History Files, “Dan Creek” Folder, 430.

(Previous page, bottom) Miners, such as those at Chititu Creek, quickly adopted a new technique to find gold, 

which thawed the permafrost without the need for fires. Hydrauliking used a strong spray of water to loosen and 

transport gold bearing gravels and soils to a processing facility. Water was redirected into an ever-narrowing 

channel, through a large canvas hose, then out a giant iron nozzle, called a monitor. The extremely high pressure 

stream was used to wash entire hillsides through enormous sluices. Hydraulic mining became the largest-scale form 

of placer mining and had a devastating effect on the Wrangell’s riparian environments. The Chititu Development 

Company worked the site at the confluence Chititu, Rex, and Whites Creeks, but by 1906 production had dropped. 

Hydraulic Mining on Chititu Creek, 1903. WRST History Files, “Chititu” Folder.

Stories told by coastal Natives of a “copper mountain” located in Alaska’s rugged inland region sparked tall-tales 

among the early traders and pioneers. The rising economic interest in copper by the turn of the century prompted 

the U.S. Army to send geologist Oscar Rohn up the Chitina River in the summer of 1899. Guided by Rohn’s reported 

findings, prospectors Clarence Warner and Jack Smith discovered Kennecott’s world-famous Bonanza copper 

deposit in 1900 (Kirchhoff 1993: 19-20). Future site of Kennecott Mill. WRST History Files, “Kennecott Millsite pre-1920” 

Folder, 1144.
52 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

In 1899, Clarence Warner and Jack Smith found the purist copper deposit in the world, situated along a depositional 

contact zone, where the light-gray marine rocks of the Chitistone Limestone cap the distinctive slopes of the 

Nikolai Greenstone, a formation that dominates much of the visual landscape south of the Wrangell Mountains. By 

1902, Stephen Birch, a young mining engineer and future president of Kennecott Copper Company, had invested 

$400,000 in development work at Bonanza (Kirchhoff 1993: 23). Adit (mine shaft opening, bottom left), 1902. WRST 

History Files, “Kennecott—Bonanza Mine” Folder, 517.
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 53

By the early twentieth century, copper was the coveted metal made increasingly valuable by America’s desire for 

electric power. With outside interests looming, claim to the Bonanza lode failed to remain in the hands of Warner 

and Smith. Through the legal “wheeling and dealing” efforts of Stephen Birch, mining claims were consolidated 

with the formation of the Kennecott Copper Company in 1906 (Graumann 1976: 6-7). Snowslide. WRST History 

Files, “Kennecott Millsite pre-1920” Folder, 742. Original image is located at the Washington State Historical Society, 

Tacoma, WA.
54 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 55

In 1902, Stephen Birch built the first structure at the Kennecott 

Mill site, a log cabin at National Creek, and broke a trail 

up the mountainside to the green-colored outcropping. 

Knowing he still needed to raise enormous capital to develop 

the Bonanza deposit, Birch lobbied two of the biggest players 

in American business, J. P. Morgan and the Guggenheims. 

Convincing potential investors, Stephen Birch merged the 

banking interests of Morgan with the mining and smelting 

interests of the Guggenheims. Jointly, they formed the 

Alaska Syndicate, which acquired a 40 percent interest in 

the Kennecott Copper Mines Company. The company 

reemerged in 1915 as the Kennecott Copper Corporation 

with Birch as president (Graumann 1976: 7). Early Kennecott. 

WRST History Files, “Kennecott Millsite pre-1920” Folder, 1097.
56 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Kennecott’s copper deposit 

was located high in a steepwalled mountain named 

Bonanza Ridge, which rose 

about three miles above the 

glacial moraine. Hard rock 

miners working at Kennecott’s 

mines—Bonanza, Jumbo, 

Mother Lode, and Erie—

had to blast and dig their 

way deep into the peaks to 

retrieve thousands of tons 

of copper ore. (Glacier, an 

open-pit mine, was an ore 

extension of Bonanza and 

worked only in the summer.) 

The Bonanza, Jumbo, Mother 

Lode and Erie mines were 

connected by tunnels. The 

Erie mine was perched on the 

northwest end of Bonanza 

Ridge, overlooking Root 

Glacier. Erie Mine. WRST 

History Files, “Kennecott—Erie 

Mine” Folder, 530. 
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 57

The core of a mountain can be a very dangerous place to work. Cave-ins, explosions, toxic fumes, and flooding 

injured and killed hundreds of miners. Once blasted from the mountains depths, miners sent the copper ore to the 

mill where mill employees separated the copper from other minerals through crushing and pulverizing the rocks, 

and later leaching. Like any factory worker of the day, Kennecott miners worked as wage laborers, and because 

hard rock mining took vast capital and heavy equipment, vertically integrated businesses like Kennecott typified 

the incorporation of the mining industry in Alaska. Sanford Sjogren Drilling, 1937. WRST History Files, “Ethel Lecount 

Album-Kennecott” Folder.
58 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

At the foot of Bonanza Ridge sat the conglomerated milltown of Kennicott. Kennicott constituted a cobbled 

collection of employee cottages, recreational facilities, carpenter shops and power plants resembling a kind of 

fairytale industrial village. Its stacked, fourteen-story mill building represented a time when Gilded Age businessmen 

lorded over the land. Midnight looking down the Glacier. J. McGauock WRST History Files, “Kennecott Millsite post1920” Folder, 740.

(Facing page, bottom) In 1928, three miners—Lee Ramer, his brother Peyton “Pete” Ramer, and Charles Nelson—

located the “Grand Prize” vein in the mountains above Golconda Creek in the Bremner Mining District, located in 

the Chugach Mountains, approximately thirty miles southwest of McCarthy. Encouraged by the discovery, Lee and 

Pete attracted investors and formed the Bremner Gold Mining Company in 1931. The company benefited from the 

passage of the Gold Reserve Act in 1934 which set the selling price of gold at $35 per ounce and created a stable 

market for mining enterprises. Their claims were ultimately acquired by Asa Baldwin and incorporated into his Yellow 

Band group (White, 2000: 28-30.) Bremner Crew, 1931. Bertha Ramer Collection, McCarthy-Kennicott Historical 

Museum, McCarthy, Alaska. 

58 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS
Veteran of the Chisana stampede, Carl Whitham formed 

the Nabesna Mining Corporation in 1929. Though promising, 

the location of Whitham’s claims—on the north side of the 

Wrangells, in the foothills of the Mentasta Mountains—made 

access to the outcroppings difficult. In order to develop 

his property, Whitham had to ship all necessary milling 

and mining equipment from Seattle via Alaska Steamship 

Company to Cordova, and then freight the equipment on 

the Copper River & Northwestern Railway to Chitina. From 

there, he and six or seven men hauled loads up to the 

Richardson Highway to the Gakona Roadhouse. A team 

of horses and a tractor pulled bobsleds over the Eagle Trail 

to Slana and then down the Nabesna Trail for nearly one 

hundred miles. The Alaska Road Commission eventually 

constructed the 45 mile-long Nabesna Road between 1931 

and 1934. By 1940, the mine had shipped 73,000 tons of 

ore valued at $1,869,396. The Nabesna mine operated 

until World War II restrictions shut down Alaska’s gold mining 

industry (Stanley 2002:71). Bill Fancke was the assayer at 

Nabesna. WRST History Files, “Nabesna Mine” Folder, 1493.
Life as a prospector in Wrangells was extremely hard work. To the optimistic prospector, the five mining districts 

represented potential wealth and great adventure. But the region’s brutal elements and topography could be a 

deathtrap for unprepared mineral seekers. Many froze to death, starved or drowned. Copper proved to be the 

big bonanza, while gold strikes at Chisana never turned into the motherlode prospectors had hoped. Some miners 

found success in the Nizina, where pockets of gold were discovered. Although finding little in mineral wealth, a few 

determined prospectors found solace in the unique lifeway they created within the Wrangell’s mining landscapes 

(Ringsmuth 2012: 101). Bert Palmer in Cabin on Kotsina River. WRST History Files, “Kotisina” Folder, 691.

"A miner didn't view his life as somehow extraordinary. He considered his work the 

normal course of his life."

 —Jim Edwards
Integral to profitable economic 

encounters and exchanges in the 

Wrangells was the development of 

a fluid transportation network. First 

Alaska Native hunters, fishers and 

traders created a far-reaching trail 

system that reflected their knowledge 

of the region’s mountains, rivers 

and glaciers. New arrivals utilized 

the energy of horses and their own 

muscle power. Interest in the area’s 

mineral wealth attracted corporate 

industrialists, whose capacity 

for innovation and technology 

produced one of the most advanced 

transportation systems in Alaska, but 

was still at times, no match for the 

Wrangells’ natural obstacles. 

CHAPTER 3

TRANSPORTATION
62 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

In 1897-1898 a handful of prospectors remained in Copper Center, making a living by fishing, trapping and trading 

with the nearby Ahtna natives. They also provided transportation across the Copper River at the point where the ’98 

stampeders accessed the “all-American” route to the Klondike (Hunt 1996: 153). Copper Center (river boat) 1898. 

WRST History Files, “Copper Center” Folder.
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 63

The trail networks that prospectors used to access and traverse the Wrangell 

Mountains formed originally as Ahtna, Alutiiq, Eyak, and Tlingit subsistence and 

trade routes that extended from interior sites to coastal areas, such as Cook 

Inlet, Prince William Sound and the Gulf Coast. After 1910, a new trading pattern 

developed as a result of the gold rush. Trade stations along the Valdez Trail, like 

Copper Center, emerged as the mercantile centers for both Natives and nonNatives working in the region (Hunt 1996:23). The Prospector Welcome at Copper 

River Roadhouse. WRST History Files, “Lower Tonsina” Folder, 28.

Alaska Natives also took advantage of the increasing demand for 

transportation services. By 1901, Ahtna leader Doc Billum operated the Siwash 

Ferry that crossed the Lower Tonsina as a successful commercial business. 

“Copper River, Opposite Mouth of the Tonsina.” WRST History Files, “Ahtna” 

Folder, 731. Original photo located in the Miles Brother Collection, Valdez 

Museum, P1986.117.56. 
64 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 65

(Preceding page, top) Boosters 

called the Interior river corridors of 

the Copper and Tanana “natural 

highways.” In reality, swift currents, 

deceptively deep channels and ice 

floes greatly inhibited movement 

into the Wrangell region, making 

travel along the rivers not only 

difficult but dangerous because 

of the strength of the currents 

and braided channels. In fact, 

prospectors who wished to 

ascend the Copper River had to 

pull their boats by hand, which 

by all accounts was a laborious 

task (Bleakley 2006-Forgotten). 

Prospectors lining boat up 

Copper River. WRST History Files, 

“Transportation” Folder, 1237.

(Preceding page, bottom) Between 

1907 and 1911, the Copper River 

& Northwestern Railway (CR&NW)

operated a fleet of steamboats on the 

Copper and Chitina rivers to support 

railroad construction and mining 

operations. The Steamboat fleet on the 

Copper River included the Chitina, the 

Nizina, and Tonsina. Copper River Fleet, 

1910. WRST History Files, “Steamboats” 

Folder.

The CR&NW Railway route spanned a distance of 192 miles 

from the Bonanza deposit in the Wrangell Mountains to the 

coastal town of Cordova. In order to get the ore to markets, 

the CR&NW Railway would need to overcome nearly impossible 

obstacles. Former railway worker and copper prospector Martin 

Radovan wrote that the railway “crossed the mossy swamps of 

the broad [Copper] river delta and passed for miles over the 

solid ice of the great coastal glaciers, and then carved its way 

through the rocky cliffs of the lower canyon” (Ringsmuth 2012). 

Railway Construction, 1909. WRST History Files, “CR&NW Railway” 

Folder, 1226.

“The railway crossed the mossy swamps of the 

broad [Copper] river delta and passed for miles 

over the solid ice of the great coastal glaciers, and 

then carved its way through the rocky cliffs of the 

lower canyon.” 

 —Martin Radovan 
Construction of the CR&NW Railway began in 1907 from the fishing town of Cordova. In four years, railroad crews 

chiseled roadbed through mountains and bridged numerous rivers. They cut coastal hemlock for rail ties. Seventypound steel was used for the Cordova-Chitina line and from Chitina sixty-pound steel was used to reach Kennecott 

(Hunt 1996: 168). At the peak of the railroad construction 6,000 men labored on the project. On March 12, 1911, 

the CR&NW Railway joined the copper mines with the coast at the enormous cost of $23 million. “C.R.&.W.RY. 

Construction, Mile 134, May 26, 1910.” WRST History Files, “CR&NW Railway” Folder, 1248.

66 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 
In 1911, Alfred H. Brooks, head 

of the U.S. Geological Survey in 

Alaska, called the completion of 

the CR&NW Railway “the most 

important advance made in the 

history of Alaska transportation since 

steamboat service was established 

on the Yukon” (Brooks 1911:23). 

Not surprisingly, engineers consider 

the CR&NW Railway a modern 

marvel (Rozell 2012). The great 

steel Kuskulana Bridge, built in 1910, 

continues to be traversed by vehicle 

traffic today. Kuskulana Trestle, 1910. 

WRST History Files, “CR&NW Railway” 

Folder.

“Completion of the 

CR&NW Railway was “the 

most important advance 

made in the history of 

Alaska transportation 

since steamboat service was 

established on the Yukon.”

 —Alfred H. Brooks 

CHAPTER 3: TRANSPORTATION 67

“Completion of the 

CR&NW Railway was “the 

most important advance 

made in the history of 

Alaska transportation 

since steamboat service was 

established on the Yukon.”

 —Alfred H. Brooks 
68 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Outside of those working at Kennecott’s railroad camps and mines, Alaska residents resented the level of control the 

Guggenheims and Morgan wielded over the Territory. The Syndicate’s purchase of the Alaska Steamship Company, 

the Ballinger-Pinchot affair, and the battle for Keystone Canyon between CR&NW Railway and the Valdez-based 

Home Railway were significant turning points. Alaska leaders, such as Judge James Wickersham, began to rail 

against the Syndicate’s transportation monopoly. In response, the Syndicate pulled funds for schools and roads. 

Kennecott encouraged its employees to vote in important elections to derail Home Rule legislation—to the extent 

of transporting them to polling stations from their remote work sites (Hawley 2014:73-74). Alaska’s embattled 

relationship with Kennecott would later serve as a warning to Alaska’s future lawmakers. Their desire to prevent 

“another Kennecott” was, in part, the inspiration of the “Natural Resources” article in Alaska’s Constitution (Cole 

2004: 73). “Camp 42.” WRST History Files, “CR&NW Railway” Folder, 387.
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 69

As the CR&NW Railway 

became a significant 

transportation corridor it 

brought to the region new 

networks of exchange. 

Inventive adaptations 

appeared along the railway. 

Even after the CR&NW 

Railway pulled out in 1938, 

residents made use of the rails 

by modifying automobiles 

and trucks. Hand-powered 

Railroad Speeder, 1909. WRST 

History Files, “CR&NW Railway” 

Folder, 1213.

(Below) Frank Iverson served as a general foreman during 

construction of the CR&NW Railway. He homesteaded 

west of McCarthy about 1917, where he and his wife 

Anna started the McCarthy Dairy during the 1920s. They 

were one of five farms that supplied vegetables to 

Kennecott. Frank Iverson, McCarthy Farmer on Buda Car, 

1930s. Bill Herman. WRST History Files, “CR&NW Railway” 

Folder, 62.
70 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Nature presented constant 

barriers along the railway 

route. Heavy snow often 

delayed transportation 

between Cordova 

and Chitina. In 1909, a 

snowstorm engulfed a work 

train for 21 days, forcing 

the 160 men aboard to dig 

their way from beneath “a 

mountain of snow” (Hunt 

1996:173). “Snowed.” WRST 

History Files, “CR&NW 

Railway” Folder, 399.

Nature’s fury also took the 

form of huge boulders, 

torrents of swirling water 

and treacherous ice 

floes. Copper River floods 

took their toll on the CR& 

NW Railway’s trestle that 

spanned the Copper River 

near Chitina. Annual floods 

often washed away the 

bridge, which had to be 

rebuilt in the spring. IceDamaged Trestle, 1909. 

WRST History Files, “CR&NW 

Railway” Folder, 1232.
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 71

With the completion of 

the Railway, the primary 

distribution center for 

the Copper Basin shifted 

from Valdez to Cordova, 

as an enormous volume 

of supplies, equipment 

and workers moved into 

the Chitina Valley, and 

copper ore was shipped 

out to Tacoma, Washington 

for smelting (White 2000: 

26). At the time, pundits 

expected the mining and 

transportation industries 

to attract 5,000 to 10,000 

people to the fishing town. 

Still, Cordova’s first mayor 

George Hazelet, wondered 

if unrestrained growth was 

a good thing, confessing to 

a reporter in 1909, that the 

1,500 newcomers were plenty, "No greater misfortunes could befall the town than a large influx of people before it is 

warranted by the permanent development of the country" (Hunt 1990). “Loading Copper Ore at Cordova, Alaska.” 

WRST History Files, “CR&NW Railway” Folder, 397. 

The discovery and success 

of Kennecott’s copper 

development and the 

subsequent construction of 

the Railway reinvigorated 

interest in the mineral 

prospects of the Copper 

Basin. Miners explored 

many nearby streams, 

including Chititu Creek. 

After fits and starts, Chititu 

yielded profitable quantities 

of gold, thanks in part to 

the CR&NW Railway that 

facilitated the movement 

of heavy mining equipment 

and reduced transportation 

costs for companies working 

in outlying districts. Horse 

Drawn Railway Track, 1903. 

WRST History Files, “Chititu” 

Folder, 1121.
72 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Competing newspapers 

published sensational reports 

about the transportation routes 

to the Chisana goldfields. 

According to the Chitina 

Leader, rushers from Fairbanks 

could “travel light” over the 

government trail to Chitina and 

take the train to McCarthy. 

Outfits there, then took pack 

horses over the Skolai Pass to 

White River. From there the 

crossing of a “small divide,” a 

little over 20 miles, placed outfits 

on the Chisana River (Hunt 

1996:103). As a consequence 

of such promotions, far too 

many prospectors, who 

approached the goldfields 

from McCarthy, crossed the 

Chisana-Nizina Glacier Trail 

woefully unprepared. Summit 

Roadhouse, Chisana-Nizina 

Glacier Trail, 1914. WRST History 

Files, “Trails” Folder, 889.

At the time of the Chisana stampede 

in 1914, hopeful prospectors traveled 

from Cordova, arriving at McCarthy 

on the northbound train. They then 

hauled their supplies for over one 

hundred miles, along the Chitistone 

River to Skolai Pass, crossing raging 

streams, glaciers, and a trail so 

treacherous that one miner called it 

nothing more than a “goat trail.” “On 

the Scolai [Skolai] and White River trail, 

Alaska.” WRST History Files, “Trails” 

Folder, 887. Original photo located in 

the Zacharias Collection, Alaska State 

Library, PCA 178-2.
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 73

Besides horses, dogs provided an important mode of transportation for 

people who made their living in the Wrangell Mountain region. At that 

time, acquiring a wolf was believed to be important for breeding, as it 

eliminated the effects of inbreeding and created more robust and resilient 

animals. As Aileen Gallaher explained, “a fur trapper needs strong dogs 

for his team” (Gallaher & Gallaher 2004: 34). In front of the roadhouse at 

Gakona, Alaska. Al Norwood, Herb Hyland, Tommy Hyke, Eugnia Borwn, 

Arne Sundt. Samme Gallaher Darnall Collection. Courtesy of Geoffrey 

Bleakley Collection, Makawao, HI.

(Below) Besides the privately constructed CR&NW Railway, the federally 

run Alaska Road Commission (ARC) facilitated the movement of people 

and supplies into the Wrangell region. By 1910, ARC was engrossed with 

its premier project: construction of a spur trail from Gulkana on the ValdezEagle route to the new mining camps of Fairbanks. Calling attention to 

the ARC early on was the promising mineral regions of the Copper and 

Nabesna country that lay to the east of the Valdez road (Naske 1986: 1). 

“Truck.” WRST History Files, “Alaska Road Commission” Folder, 1072.
74 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

The powerful Nizina River created a significant obstacle to prospectors hoping to access the gold streams at Dan 

Creek and the surrounding copper belt of the Nizina Mining District. In 1923, renewed speculation and corporate 

investment in the Nizina Mining District prompted Alaska Road Commission engineers to redesign a permanent 

bridge, made with a steel and a concrete foundation, which could withstand spring breakup, as well as the Nizina 

River’s notorious shifting channels (Historic Structures Inventory, 1991). Nizina Bridge. Bertha Ramer Collection, 

McCarthy-Kennicott Historical Museum, McCarthy, Alaska. 

The Alaska Road Commission constructed an 

aviation field and a four mile tractor road to 

connect mining sites at Bremner Pass in 1938. 

The ARC also constructed airstrips at McCarthy, 

Chisana, Nabesna, Copper Center, Chistochina, 

and on a flat site near the headwaters of the 

Chitina River. Sylvia Baldwin Collection. Courtesy 

of Paul White.
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 75

Merritt “Kirk” Kirkpatrick, along with several Cordova business leaders with connections to the Bremner Gold 

Mining Company, started Cordova Air Service in 1934. Kirk’s Kinner Bird provided air support to miners transporting 

construction material from McCarthy into Bremner during the winter of 1934. Bertha Ramer Collection, McCarthyKennicott Historical Museum, McCarthy, Alaska. 

In order to facilitate the 

transportation of construction 

material and personnel from 

the CR&NW Railway terminus to 

the Bremner mine, the Ramers 

began buying up real estate 

in early 1934 from McCarthy 

homesteader, Alfred Doze, whose 

land surrounded the McCarthy 

airstrip. The Bremner Gold 

Mining Company briefly owned 

the McCarthy air strip and likely 

built the airplane hangar near 

the historic Cordova Air Service 

cabin. The brothers supported 

Harold Gillam’s early flying career 

and were early investors in Merritt 

Kirkpatrick’s Cordova Air Service. 

Lee and Pete Ramer, McCarthy, 

Alaska, ca. 1931. Bertha Ramer 

Collection, McCarthy-Kennicott 

Historical Museum, McCarthy, 

Alaska. 
76 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Kennecott’s trams were built to transport copper 

ore from the mine to the mill. But miners utilized the 

buckets on occasion, riding up to the mine. Others 

used dog teams for quick mobility. Prior to air carrier 

service, dog teams delivered the mail. Routes 

radiated from population hubs throughout the 

Wrangells, connecting the most isolated individuals 

with the rest of the world. Sprouting up around the 

dog team mail carriers was an elaborate business 

system from sled makers to sellers of dried salmon to 

feed the dogs. “Tram and Dog Team near Bonanza 

Ridge.” WRST History Files, “Trams” Folder. Original 

photo located at the McCarthy-Kennicott Historical 

Museum.

Likely for safety reasons, Kennecott’s management 

restricted dog sleds at the milltown. A sign near the 

edge of the baseball field announced to new arrivals, 

“No Dog Sleds Beyond This Point.” Still, McCarthyite 

Oscar Watsjold, who attended school at Kennecott, 

remembered hitching his dog to a doghouse by the 

glacier “and when school was out, we’d [he and his 

dog] go back to McCarthy” (KKOHP 1991-Watsjold: 

7). When the railroad closed in 1938, dog teams 

became an important mode of transportation for local 

residents. Ramer Dog Team, 1930s. Bertha Ramer 

Collection, McCarthy-Kennicott Historical Museum, 

McCarthy, Alaska. 
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 77

From 1907-1911, the Alaska Syndicate invested $25 million in the development of the Kennecott Mine, and 

approximately 80 percent of the funds were spent in the construction of the railway. The exorbitant expense, 

however, was worth it. On April 8, 1911, the first ore train from Kennecott hauled $250,000 of 70 percent copper ore. 

In 1916, the peak year for production, the mines produced copper ore valued at $32.4 million. In less than 30 years, 

the railway shipped out more than 4.5 million tons of ore. Kennecott produced over $200 million in copper, with at 

least half realized in net profits. When Kennecott exhausted the high-grade copper sources and abandoned the mill 

in 1938, the CR&NW Railway closed within a few weeks, causing populations in Chitina, Kennecott and McCarthy 

to dwindle (White 2000: 26-29). Kennecott Millsite, 1920. Hubrick Photo. WRST History Files, “Kennecott Millsite pre1920” Folder, 570.

When Kennecott exhausted the high-grade copper sources and abandoned the mill in 

1938, the Copper River & Northwestern Railway closed within a few weeks, causing 

populations in Chitina, Kennecott and McCarthy to dwindle. 

 
The Copper River trestle at Chitina washed out for the last time in 1939. With Kennecott’s closure of the mines, and 

the pull-out of the CR&NW Railway in 1938, the trestle was not rebuilt. The only way to cross the river was either by 

small boats, or by cable and “boson’s chair” (shown here) until the Copper River Bridge was rebuilt at Chitina in 

1971. Stan Bigos at Chitina Tram Car #1. 1950. Courtesy of Charles “Bob” Leitzell.

78 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 
 79

The completion of the Copper River & 

Northwestern Railway, the introduction 

of communication and legal services, 

and the discovery of new mining 

prospects and the establishment of 

the US Geological Survey stimulated 

commercial enterprise. As a result, a 

variety of people with differing pursuits, 

met and interacted through the 

Wrangell region. Camps transformed 

into communities, the mining industry 

professionalized, residents coveted 

fashionable commodities, and new 

businesses materialized, which, 

together, integrated the Wrangells 

into a web of American capitalism. 

Linkages to Western cultures, however, 

transformed traditional lifeways and 

brought diseases that changed Native 

CHAPTER 4

cultures in the Wrangells forever.

COMMERCE 

AND

GOVERNMENT 

SERVICES
80 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Observing American newcomers, 

who were celebrating the Fourth of 

July in downtown Chitina, is Chief 

Nicolai’s youngest brother, Eskilida, 

who succeeded his brother Hanagita 

as head of the Lower Ahtna. Eskilida 

divided his time between his village 

Tsenghaax on the Copper River 

opposite the mouth of the Chitina 

River and subsistence sites at Strelna (Staghael Na’) and the mouth of 

the Tebay River (Naghael Na’). In 

his lifetime, Eskilida witnessed the 

growth of urban centers, the rise of 

industrialization and mechanization, 

and the commodification of natural 

resources that his people had 

subsisted on since time immemorial 

(Bleakley 2006). Chief Eskilita at 

Chitina, July 4, 1917. WRST History 

Files, “Ahtna” Folder.

(Facing page, bottom) The Spruce 

Point Roadhouse on the Nizina 

River served as temporary staging 

areas for portaging supplies along 

well traveled trails that connected 

prospectors to potential claims. 

Spruce Point was a midway point 

between Dan Creek and Glacier 

Creek and could be traveled on foot 

in a day. “Spruce Point” Roadhouse, 

McCarthy-Chitina Trail, 1915. WRST 

History Files, “Nizina” Folder, 816. 

Original photo located in the Stanley 

Collection, Alaska State Library, PCA 

184-118.

80 
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 81

In 1900, Congress authorized 

the U.S. Army Signal Corps to 

begin laying a system of cables 

and telegraph lines in Alaska, 

known as the Washington-Alaska 

Military Cable and Telegraph 

System (WAMCATS). For the first 

time, Alaska was temporally 

linked to the continental U.S., as 

well as to the rest of the world. 

In 1903, the Signal Corps began 

construction of a WAMCATS line 

along the Valdez-to-Eagle trail. 

This made the Valdez trail one 

of the most important access 

routes to the Alaska Interior. 

WAMCATS Station, 1903. WRST 

History Files, “Chistochina” 

Folder.
82 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 83

(Previous page) To serve prospectors and other business entrepreneurs, the U.S. Geological Survey produced reports 

that contained “useful information” in “untechnical language.” The federal government’s relationship with private 

investors cultivated a new field known as ‘economic geology.’ Implementing the new role of economic geology 

were USGS geologists Walter C. Mendenhall and Frank C. Schrader whose brief report on the new Chititu Creek 

district in 1903 contributed to a small, yet ultimately failed stampede, which historian Geoff Bleakley described 

as one of the “forgotten mining camps of the Wrangell region” (Mendenhall and Schrader 1903: 59-62; BleakleyShadow 2006). “Chititu Camp, 1903.” WRST History Files, “Chititu” Folder, 1118.

Some of the first businessmen in the area were the Fagerburg brothers, who ran a small store at the mining camp 

at Nizina. In 1911, the Fagerburg brothers constructed the Blackburn Roadhouse, a two-story structure built with 

logs and milled wood. At the time, it was considered the “biggest log structure in the district” (Chitina Leader, July 

15, 1911). When word spread of the Chisana strike in 1914, a rush ensued that drained the Blackburn population. 

Because the railroad stopped at McCarthy and not Blackburn, stampeders stayed in McCarthy and made nearly 

all their purchases from McCarthy’s merchants. McCarthy, then, survived the Chisana gold rush, while the one-time 

promising town of Blackburn shriveled (Kirchhoff 1993: 42). Blackburn City, 1914. John Byram Collection WRST History 

Files, “Blackburn” Folder. 
84 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Boosters, hoping to attract investment in and settlers to the Wrangell region, proclaimed that the area was suitable 

for agriculture. Although farms such as the Tibb’s Farm located along the railway in Chitina were assured easy, 

inexpensive transit to market, the short growing season and early frosts made farming economically risky, which 

forced some farmers to double as fur raisers (Hunt 1996: 208). “Tibbs Farm, Chitina Alaska.” WRST History Files, 

“Chitina” Folder, 7354.
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 85

For the most part, the wild side of mining communities was absent from Chisana’s growing population. Still, aged 

miners frequented at least one gambling house, and as one stampeder observed, “it is no trick to get all the booze 

you want” (Hunt 1996: 110-111). The Gambling House in Chisana City. “Cigars and Tobacco.” WRST History Files, 

“Chisana City” Folder, 47. Original photo located in the Zacharias Collection, Alaska State Library, PCA 178-99.

Token. WRST History Files, "Chisana Other" Folder.
86 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

An account from 1914 reported that Chisana maintained all the necessary institutions of small-town America: 350 

cabins, two restaurants, two barber shops, one drug store, one Red Cross nurse, one jail, and seven petitions out for 

saloon licenses (Hunt 1996: 110). “Miner’s Home Bar.” WRST History Files, “Chisana City” Folder, 115.
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 87

As “respectable” women took up residence in 

Chisana, contemporary observers saw it as a sign of 

camp progress and permanence. By spring 1914, 

twenty-three women lived in Chisana. Moreover, 

commerce accompanied women to the camps, 

especially giving a boost to clothing and other 

general merchandise businesses (Hunt 1996: 110). 

“Shushana Café.” WRST History Files, “Chisana City” 

Folder, 116.

Airmail, 1934. WRST History Files, "Chisana-Other" folder.
Businesses in the Wrangells utilized, almost extensively, the energy of horses. Initially, pack horses and sleds 

transported the materials and provisions required to equip Kennecott’s mill site until the Copper River & Northwestern 

Railway permitted operation of a supply train (Graumann 1976: 15-16). Horse power was commodified by 

commercial freighting services for the conveyance of supplies to mining districts such as Chisana. Later, horses 

facilitated hunting expeditions, as the primary mode for transporting hunt guides and their clients into the Chitina 

and White River region. Horse on Snowshoes. WRST History Files, “Transportation” Folder, 1044. Original photo located 

at the McCarthy-Kennicott Historical Museum, B7-32.

88 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 
Kennecott Copper Corporation 

represented the rationalization, 

scientific and managerial 

professionalization of Alaska’s 

mining industry. The company 

sought the expertise of universitytrained engineers and geologists 

to determine where and how to 

build mines in order to efficiently 

and profitably extract copper. 

The practical knowledge of the 

“old-timers” became outdated, 

which marginalized the so-called 

“little-guy” and transformed 

the way people worked in the 

Wrangells. Office Force and 

Engineers, Kennicott Mines Co, 

Kennicott Alaska. PS Hunt Photo. 

WRST History Files, “Kennecott 

Millsite pre-1920” Folder, 765.

Tony Dimond (on the far right) 

mined for gold along Young 

Creek. Finding none, he joined 

the Thomas Donohoe law firm in 

Valdez. After becoming Alaska’s 

non-voting delegate in Congress, 

Dimond pressed for regular air mail 

service in Alaska. While arguing 

before the U.S. House Appropriation 

Committee, Dimond used his 

experience as a Wrangell Mountain 

miner to stress the importance of 

mail to people living and working 

in remote areas. “I remember back 

in 1905, or thereabouts, the great 

thrill of pleasure we all had in the 

camp when the first mail came in,” 

recalled Dimond. Dimond assured 

the committee, “Air transportation, 

and particularly the transportation 

of mail by air, is here to stay” 

(Cordova Daily Times, 1934). Tony 

Dimond at Mining Camp. WRST 

History Files, “Young Creek” Folder, 

1022. Original photo located at the 

Valdez Museum, P.1987.132.5.
90 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 91
92 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

(Previous spread) Although miners and bush pilots drew public attention as the “face of the Wrangells” working 

population, from behind the scenes lawyers and other businessmen paved the way for the growth of commercial 

networks. Such a figure was Cordova attorney Thomas M. Donohoe (likely seated at head of table)—a professional 

with the means “to facilitate the business side of things” (Griese 2005:176). In 1920, the partnership of Donohoe & 

Dimond created the foremost law firm in the Alaska’s Third Judicial District. Donohoe served as attorney and financial 

advisor to regional aviators such as Harold Gillam and Bob Reeve. He was the public notary who signed the Nabesna 

Mining Corporation’s incorporation papers in 1929, and by 1937, served on the company’s Board of Directors. In 

addition, Donohoe, along with Peyton Ramer and Lee Ramer, formed the Bremner Gold Mining Company on 

October 2, 1931 (Ringsmuth 2015:35-36). Tom Donohoe, Dinner Party, Cordova History Museum, 73-51-292.

(Above) Chitina served as a regional hub for mining, trading and guiding. Over time, Chitina gained government 

and business amenities, including a school for local Native children, various mercantile stores, and a hotel—Chitina’s 

Commercial Hotel—operated as Jack Palmer’s Place during the community’s heyday. As radio reached the region 

and air travel arrived with Gillam Airways, Chitina became linked to wider commercial networks and systems of 

communication and exchange. “Main Street, Chitina, Alaska.” WRST History Files, “Chitina” Folder, 352.
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 93

Chitina boomed as the CR&NW Railway arrived in 1910. The onset of the railway attracted entrepreneurs who 

established commercial businesses. Chitina also served as an important junction between the rail towns like 

McCarthy and Kennecott and the government constructed Richardson Road, which created efficient movement 

for services such as mail delivery. A wagon from Valdez met the train in Chitina, picked up mail, and delivered it 

along the road to Fairbanks. Tourism businesses also benefited from the new linkages, for commercial operators 

picked up passengers in Chitina in wagons—then cars—for tours that included sightseeing over Thompson Pass. 

Commercial Hotel, Chitina, Alaska. WRST History Files, “Chitina” Folder, 1088.
94 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

(Below) McCarthy, in many ways, reflected the social, economic and cultural norms of any small town in rural 

America. McCarthy supported several newspapers, including the McCarthy Weekly News, published sporadically 

by different owners from 1917 to 1927. In the 1920s, the town’s population peaked at 127. Additionally, a number 

of commercial establishments also served much of Kennecott’s 500 population. Besides stores, saloons, and other 

prospering businesses, prostitution was also active in McCarthy. Many of the prostitutes who lived on “the Row,” 

an alley near McCarthy Creek, represented some of the most influential business people in the community and 

supported the flow of commerce with their power to purchase luxury commodities, such as nice dresses (Hunt 1996: 

186). Russ Dow papers, Archives and Special Collections, Consortium Library, University of Alaska Anchorage, uaahmc-0396-14a-230.

(Left) Much of the working life at Kennecott 

was spent deep in the mines, at the leach 

plant or the deafening machine shop. Thus, 

employees and their families often brought 

with them luxury goods that provided joy 

and comfort when not working. Although 

some items were purchased at the Company 

Store, most goods were ordered from the 

Outside. Eleanor Tjosevig Eidemiller recalled 

that when she and her family made trips 

to Seattle, they returned to Kennecott with 

“nice things.” According to Eidemiller, 

“We would come home with clothes and 

books and records and other little things 

that added to our comfort and enjoyment” 

(KKOHP 1991-Eidemiller: 11). Similarly, James 

McGavock recalled that employees ordered 

items like clothes from a mail order house 

like Sears Roebuck (KKOHP-Lamb and 

McGavock: 18). Messhall at Bonanza. WRST History Files, “Kennecott—Bonanza Mine” Folder, 631.

94 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 95

The establishment of the salmon 

canneries in Yakutat and Cordova 

was part of a larger pattern of 

commercialized salmon packing 

that occurred throughout Alaska 

and the Pacific Slope. By the end 

of the 19th century, new economic 

conditions had significantly 

altered the traditional relationship 

between human consumers 

and the salmon in the Wrangells 

region. The reciprocal relationship 

between humans and nature in 

the commercial fishery had faded. 

Capitalism was now the single most 

important force driving activities 

that affected the salmon. Whereas 

Native fishers had traditionally 

harvested for local use, limiting 

takes to moderate catches, the 

industry fishermen had considerably 

fewer cultural or economic 

constraints, and as a result, 

excessive catches and wastefulness 

plagued the early years of the 

commercial fishery. Men in knee deep water gaffing fish, Yakutat Bay. Shoki Kayamori Photograph. ca. 1912-

1941. Alaska State Library, ASL-P55-752. 

Although salmon fishing remained 

an important subsistence activity, 

Yakutat Tlingit gained employment 

in the salmon canneries as skilled 

commercial fishermen. In 1949, Icy 

Bay fishermen Harry Bremner told 

Frederica de Laguna about how 

his ancestors had navigated across 

Mount Saint Elias to the coast. “[The 

mountain] was a compass for the 

people so they wouldn’t get lost 

... Then they finally found Icy Bay, 

Yahtse,” the site of a significant 

salmon fishery (Cruikshank 2005: 

34). Harry Bremner making a net, 

August 28, 1954. Frederica de Laguna 

Photograph Collection. ASL-P350-52-

copy-09-sup.
96 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Alaska Natives adapted 

to American capitalism by 

responding with their own brand 

of consumerism. Native people 

designed objects such as small 

carvings, cribbage boards, 

baskets, snowshoes, moccasins, 

fur hats, boots and gloves for 

miners, trappers and explorers, 

who created a market for 

Native art. Alaska Natives were 

able to capitalize on traditional 

commodities as a way to earn 

money for western goods and 

supplies in order to care for their 

families. Still, the sale of cultural 

items to the encroaching 

society was often times a 

reluctance and painful choice.

By 1919 adaptability became 

even more difficult as Alaska 

Natives faced challenges 

caused by the Spanish flu 

pandemic, carried north by 

ocean transversing ships. 

At the time, Alaska Natives 

faced a stark choice: adapt 

or perish. Census figures reflect 

a catastrophic population 

decline which pushed Tlingit 

and Eyak to the edge of a 

demographic cliff. By the 1930s, 

white Americans constituted 

the majority of the population. 

Tlingit leader Ishmael Hope 

suggests that, instead of 

straddling two worlds, his people 

actually lived in two worlds. “It 

was as if they had two world 

views at the same time, rather 

than one pushing out the other 

to make room,” explained Hope 

(Metcalfe 2014:15). “Friends of 

Bygone days.” Jim Kardeeto in 

Native costume standing by four 

carved posts from Shark House. 

Shoki Kayamori Photograph. ca. 

1912-1941. ASL-P55-146.

98 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Trained as a civil engineer, Otto A. 

Nelson came to Alaska in 1908 for a 

surveying job on the Copper River 

and Northwestern Railway. He soon 

settled in Chitina, where he operated 

the Chitina Cash Store, served as 

postmaster from 1924-1955 and 

also served as the community’s U.S. 

commissioner during the 1920s. Nelson 

owned several parcels of local mining 

property, including a Copper Creek 

placer claim in the Nizina district. 

During the 1930s he and N.P. Nelson 

formed the Nelson Mining Company 

to mine in the Chisana district. In 

addition, Nelson was a stockholder 

in Gillam Airways and the HubbardElliott property, a director of the 

Nabesna Mining Corporation, and 

a director and secretary-treasurer of 

the Yellow Band Mining Company. 

An indefatigable booster of Chitina, 

Nelson led the effort to construct a 

connecting highway to Cordova, 

personally building the first two miles 

of the road in the early 1950s. O.A. 

Nelson, Post Office, Chitina, 1954. 

Courtesy of Charles “Bob” Leitzell. 
 99

Women not only matched the work 

of men in the Wrangells, but they 

overcame the demands that nature 

itself placed upon them. It was 

the wisdom of Native women who 

developed ways to preserve and store 

fish and other foodstuffs that kept 

the village fed and clothed well into 

the winter. The influx of “non-Native” 

or American and immigrant women 

worked as cooks, secretaries, teachers, 

nurses, gardeners and caretakers 

of history. Some even made history 

through their work. Former prostitute 

Kate Kennedy became a successful 

business leader. Mountaineer Dora 

Keen was the first climber to reach the 

top of Mount Blackburn. Margaret 

Keenen Harrais taught school in 

McCarthy, was a leader in the 

Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, 

and later became U.S. Commissioner 

and ex-officio probate judge in Valdez. 

Anthropologist Frederica de Laguna 

conducted ambitious fieldwork in the 

Copper River area and along the 

coast. Her three volume publication, 

Under Mount Saint Elias: The History and 

Culture of the Yakutat Tlingit, has since 

become the foundation for regional 

archeology and is still considered the 

definitive account of the Yakutat Tlingit 

and Eyak cultures. 

CHAPTER 5 

“WOMEN’S WORK”
100 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 101

(Preceding page) The Ahtna social system valued women who worked hard. In order for a young woman to marry, 

it was important that she was perceived by the family of the prospective spouse as productive and hardworking. 

At an early age, girls learned to tan skins, sew, and cook. They were expected to look after smaller children and 

underwent rigorous physical training (Haynes and Simeone 2007: 60). “80 lbs. Packs.” WRST History Files, “Ahtna” 

Folder, 213. Original photo is located in the Miles Brothers Collection, Valdez Museum, 916. 

A wealthy Native man living in the Wrangell region prior to contact might have had more than one wife. In this 

instance, it was the job of the eldest wife to supervise the younger wives in ways of childcare, food gathering and 

processing, and other domestic skills essential for survival (Haynes and Simeone 2007: 60). “Lazy Summer Day in the 

Copper,” ca. 1902. WRST History Files, “Ahtna” Folder, 200.
102 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

By the beginning of the 20th century, indigenous peoples in the Wrangell Mountain region retained many of their 

traditional features, but had entered a period of transition. In the new “mixed, subsistence-market economy,” 

households combined jobs with subsistence activities that invested a portion of their income to purchase western 

goods and clothing (Haynes and Simeone 2007: 46-47). In Alaska, as well as throughout the West, women worked to 

preserve important elements of traditional lifeways, while at the same time, incorporated useful western goods that 

made their working lives less arduous (Van Kirk 1983). “Indians Drying Salmon at Chitina.” WRST History Files, “Ahtna” 

Folder.

The Ahtna social system 

valued women who worked hard. 
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 103

As with many frontier communities, the influx of white American women were instrumental in introducing many core 

social institutions, such as education, health care, civic beautification projects and missionary work, which helped 

transform male-dominated mining camps into American towns (Pascoe 1990). One contemporary observer noted 

a direct influence of women on Chisana miners: “men mostly shave now, where formerly they were rough and 

bearded” (Hunt 1996:110). 2 women. WRST History Files, “Bonanza City” Folder, 100.
(Facing page) Dora Keen was the first mountaineer to climb Mount Blackburn. After a failed attempt in 1911, she 

and her party succeeded in 1912. Members of the 1912 expedition had to cross steep and dangerous sections 

on Mount Blackburn, but the elevation provided tremendous views of the Kennicott Glacier and the surrounding 

mountainous landscape. “Mountaineer.” WRST History Files, “Mountaineering” Folder, 786. Original photo is located 

in the Dora Keen Collection, University of Washington Library, 16694.

Loomis Lovelace and his wife, Josephine Swanson ran the Loomis Roadhouse at Upper Tonsina through 1903 

(Bleakley 2006). Few gardens were grown for market consumption. Most served individual families or a small local 

community (Hunt 1996:208). Although some gardens were grown for food, others cultivated flowers grown simply for 

their beauty. Through gardening and other similar activities, women developed a relationship to the land that often 

diverged from their mining husbands. Josephine Swanson Loomis Lovelace, Edwin Loomis (4) and Jennie Swans 

Banta, Tonsina, 1902-1903. WRST History Files, “Upper Tonsina” Folder.

104 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

106 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Matilda Wales had joined her long-time companion Billy James, when he and Nels P. Nelson discovered gold on 

Bonanza Creek in 1913. The couple staked a claim on Little Eldorado Creek in the Chisana district that same year 

(Bleakley 2005: 11-13). “Billy James and Matilda Wales, Little El Creek, 1913.” WRST History Files, “Little El” Folder, 309. 

Original photo located in the Best Collection, Alaska State Library.
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 107

Fletcher Hamshaw was a well-known mineral developer. He leased the James-Nelson holdings in the Chisana district 

in early 1914. Margaret Hamshaw rushed to the district soon after her husband. Several early claims, including 

Eldorado Discovery and No. 1, were staked in her name (Bleakley 2006). Couple on right Fletcher and Margaret 

Hamshaw, 1914. WRST History Files, “Chisana-Other” Folder, 322.
108 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 109

(Left) Margaret McGavock worked numerous claims 

with her husband James McGavock, who worked for the 

Great Northern Development Company on Clear Creek, 

for the Hubbard-Elliott Company on Elliott Creek, and 

for Angus MacDougall on MacDougall Creek, as well as 

prospecting his own properties, which included a Rex 

Creek claim (Bleakley 2006). Aunt Margaret McGavock 

operating a “hydraulic giant” on Dan Creek. Jean 

McGavock Lamb Collection. WRST History Files, “Dan 

Creek” Folder, 435.

(Above) Some women workers came to the Copper 

basin with their miner husbands, but others found wagepaying jobs on their own merit. Women taught schools, 

worked as secretaries, nurses and typists for Kennecott 

Mines, the Alaska Road Commission, and the Post Office. 

They fished, baked bread, ran roadhouses, sluiced 

for gold, washed laundry, cut wood, socialized with 

neighbors, and had a naturalist’s eye for wildlife. They 

even represented Alaska’s first generation of female 

voters to serve on a jury (Ringsmuth 2012). Mrs. Augusta 

Radovan and Mrs. J.J. Price, McCarthy. Courtesy of the 

Wrangell St. Elias News.
110 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

In her memoir, Sisters: Coming 

of Age and Living Dangerously 

in the Wild Copper River Valley, 

Samme Gallaher confessed, 

“I was nineteen...and thought 

I was in love with Gillam” 

(Gallaher & Gallaher 2004:156). 

Gillam frequently visited Samme 

Gallaher’s homestead along 

the Copper River in the early 

1930s. Gilliam unloading 

his Zenith. Samme Gallaher 

Darnall Collection. Courtesy of 

Geoffrey Bleakley Collection, 

Makawao, HI.

In 1925, a young Californian 

named Aileen Gallaher met Clyde 

C. “Slim” Williams, a trapper from 

Alaska. Gallaher had dreamed 

of an adventurous life, and when 

Slim asked her to join him in 

Alaska, she saw the journey North 

as a means of escape from the 

humdrum, day-to-day monotony. 

“I was consumed by a desire 

for something fresh and new,” 

recalled Gallaher, something 

completely different” (Gallaher 

& Gallaher 2004: 20). Aileen at 

the Copper River Cabin. Samme 

Gallaher Darnall Collection. 

Courtesy of Geoffrey Bleakley 

Collection, Makawao, HI.
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 111

Margaret Keenen Harrais came to Alaska in 1914, where she served as principal of Skagway schools and then 

Fairbanks schools, and was active in the Alaska Chapter of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. In 1924, 

she joined her husband Martin Harrais in McCarthy, where she taught school for eight years, instilling in the children 

the principles of temperance and frugality (Movius 2009: 79-102). Margaret Harrais with McCarthy School Children. 

Harrais Family Papers, Box 8, folder 125, Alaska and Polar Regions Collections & Archives, Archives, Rasmuson 

Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
112 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Martin and Margaret Harrais shared 

a mining claim on the Upper Chitina 

River, and built a nearby camp 

called Hubert’s Landing. While 

Martin valued the land for its mineral 

potential, Margaret valued it for other 

reasons. In 1931, she described her 

strong connection to the Wrangell 

Mountains in her journal: “I took 

a long survey of the mountainous 

horizon. North, east and south the 

mountains tower eighteen thousand 

feet in height, on their crowns and 

sides glacial snows that are older than 

history—to the west lay McCarthy, five 

days distant on horseback and utterly 

impossible on foot on account of 

deep water. It was not exactly a restcure sanatorium for a nervous person, 

so I decided I must not be a nervous 

person” (Harrais nd). Margaret 

Keenen Harrais. Martin and Margaret 

at the Harrais Camp, Upper Chitina 

region. Harrais Family Papers, Box 8, 

folder 125, Alaska and Polar Regions 

Collections & Archives, Archives, 

Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska 

Fairbanks.

“It was not exactly a restcure sanatorium for a 

nervous person, so I decided 

I must not be a nervous 

person.”

 —Margaret Keenen Harrais
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 113
The Kennecott milltown offered intermixed 

spaces for work, as well as domestic and 

leisure activities. Employees with small 

children generally lived in single houses 

or cottages, away from the industrial 

activities. Single employees—including two 

teachers, two nurses, one and sometimes 

two secretaries—lived in staff housing. The 

first floor, according to “Kennecott Kid” 

Mildred Erickson Reis, had a recreation area, 

the second floor was for men only, and the 

third floor was only for women, and aptly 

nicknamed “no man’s land” (Kennecott Kids 

Oral History Project-Ries 1990: 5). 2 women 

and baby. WRST History Files, “Friends of 

Kennecott Collection” Folder. 

Almost as hard as working 

as a bush pilot was being 

married to one. At a time 

before the introduction 

of modern modes of 

communications, the 

wives of aviators often 

led lives filled with 

anxiety and worry. 

Merritt Kirkpatrick’s wife, 

LeahDean, wrote in her 

memoir that it could be 

a lonely life too, recalling 

that one winter her 

only companions were 

Florence “Ma” Barnes 

and a Huskie named 

Oscar (Ross 1998: 4). 

Merritt “Kirk” Kirkpatrick 

and “Dean,” ca. 1937. 

Cordova Airlines 

Sourdough Tours. Merle 

Smith Collection, Alaska 

Airlines.
Often perceived as a male-dominated activity, many women worked as miners. If not mining, women served as 

cooks and laundresses for the mining camps. On the Trail, 1900s. WRST History Files, “Miscellaneous” Folder, 5.

Many of the working women at Kennecott 

found employment at the hospital. 

Except for Fairbanks, Kennecott’s hospital 

was the most modern in the territory in the 

1930s. Leach plant worker, James Bean 

Sr., whose son was born at the hospital 

recalled, “They had a nice hospital here 

for their employees. They had good 

doctors and good nurses and everything 

there” (KKOHP-Bean 1990: 9). “Oscar” the 

skeleton poses with Mary E. Mulhall and a 

second unidentified nurse at Kennecott. 

WRST History Files, “People” Folder, 828.
116 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Women found jobs in the 

Wrangells because they 

were willing to work hard. 

If they chose to marry, 

they continued to work, 

often side by side with 

their husbands. Instead of 

the stereotypical image 

of the “reluctant pioneer,” 

women of the Wrangells 

played active roles in 

their work, marriages and 

communities (Armitage 

and Jameson 1987). “My 

mother as a prospector’s 

wife, Jean Moore.” WRST 

History Files, “People” 

Folder, 867.
Bertha Krentz Ramer 

was one of two female 

teachers who taught 

school at Kennecott in 

the early 1930s. Mary 

Ellen Duggan Clark, who 

was six years old when 

she lived at Kennecott, 

recalled what it was like 

to attend school at the 

milltown: “It was a two 

room school, one teacher 

for each room, and on 

the average I’d say 

about 20 children overall. 

We felt that we got a 

really good education. 

Each teacher had to 

teach four grades and 

she reviewed the lessons 

of one grade and then 

give them an assignment, 

put them to working on it, 

and then go to the next 

grade and she had to 

keep doing that all day 

long, jumping from one 

to the other.” Kennecott 

required that only single 

women teach school. 

But within a year, many 

of these single teachers 

married local miners. This 

was the case for Bertha, 

who met and married 

McCarthy miner Pete 

Ramer, who later formed 

the Bremner Gold Mining 

Company with his brother 

Lee Ramer (KKOHP-Clark 

1990: 4). Bertha Ramer 

Collection, McCarthyKennicott Historical 

Museum, McCarthy, 

Alaska.

CHAPTER 5: “WOMEN’S WORK” 117
118 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

While the Ramer brothers worked to develop the gold mine at Bremner, the Ramer family lived in McCarthy. 

Cordova Air Service often flew the Ramer family between McCarthy and Bremner. In an August rainstorm in 1937, 

Merle Smith crashed his Stearman C2B biplane after attempting a takeoff from Bremner Mine’s muddy strip. The 

story goes that word spread of Smith’s rookie mistake and when running into Bob Reeve days later, the senior pilot 

gave his new competitor the nickname, “Mudhole.” In her scrapbook, Bertha Ramer explains that it was actually 

Pete Ramer who witnessed the crash and gave Smith his famous nickname, “Mudhole.” Bertha Ramer Collection, 

McCarthy-Kennicott Historical Museum, McCarthy, Alaska. 
Aviation in the Wrangells was 

represented by pilots whose names are 

recalled today by even the youngest 

Alaskans: Harold Gillam, Merritt “Kirk” 

Kirkpatrick, Merle “Mudhole” Smith, 

and Bob Reeve, “the Glacier Pilot.” 

Their competitive rivalries brought 

reliable air service to the Wrangells, 

and eventually formed the primary 

stops along a regularly scheduled flight 

route called, “The Copper Belt Line.” 

CHAPTER 6

AVIATION
120 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

In a poem about his favorite person, a third grader from Cordova captured public sentiment for pilot Harold Gillam: 

“He thrilled em/ Chill em/ Spilled em/ But no kill’em/ Gillam.“ Not only did Harold Gillam pioneer commercial air 

service in the Wrangell Mountain region, but he was famous for his pet polar bears, his “cat-like” vision, and his 

uncanny ability to fly in weather that kept most flyers grounded. To bush pilots like Bob Reeve and the rest of the 

Wrangell Mountain skyboys, “There was only one Gillam” (Day 1957: 134-135). Gillam preparing to takeoff in his 

Pilgrim around 1935. Courtesy of the Cordova Historical Museum, 95-46-95.
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 121

In 1931, Harold Gillam purchased a Zenith Z-6 biplane to serve the isolated communities and homesteads scattered 

throughout the Copper Belt. The Zenith’s cabin was spacious for carrying heavy freight, but also important to Gillam 

was that it was enclosed for passenger comfort. Of the six Zenith Z-6 cabin biplane airframes built, two served in 

Alaska. Bennett-Rhodebaugh had one, and Gillam flew the other. Harold Gillam's Zenith on the hanger ramp 

in Cordova just before a freak wind destroyed it on Town Lake in Chitina on April 11, 1935. Courtesy of Geoffrey 

Bleakley Collection, Makawao, HI.
122 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Harold Gillam conducted some of 

the first reconnaissance flights into 

the Bremner Mining District in 1930 

for the Ramer brothers, owners of 

the Bremner Gold Mining Company. 

Lee Ramer and his dog team and 

possibly Gillam’s Swallow biplane 

in the saddle of Bremner pass in the 

early 1930s. Bertha Ramer Collection, 

McCarthy-Kennicott Historical 

Museum, McCarthy, Alaska. 

To provide air support for the 

Bremner Mining Company, 

Peyton and Lee Ramer 

offered Harold Gillam the 

opportunity to organize 

the first flying business in 

the Wrangells in 1929. The 

Bremner Mining Company 

purchased Gillam’s Swallow 

biplane, along with the 

McCarthy hanger and 

airstrip. But plans for the 

new aviation business 

never materialized. That 

same month, world-famous 

Alaskan pilot Carl Ben 

Eielson and his mechanic, 

Earl Borland, went missing in 

Siberia and Gillam flew off 

to join the search. A year 

later, Gillam returned to the 

Copper Belt and established 

Gillam Airways, Inc., the first air service company in the Wrangell Mountain region. The Ramers sold the hanger and 

airstrip to the Alaska Road Commission in 1936. Peyton “Pete” Ramer posing in front of Harold Gillam’s Swallow, ca. 

1931. Bertha Ramer Photo Album, McCarthy-Kennicott Historical Museum, McCarthy, Alaska.
Carl Whitham, the owner 

of the Nabesna Mining 

Corporation, contracted 

Harold Gillam to fly in mining 

supplies and laborers and ore 

out of his mining operation. 

Gold ore was hauled by 

pack horse six miles down 

to the landing field near the 

Nabesna River. From the 

airfield, Gillam flew the ore 

120 miles to Copper Center, 

so that it could be trucked 

down to Valdez and shipped 

outside. Gillam’s Pilgrim at 

Nabesna airstrip. Courtesy of 

the Alaska Aviation Heritage 

Museum, Anchorage, Alaska.

Between 1922 and 1938, no regular air mail service existed in Alaska. Dog teams delivered the mail for the federal 

government. Through the efforts of Alaska leadership, Washington D.C. finally provided a territorial airmail system. In 

April 1931, Harold Gillam obtained a contract to deliver mail twice monthly to the mining communities of Nabesna 

and Bremner. In 1934, Kennecott Copper Cooperation contracted him to fly in the mail after the Chitina Bridge went 

out during spring, preventing mail delivery by rail. By 1935 Gillam Airways had successfully expanded its “Copper 

Belt” contract to carry mail to Katalla once each month and to Yakataga Beach four times a year. Harold Gillam’s 

Pilgrim refueling at Yakataga Beach during low tide on August 20, 1938. Courtesy of the Cordova Historical Museum, 

99-2-20. 
124 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

During these early years at McCarthy, Gillam befriended ten-year-old Bud Seltenreich, whose family came to Alaska 

during the Chisana gold rush and ended up homesteading near the site of the Nizina Bridge. Gillam took the 

interested grade-schooler under his wing, giving Bud lessons in mechanics at the Anderson Garage in McCarthy. 

Gillam taught Bud and his brothers to fly, and then, eventually hired Bud as an aviation mechanic for his future flying 

business, Gillam Airways. It is likely that Bud built the hanger at the McCarthy airfield to keep Gillam’s assortment 

of biplanes’ airborne (KKOHP 1991-Seltenriech: 254). Housed in the McCarthy hanger are Harold Gillam’s Swallow 

and what appears to be Merritt Kirkpatrick’s Kinner Bird, ca. 1933. Holmes Family Papers, Archives and Special 

Collections, Consortium Library, University of Alaska Anchorage, Box 1, Series VII, 48b.

To calm investor doubts regarding 

transportation difficulties, the Bremner Gold 

Mining Company trumpeted the acquisition 

of $2,000 to enlarge and develop the mine’s 

upper airfield in 1936, boasting that “supplies 

are landed right at the mine” (Valdez Miner, 

June 18, 1936). Bremner’s upper airfield 

was also the site of Merle “Mudhole” Smith’s 

infamous crash. Pete Ramer and Lee Ramer 

level Bremner’s Upper Airfield, 1936. Bertha 

Ramer Collection, McCarthy-Kennicott 

Historical Museum, McCarthy, Alaska. 
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 125

Cordova Air Service manager, Kirk Kirkpatrick, started a subsidiary, Airways, Inc., from McCarthy, to serve mining 

operations throughout the Wrangell Mountains. The planes that flew the Copper Belt Line featured a large green belt 

painted around the fuselage, acknowledging the region’s affinity for the mineral, copper. Kirk hired a young Merle 

Smith to manage the route in 1937. Kirkpatrick died in a plane crash ferrying passengers from McCarthy to Cordova 

in a spring blizzard in 1939. Merle Smith Collection, Alaska Airlines, Seattle Washington. 
Merle Smith spent several years as a working-stiff, flying scheduled flights for Cordova Air Service (CAS) to mines 

around the Copper Belt. But attitudes regarding Alaska’s environment and identity have changed since the 

1930s. Today, Wrangell residents find value in isolation, choosing to live independent from the Outside world. While 

bush pilots continue to provide these disconnected communities and individuals access to economic systems, 

commodities, and medical care, such connections allow residents to maintain a frontier ethos and wilderness 

lifestyle. Merle Smith posing in front of his Stearman C2B biplane in McCarthy in 1937, his first year flying the Copper 

Belt Route. Courtesy of the Cordova Historical Museum, 95-46-45.

126 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 
McCarthy was the Wrangell region’s aviation hub 

throughout the 1930s. Aviation made public services, such 

as mail delivery, medical aid, and speedy transportation 

available to isolated residents. After World War II, aviation 

gave a boost to both tourism and sport hunting. In 1965, 

revitalized mining activities at Kennecott prompted the 

construction of a larger airfield at McCarthy (McCarthy 

airstrip #2), after which the State of Alaska classified the 

old McCarthy airstrip as “abandoned.” Aerial view of the 

McCarthy airstrip #1, with the Cordova Air Service cabin 

and hangar. The McCarthy townsite lies to the north. 1957. 

History Files, Federal Aviation Administration, Anchorage, 

Alaska.

CHAPTER 6: AVIATION 127
“Only the toughest—and the shrewdest—survive”

 —Bob Reeve
 129

The unmistakable sentinels of the Wrangells include Mount Blackburn rising 16,390 feet; Mount Sanford rising 16,237 

feet; Mount Drum rising 12,010 feet; and Mount Zanetti, rising to 13,009 feet. Mount Wrangell, for which the range is 

named, is one of the largest andesite shield volcanoes in the world, rising to 14,163 feet. This skyscape commanded 

Bob Reeve’s view as he flew between Copper Center, Chistochina, and the Nabesna and Chisana mining districts, 

ca. 1937. Russ Dow Papers, Archives and Special Collections, Consortium Library, University of Alaska Anchorage, 

uaa-hmc-0396-14b-24.

(Preceding page) Pilot Bob Reeve drifted into 

the coastal town of Valdez during the spring 

of 1932. Called by his clients a “scout of the 

sky,” Reeve used his modified Fairchild 51 to 

prospect for undeveloped mineral deposits 

throughout the Chugach and Wrangell 

Mountains. A self-proclaimed maverick of the 

Wrangell’s aviation scene, Reeve embraced 

an old Frontier style. Reeve felt that in the 

dog-eat-dog competition for Alaska aviation 

business, “Only the toughest—and the 

shrewdest—survive” (Reeve 1939). Bob Reeve 

refueling his plane while smoking a cigarette. 

uaa-hmc-0396-14b-122.
130 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Because work kept him mired in a muddy mess that smelled of rotting salmon and decaying seaweed, Reeve was 

known as a fairly filthy flyer. Not everyone was impressed with Reeve’s dirty flying, however. Reeve’s major rival, the 

meticulously clean Harold Gillam, once remarked, “Reeve can have it!” (Day 1957: 113). Russ Dow Papers, Archives 

and Special Collections, Consortium Library, University of Alaska Anchorage, uaa-hmc-0396-14a-50.

In 1938, Smith flew Ernest Gruening on an aerial 

tour of the Chitina Valley. Alaska’s future 

Governor was the Director of Department 

of Interior’s Division of Territories. Gruening 

rightfully worried that the ensuing pullout of 

Kennecott and its Railway would negatively 

affect the region’s economy. That September, 

Gruening recommended that the Chitina 

Valley be added to the National Park Service 

system, as the Kennicott National Monument. 

The threat of war, however, put any discussion 

of a national park on the back burner, but 

nevertheless, Gruening did set the precedent 

for fly-in tourism becoming the region’s new 

economic engine (Janson 1981: 69). Gruening’s federal entourage in front of CAS’s Stinson Standard on a stopover 

at McCarthy. Courtesy of Geoffrey Bleakley Collection, Makawao, HI. 
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 131

The Civil Aeronautics Authority (CAA)–predecessor 

to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)–

granted the contract for constructing the 

Northway airport in the spring 1941, just a few 

months before Germany invaded the Soviet 

Union and Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. Before 

construction could begin at Northway, engineers 

first had to improve and enlarge the Nabesna 

“bush” strip. With Bob Reeve’s guidance, M-K built 

a 6,000 foot main runway and two 2,000 foot crossrunways near the Nabesna River. By summer, the 

Nabesna Landing Field had become one of the 

biggest in Alaska, shorter only than the Elmendorf 

and Ladd Army airfields. After Reeve left to assist 

the military in the Aleutians, Gillam replaced him 

as head pilot for M-K, while bush pilots from across 

Alaska flew the “Nabesna-Northway airlift” in 1942. 

Thanks to their wartime service, Northway became 

an important link in the Lend-Lease operation, 

which sent thousands of fighter planes to Russia, where pilots engaged the Nazis in the skies over Moscow (Rearden 

1992). Merle Smith (Smitty) Rudy Billberg, John Walatka, Frank Barr, Don Emmons, Jack Scavenius, Frank Kammer, 

Herman Lerdahl. Courtesy of Johanna Bouker.

Although both Gillam 

and Reeve flew 

into areas served 

by Cordova Air 

Service, Kirk set his 

company apart from 

his rivals simply by his 

company’s name: 

Gillam Airways and 

Reeve Airways implied 

that those businesses 

were essentially “one 

man shows,” whereas 

Kirkpatrick’s company 

reflected the 

interests of the larger 

geographical region, 

indicating that Kirk’s 

goal as a bush pilot 

was building clientele 

rather than cultivating 

a legendary selfimage. Cordova Air 

Service plane on a beach loading passengers and luggage illustrates the company’s position as a true regional 

carrier. Courtesy of the Cordova Historical Museum, 95-46-1. 
132 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

(Facing page) When Cordova Air Service stockholders asked Merle 

Smith to return to the failing company near the war’s end in July 1944, 

Smith returned with a plan. First, he bought out all stockholders, then, he 

expanded his fleet. In 1945, Smith acquired a Lockheed L-10E Electra 

from M-K for $25,000. It was the first all-weather, twin-engine airplane to 

fly between Anchorage and Cordova. The Electra was kept for a year 

then replaced with an even more passenger-friendly DC-3 (Janson 1981: 

198). The St. Elias, Merle Smith’s Lockheed Electra, in 1945. Merle Smith 

Collection, Alaska Airlines, Seattle, Washington.

Starting from Cordova, Jack Wilson flew the mail up the Copper River, 

stopping at Chitina, McCarthy, May Creek, Glacier Creek, up to Chisana, 

and sometimes beyond to either Northway or Nabesna. Then he 

backtracked, stopping at each place again to pick up returning passengers 

or mail. “I liked the run and the people I met on it,” recalled Wilson. 

Recognizing the importance of aviation to the outlying communities, Wilson 

echoed the sentiments expressed by Bob Reeve a generation ago: “They 

[the prospectors] looked forward to the weekly mail plane which brought 

all their mail, groceries, clothing, new people, other freight when there 

was space available, and sometimes, even a bottle of rum to make the 

long, dark evenings a bit more enjoyable” (Wilson 1988: 39). Merle Smith 

Collection, Alaska Airlines, Seattle Washington. 
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 133
(Left) Cordova Air Service plane flies over a 

boundless sea of mountain and ice. Walter 

A. Wood, a geologist who utilized aviation to 

conduct scientific fieldwork in the Saint Elias range 

once noted, “These glacierized high-mountain 

ranges were by their very nature unsympathetic 

to human invasion” (Wood 1963). Merle Smith 

Collection, Alaska Airlines, Seattle, Washington. 

“These glacierized high-mountain 

ranges were by their very nature 

unsympathetic to human invasion”

 —Walter A. Wood

Cordova Airlines supplied air service to the Wrangell 

Mountain Observatory in 1953. Pilots Herb Haley 

and Jack Wilson flew the support flights. In the 

1960s, Wilson alone made a record 69 landings on 

top of Mount Wrangell. High altitude landings were 

always dangerous, but most remained uneventful. 

Occasionally, pilots like Herb Haley, were reminded 

that landing on a live volcano was anything but 

routine (Benson and Motyka 1979: 8). “Pulling out 

Cordova Airlines plane.” Courtesy of Charles “Buck” 

Wilson. 
 135

For thousands of years, people 

living in the Wrangells engaged 

in hunting and trapping activities, 

which also facilitated trade among 

various groups. In the 20th century, 

people began to hunt for sport in the 

Wrangells. Although big game hunting 

was never considered an economic 

necessity, affluent expeditions did 

produce work for residents. Despite 

fair-chase principles upheld by most 

early 20th century hunters, postwar 

competition among guides caused 

significant drops in the Wrangells’ 

sheep populations. Still, hunting 

and trapping—both for sport and 

subsistence—remain important 

economic activities for Wrangell 

residents.

CHAPTER 7

SPORT

HUNTING
136 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Chisana resident Con Miller, hunted the open country for caribou, Dall sheep, moose, and bear. He was a wellknown guide and led several hunting expeditions from McCarthy into the Nabesna and White River areas (Bleakley 

2006). Miller later died on a flight from McCarthy to Cordova with Merritt Kirkpatrick in 1939 (Cordova Daily Times, 

April 1939). Con Miller with Sheep on Nabesna. Ethel Lecount Album. WRST History Files, “Hunting” Folder.
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 137

As the last great Alaska gold rush at Chisana passed into history, 

big game hunters replaced the gold prospectors. The rich and elite 

members of East Coast society constituted most hunting parties, 

who sought trophy-size mega fauna in the “game fields up the 

White River behind the St. Elias mountain range” (Burnham 1925). 

Hunting Trail. WRST History Files, “Hunting” Folder.
William H. Slimpert started his career as a hunting 

guide in 1919, when he was hired as a wrangler by 

Morley Bones, a famous outfitter headquartered 

on Kluane Lake. Slimpert made most of his income 

guiding sportsmen during the 1920s and 1930s, but 

drowned tragically in 1942 while attempting to ford 

the Nabesna River. He is buried on the Nabesna 

Bar (Bleakley 2006). W.H. Billy Slimpert. McCarthy 

Guide. Evonne Sullivan Collection. WRST History 

Files, “Hunting” Folder 496. Original photo at the Miles 

Sullivan Collection, Valdez Museum.

138 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 
 139

Sport hunting in the Wrangell-St. Elias region mostly went unnoticed until two publications caught the attention of 

American sportsmen. George O. Young published an account of his 1919 expedition in Alaska Yukon Trophies Won 

and Lost and James A. McGuire published In the Alaska-Yukon Gamelands in 1921. Upper Chitina Valley, likely 

Gibraltar Hill. WRST History Files, “Hunting” Folder.

CHAPTER 7: SPORT HUNTING 139
140 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

In the 1920s, trophy hunters were lured by the magnificent wide-horned sheep found in such large numbers that 

enthusiasts considered the Wrangells “the last big-game hunting ground of North America” (McGuire 1921: 11). Dall 

Sheep, Chitina Glacier. WRST History Files, “Hunting” Folder 1396. 
Some of the best known hunting guides in the 

Wrangells were J.P. Hubrick, Bill Longley, Billy 

Wooden, Shorty Gwin, and Jimmie Brown. Their 

cook, Jimmie Fujii, originally from Japan, had 

twenty odd years of experience in the country. 

All the men had gained familiarity with the trail 

route while freighting supplies between McCarthy 

and the Chisana Mining District during its 

golden heyday. Hunter on Snowshoes. Note his 

traditional squirrel-skin parka. WRST History Files, 

“Hunting” Folder, 494. Original photo located 

at the Washington State Historical Society in 

Tacoma, WA.
Hunting over the planned route 

required a small caravan of 

packhorses and several men, 

including experienced Natives 

and ancillary guides, to manage 

the animals and to assemble 

camps. Hells Half Acre Camp, 

Chitina Valley, Alaska. WRST 

History Files, “Hunting” Folder, 500.

(Below) With the increasing attention of wealthy hunting 

groups, the Alaska Road Commission, in 1921, began to 

maintain the trail route between McCarthy and the White 

River area, naming it route-54. The ARC route, also known 

as the Nizina-Chisana trail, “branches from the McCarthyDan Creek road at Mile 18 and extends up the Nizina and 

Chisana rivers over Scolai [Skolai] Pass to the head of the 

White River” (Naske 1983: 67). Freighting on White River Trail. 

WRST History Files, “White River” Folder, 1010.

142
Sheep hunters considered their particular brand of hunting special, primarily because of the physical demands 

it placed on the hunter. Only the best sheep hunters were successful. Outdoorsmen everywhere viewed sheep 

hunting an art, which required specific knowledge of “woods lore,” a sense of tracking, strong legs, and for the 

hunter to be a good shot. In 1921, James McGuire wrote, “The successful sheep hunter must, perforce, have the 

game vision developed to the very highest order of perfection. He should be a good climber, strong of heart and 

limb...The prime requisites are a cool head, ordinary ability to judge distances quickly, and good marksmanship 

qualities” (McGuire 1921: 88, 90-91). Hunter with sheep. WRST History Files, “Hunting” Folder, 1393.

“The successful sheep hunter must, perforce, have the game vision developed to the very 

highest order of perfection. He should be a good climber, strong of heart and limb...The 

prime requisites are a cool head, ordinary ability to judge distances quickly, and good 

marksmanship qualities.”

 —Hunter James McGuire
144 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

After most of the 

prospectors gave up 

mining in Chisana, the 

old gold town became a 

base for hunting-related 

activities. Lou Anderton 

established himself as a 

guide and storekeeper at 

Chisana in 1925. When air 

service became available 

in the 1930s, hunting 

along the north slope of 

the Wrangells became 

the primary way to make 

a living. Unidentified 

trapper holding a Lynx 

pelt. WRST History Files, 

“Hunting” Folder, 493. 
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 145

Some of the first newcomers to settle in the Wrangell-St. Elias region were intrigued by Native life, customs and 

languages and impressed by Native peoples’ ingenuity and efficiency. Although few lived entirely off the country, 

many took advantage of trapping, hunting and fishing (Hunt 1996). Furs taken near McCarthy. WRST History Files, 

“Hunting” Folder, 501.
146 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Samme Gallaher, whose sister 

Aileen and her husband Slim 

Williams trapped along the 

Sanford River, recalled shooting 

her first caribou in the summer of 

1927. Likely shot for meat rather 

than sport, the caribou was 

Samme’s first hunting experience 

(Gallaher & Gallaher, 2004: 81). 

“Samme’s first Caribou, Sanford 

River, 1927.” Samme Gallaher 

Darnall Collection. Courtesy of 

Geoffrey Bleakley Collection, 

Makawao, HI.

Increased hunting and trapping activities 

combined with gold rushes and access 

to aviation in the 1930s sparked the 

implementation of a territorial game 

management program (Sherwood 1981: 1). 

The young game warden, Clarence Rhode, 

chartered Merle Smith to fly him over the 

Wrangell St. Elias Mountains to patrol for 

fur smugglers near the Canadian border. 

Rhodes later became well-known for his 

work at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service 

(Janson 1981:69). Courtesy of the National 

Park Service, Alaska Regional Office, 

Anchorage, Alaska.

“It was my first hunting experience, and I 

felt a sense of pride... We took pictures of me 

with my first caribou, and you could see how 

delighted I was with my accomplishment.” 

 —Samme Gallaher
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 147

The increase in the number of hunters 

in the postwar years coincided with the 

arrival of small aircraft, which reduced the 

cost of hunting in remote regions such as 

the Wrangell-St. Elias range. According 

to historian William Hunt, “What had been 

an expensive, elitist venture became 

a sporting exercise available to almost 

anyone” (Hunt 1996: 207). Group of 

mountain climbers and sheep hunters 

leaving May Creek, 1959. Courtesy of the 

Cordova Historical Museum, 90-86-3.

The purpose for some of the big game 

expeditions was to gather important 

zoological specimens for East Coast 

museums. In institutions such as the 

Smithsonian, the Wrangells’ big-game 

served as center pieces in exhibits known as 

“habitat groups,” in which specimens were 

displayed in cases surrounded by natural or 

artificial trees, plants, flowers, rocks, land and 

water, made to represent the natural haunts 

of the beasts (McGuire 1921: 11). Al Nikolaus 

with Goat on Donoho Peak. WRST History 

Files, “Ethel Lecount Album-Kennecott” 

Folder.
148 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Jack Wilson started the first fly-in hunting trips in the Wrangells 

in the early 1960s. His former employer and now rival, Cordova 

Airlines, also began to fly in hunters on trips guided by Howard 

Knutson (Wilson 1997). Courtesy of Howard Knutson.

The Wrangell’s definitive aircraft, the Super Cub, (background 

right) transported trophy sheep hunters to peaks once thought 

unreachable. Its ability to land just about anywhere opened new 

territory to sport hunters (Murphy and Dean 1978: 27-34). “Horns.” 

Courtesy of Howard Knutson. 
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 149
150 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Cordova Airlines filled its DC-3 with hunters from the Lower 48. The airline ferried the hunting parties between its 

headquarters in Anchorage and the airstrip at May Creek. Loading sheep and horns aboard a Cordova Airlines 

plane at May Creek. Courtesy of the Cordova Historical Museum, 90-86-4.
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 151

By the mid-1970s, approximately 250 guides from both sides of the US-Canadian border flew into the Wrangell 

Mountains to hunt the famous Dall sheep. Most resident guides belonged to the group that established themselves 

in the region and maintained the sportsman’s fair-chase ethic, but a minority group indiscriminately targeted wildlife 

without regard for fellow guides or the future of their business (Lappen 1984: 114-115). Hunters display trophies on 

Cordova Airlines plane. Merle Smith Collection, Alaska Airlines, Seattle, Washington.
152 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Pilot and hunting guide Jack Wilson later lamented the “quick-get-a-trophy-and-get-out” mentality of the more 

aggressive guides. “In the Old West men had exploited the riches of the new country with a will, and we were no 

different” (Wilson 1988). Pilot and Hunting Guide, Howard Knutson, displays his clients’ trophies during a fly-in hunt in 

1976. Courtesy of Gary Green.

“In the Old West men had exploited the riches of the new country 

with a will, and we were no different.”

 —Jack Wilson
 153

Mountaineering in the Wrangells often 

crossed into the areas of mapping and 

surveying, geological reconnaissance, 

and scientific exploration. Like big 

game hunting, the pursuit spawned 

work for guides, outfitters, packer and 

aviators. Probably the most famous 

example of the intersect of science, 

climbing and aviation was the Lucania 

expedition, in which “Glacier Pilot” Bob 

Reeve landed Bradford Washburn and 

Robert Bates on the Walsh Glacier in 

1937. Thanks, in part, to an account 

of the ascent authored by Washburn 

and published in Life Magazine, 

the Wrangells would become an 

international attraction for elite 

mountaineers worldwide.

CHAPTER 8

MOUNTAINEERING
154 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Harvard graduate Robert Dunn left 

in 1898 for the Klondike. Afterwards, 

he became a journalist and 

accompanied Frederick Cook’s 

unsuccessful Mount McKinley 

expedition in 1903. In 1908 he returned 

to Alaska, where he completed the 

first ascent of Mt. Wrangell (Bleakley 

2006). Robert Dunn on Wrangell. WRST 

History Files, “Mountaineering” Folder. 

Original located in the Stephen Capps 

Collections, Alaska and Polar Regions 

Collections & Archives, Rasmuson 

Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks.

154 
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 155

Dora Keen was the first mountaineer to climb Mount Blackburn. In an article for Scribner’s Magazine published in 

1912, she explained why she chose the mountain. “No one had ever been even to its base, for no one in Alaska 

climbs mountains except for gold...Yet I had selected Mount Blackburn because the completion of the railway in 

April, made it the most accessible of Alaska’s dozen great snow peaks.” She and her party failed to the reach the 

summit in 1911, but her second attempt in 1912 was successful (Keen 1912). “12,000 Feet of Ice Yet to Climb,” 1911. 

Courtesy of Jenny Kays. (Blue colorization in this and associated photos true to scans of published article.)

155
156 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

R.F. McClellan led Keen’s Blackburn expedition in 1911. John E. Barrett, Frank Buell, Ralph Felterolf, and Walter 

Wolf rounded out the team. According to Keen, the climbers’ biggest obstacle was the countless crevasses. 

“Crevasses presented real problems,” wrote Keen. “We roped. Over or around them, down, up and on we went—

we were rising, but so was the sun, and our only hope was to get to a safe altitude before the sun should start the 

avalanches” (Keen 1912). “Crossing a Crevasse,” 1911. Courtesy of Jenny Kays. 
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 157

Although the Blackburn expedition 

proved daunting, the glaciated 

landscape offered moments of grandeur. 

“From such contemplation there was 

only an occasional sound as of thunder 

to arouse me,” wrote Keen. “Mount 

Blackburn at the left, Mount Reynolds at 

the right, below me the Kennicott Glacier 

hemmed in by the lower slopes of the 

great mountains, half way between 

Mount Reynolds and the distant mine, 

Mount Regal, 13,000 feet—such was the 

view unfolded to me. Now and again a 

mighty roar led my eye to the cliffs across 

the Reynolds Glacier. Great ice masses 

crowned them. Loosened by the sun they 

were breaking off and pouring like gentle 

waterfalls down the gullies all the way to 

the glaciers fifteen hundred feet below” 

(Keen 1912). “Mt. Regal: 9000 feet above 

us,” 1911. Courtesy of Jenny Kays.

Recalling Mount Blackburn, Dora Keen 

wrote, “A panorama secured, I sat down 

to drink in forever the glory and beauty 

about me. Already I was repaid for 

coming. A world without limitations was 

unfolded to me, a world in which I felt as 

if the bonds that held me to earth were 

loosened, a world of purity the sight of 

which ennobled a world of power, of 

majesty, a vision to inspire, to uplift, to give 

peace and strength, to beget reverence 

and humility” (Keen 1912). “Dora Keen 

Leading the Way to Mt. Blackburn,” 1911. 

Courtesy of Jenny Kays.
158 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

After her successful second attempt, Keen telegraphed from Kennecott, Alaska on May 25, 1912: “After thirteen 

days’ snow-storm, spent in caves, made the summit of Mount Blackburn on May 19. Mt. Blackburn, Alaska 16,140’.“

1st Ascent, May 19, 1912. Dora Keen and George W. Handy. Courtesy of Matthew Freeman. 
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 159

“A world without limitations was unfolded to me, a world in which I felt as if the bonds 

that held me to earth were loosened, a world of purity the sight of which ennobled a world 

of power, of majesty, a vision to inspire, to uplift, to give peace and strength, to beget 

reverence and humility.”

 —Dora Keen
160 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

In early May 1925, Albert H. MacCarthy, H.F. Lambart, Allen Carpe, Andy Taylor, N. Read and W.W. Foster began 

the first ascent of Mount Logan, located on the Canadian side of the Canadian-Alaska border. The international 

climbing team, which commenced from McCarthy, stood on top of the mountain for the first time on June 23, 1925. 

It took 65 days total to approach the mountain from McCarthy, summit and return (Bleakley 2006). Mount Logan 

Expedition, 1925. Girard Collections, WRST History Files, “Mountaineering” Folder, 789.
Andy Taylor was one of the first prospectors in the 

Chisana district. Arriving at the beginning of the 

rush, Taylor staked Bonanza No. 2 in 1913. During 

the 1920s, Taylor worked as a freighter, and 

gained international recognition as a hunting 

guide. In 1925 he was a member of the first party 

to climb Mt. Logan, Canada’s highest peak, and 

later also completed the first ascents of Mt. Bona, 

Mt. Fairweather, and the first recorded northsouth traverse of the central St. Elias Mountains 

(Bleakley 2006). Andy Taylor, ca. 1930. WRST 

History Files, “Mountaineering” Folder, 4.

Named by Captain Cook in 

1778, Mount Fairweather is one 

of the world's highest coastal 

mountains at 15,325 feet. Allen 

Carpé, Terris Moore and Andy 

Taylor, climbers associated 

with the Wrangells, were the 

first mountaineers to ascend 

Mount Fairweather in 1931. 

Andy Taylor and Carpe, 1st 

assent Mt. Fairweather.” Crowe 

Collection, WRST History Files, 

“Mountaineering” Folder, 1158.
162 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Similar to today, part of the job of a mountaineer is to save lives. But it also meant volunteering to ascend into 

dangerous locations to retrieve those that did not survive. “Andy Taylor, Merle LaVoy, and Grant Pearson pull the 

sled with Koven’s body, 1932.” WRST History Files, “Mountaineering” Folder, 1166.
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 163

Mountaineering formed a significant part of Wrangell-St. Elias region history. Today’s climbers maintain a sense of 

those who have gone before them. Whether the activity was considered work or recreation is hard to say. But few 

will disagree that mountaineering exploration in the Wrangell-St. Elias region was a difficult and dangerous pursuit. 

“Pulling Out.” Molly O’Neill Collection, WRST History Files, “Mountaineering” Folder, 794.

In 1937, Bradford Washburn sought 

a pilot to fly his Harvard climbing 

party and gear to the Walsh Glacier 

at the base of Mount Lucania in 

the St. Elias Range. Reeve replied 

to Washburn’s request in typical 

Reeve fashion: “Anywhere you’ll 

ride, I’ll fly” (Bates 1994). On June 

18, they took off from mudflats in 

Bob Reeve’s plane, refueled in 

McCarthy, then landed on the 

Walsh Glacier, which straddles the 

Alaska-Canadian border. (Valdez 

Miner, June 25, 1937). Pictured are 

Russ Dow, Bob Reeve, and Bradford 

Washburn. Russ Dow Papers, 

Archives and Special Collections, 

Consortium Library, University of 

Alaska Anchorage, uaa-hmc-0396-

14e-a39.

“Anywhere you’ll ride, I’ll fly.” 

 —Bob Reeve
166 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

On landing at Walsh Glacier, Reeve broke the world’s record for the highest landing at 8,500 feet on skis. After this 

picture was taken the pilot tried for five days before he lifted his plane from the glacier’s slushy ice. Bob Reeve’s 

Fairchild 51 stuck in several feet of slush is pictured on the Walsh Glacier in 1937. Russ Dow Papers, Archives and 

Special Collections, Consortium Library, University of Alaska Anchorage, uaa-hmc-0396-14a-75.
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 167

Using McCarthy as a base, Russ Down and Bob Reeve had cached supplies on the Walsh Glacier previously in May 

1937. On arrival with Reeve in June, fellow climber Robert “Bob” Bates and Washburn had to excavate the supply 

site. Russ Dow Papers, Archives and Special Collections, Consortium Library, University of Alaska Anchorage, uaahmc-0396-14a-79.
168 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Before Washburn and 

Bates caught this glimpse 

of Mt. Lucania framed 

by their tent opening, 

they had climbed over 

6,000 feet through fog 

and snowstorms to a 

wind-swept pass above 

the Walsh Glacier (Life 

Magazine 1937). Russ 

Dow Papers, Archives 

and Special Collections, 

Consortium Library, 

University of Alaska 

Anchorage, uaa-hmc0396-14a-159.
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 169

Robert H. “Bob” Bates 

was a fellow classmate 

and member of the 

Harvard Mountaineering 

Club. Although 

four mountaineers 

were originally set to 

participate in the Lucania 

Expedition, freakish 

weather conditions, 

which turned the glacier 

ice to slush, limited 

the climbing party to 

only Washburn and 

Bates. Russ Dow Papers, 

Archives and Special 

Collections, Consortium 

Library, University of 

Alaska Anchorage, uaahmc-0396-14a-117.
170 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

“Mountaineering is a compound of sport, 

science, audacity.”

 —Bradford Washburn
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 171

In an article titled, “From a Mountain Climber’s Album,” 

published in Life Magazine, Bradford Washburn wrote 

that “Mountaineering is a compound of sport, science, 

audacity.” On July 9, 1937, Washburn and Robert Bates 

became the first to ascend Mt. Lucania. Until then, it was 

the highest unscaled peak in North America (Life Magazine

1937). Russ Dow Papers, Archives and Special Collections, 
172 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

One of the most publicized 

climbing expeditions in the 

Wrangells was AJJEX-67, 

a joint American and 

Japanese effort to ascend 

a remote part of the 

Mount Bona area in the 

mid-1960s. The climbers’ 

primary objective was 

the ascent of the chief 

peak in the Twaharpies—

at the time, the highest 

unclimbed and unnamed 

mountain in North America. 

Approaching the summit 

of West Bona. American 

Japanese Joint Expedition 

(AJJEX), 1967. Alaska and 

Polar Regions Collections 

& Archives, Archives, 

Rasmuson Library, University 

of Alaska Fairbanks, UAF2006-131-137.

172
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 173
174 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

In spite of some bad weather, a few medical emergencies, communication obstacles, 

and ultimately, the unsuccessful naming of Mount Kobe, the AJJEX-67 Expedition was 

nonetheless a great achievement for all who participated. As one climber recalled, “The 

feeling of friendship and mutual understanding was ever present.” Mountaineer Norman 

Benton later wrote:

“The success of the group’s effort proved to us that with determination 

and a desire to show respect and understanding, two peoples of different 

cultural and linguistic backgrounds can live together and share common 

interests. The leaders of this expedition and all of the team members 

learned that with mountaineering as a mutual endeavor that two nations 

which had faced each other in a life and death struggle a few years 

earlier could live and work together as a team and build toward a lasting 

friendship” (Benton 2003). 

Camp #1 at Night on Mount Bona. American Japanese Joint Expedition (AJJEX), 1967. 

Alaska and Polar Regions Collections & Archives, Archives, Rasmuson Library, University 

of Alaska Fairbanks, UAF-2006-131-102.
Since the first explorers made their 

way up the Copper River, scientists 

and explorers have been assigned 

the task to study, and later, to 

protect and manage the unique 

natural resources found within the 

Wrangell region. Today the park and 

preserve continues to ensure the 

opportunity to explore, learn from, 

and add to the body of scientific 

research in regards to the processes 

of biodiversity and wildlife ecology, as 

well as the dynamic forces of weather, 

water, glaciers, plate tectonics and 

volcanism. 

CHAPTER 9

SCIENCE
176 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Lt. Henry T. Allen led a successful second military reconnaissance of central Alaska after the first expedition failed. 

Allen’s three-man party—which besides Allen included Cavalry Sgt. Cady Robertson and Pvt. Frederick W. Pickett—

ascended the Copper River in 1885. Allen’s invaluable report, published on his return in 1897, included important 

observations on animals, geology, volcanic activity, glaciers, minerals, and even the weather. Besides recounting an 

epic journey, Allen’s report represented a significant contribution to the scientific, cultural, and economic knowledge 

of the region. The start of the Henry T. Allen Expedition from Alaganik at Mouth of Copper River, in March 1885. Henry 

T. Allen. Report of the Expedition to Copper, Tanana and Koyukuk Rivers in the Territory of Alaska, in the Year 1885. 

Washington DC, 1887.
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 177

At the time of Allen’s expedition, the Ahtna Natives of the Copper River were 

known to be fiercely territorial. Yet, had it not been for the Alaska Natives 

they encountered, Allen and his men on several occasions would have 

perished. Allen’s account of copper implements and “Nicolai’s Copper 

Mountain” inspired later searches for the mineral, leading to the discovery of 

the Kennecott Copper Mines, one of the richest deposits of high grade copper 

ever found in North America. Allen’s close encounters with Alaska Natives 

caused him to speculate about the ancient connections between various 

peoples of Alaska and early Asiatic migrations based on “general appearance 

and manner.” Wahnie and his Mother Nikolai and his Wives, 1885. Nikolai 

Chief of the Copper-Chitina River Indians. Henry Allen. “Taral at the Junction 

of the Copper and Chitina Rivers in April 1885. A House of the Athena Indians.” 

Henry T. Allen. Report of the Expedition to Copper, Tanana and Koyukuk Rivers 

in the Territory of Alaska, in the Year 1885. Washington DC, 1887.
178 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Early exploration of the 

Copper basin was conducted 

by the U.S. Army. By 1900, 

scientists with the newly 

formed U.S. Geological Survey 

conducted most of the regional 

reconnaissance work. “Lt. 

Sharp and Native girl in front of 

his camp at Tonsia,” March 15, 

1906. P.S. Hunt Photographer. 

WRST History Files, “Ahtna” 

Folder. Original photo located 

in the Zug Album, Alaska and 

Polar Regions Collections & 

Archives, Rasmuson Library 

Archives, University of Alaska 

Fairbanks, 80-68-27.
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 179

Doc Billum provided prospectors with some of their earliest accurate information about copper deposits in the 

Kotsina-Kuskulana district. One such property was the so-called Billum lode, which was probably the Copper Creek 

deposit later known as the Mullen Load (Bleakley 2006). “Ahtna—Possibly Doc Billum (second from right) at Lower 

Tonsina looking at photographs with local Ahtna and surveyors.” WRST History Files, “Ahtna” Folder.
180 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 181

Mount Wrangell has been the 

site of several scientific research 

projects in the past. Volcanicglacial interactions on Mount 

Wrangell were noted more 

than 100 years ago by explorer 

Robert Dunn, when he made the 

first recorded ascent of Mount 

Wrangell in 1908. At the time, 

Dunn claimed that climbing Mount 

Wrangell was of more scientific 

value than exploration on taller 

Alaskan peaks such as McKinley 

(now Denali) or St. Elias, because 

“on Wrangell alone, outside of 

the Antarctica, can you study 

the relation of an active cone to 

a great ice cap” (Solie 1984:12). 

Mount Wrangell in eruption, 1902. 

U.S. Geological Survey. WRST 

Geology Folder, 1138.

“On Wrangell alone, 

outside of the Antarctica, 

can you study the relation 

of an active cone to a 

great ice cap.”

 —Robert Dunn
182 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Merritt Kirkpatrick once flew down to the isolated and glacier-bound Yakataga Beach in response to a distress call 

sent by way of the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Kirk was more than surprised to find the president of the Standard Oil 

Company of California, who was there scouting for oil with his geologists, waiting patiently for a plane. “Kirk and 

Geologists at Yakutaga,” Courtesy of the Cordova Historical Museum, 99-2-4.
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 183 183

The Canadian-Alaska boundary survey work conducted from 1907 to 1913, added greatly to the geographic and 

scientific knowledge of the region, as close attention was given to glaciers and other prominent physical features. 

Two decades later, instead of mapping on foot, surveyors would utilize the airplane for mapping and geological 

reconnaissance. According to Bradford Washburn, the purpose of the aerial expedition was twofold: The first was 

to obtain material for mapping unexplored regions of Alaska. The second was to secure as complete as possible a 

series of aerial photographs, illustrating the fundamental principle of glaciation (Washburn 1941). This sketch map 

drawn by Bradford Washburn pinpoints locations for taking aerial photographs. Russ Dow Papers, Archives and 

Special Collections, Consortium Library, University of Alaska Anchorage, uaa-hmc-0396-12-1.
184 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Summer 1938, explorer Bradford 

Washburn (pictured here with 

camera) returned to study eastern 

Alaska’s mountains and glaciers 

by air. Sponsored by the National 

Geographic Society, Harvard 

University, and the New England 

Museum of Natural History, Washburn 

chartered Gillam, Reeve, Kirkpatrick 

and Smith, to fly him over “the most 

interesting and spectacular glacier 

systems on earth” (Washburn 1941). 

Russ Dow Papers, Archives and 

Special Collections, Consortium 

Library, University of Alaska 

Anchorage, uaa-hmc-0396-14a-33.
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 185

Bradford Washburn 

chartered a flight 

with Kirkpatrick in 

1938 to study Alaska’s 

geological features. 

Kirk took Washburn 

on a circuit of the 

Prince William Sound 

shoreline and then 

flew the geologist 

up to McCarthy. 

Bradford Washburn, 

Kirkpatrick, and Dr. 

Walter Clark pose 

behind equipment 

for testing ultra-red 

film plus oxygen 

containers. Courtesy 

of the Cordova 

Historical Museum, 

99-2-9.
186 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

From McCarthy, Merle Smith flew 

Washburn out past the north 

side of Mount Logan between 

the peak and Mount Walsh and 

around Mount Lucania. The 

team returned to McCarthy 

by way of the Donjek, Klutlan 

and White rivers and Skolai 

Pass. Washburn left Cordova 

in October 1938, remarking 

that he had never worked 

in any area where he had 

received more whole-hearted 

and sincere cooperation. He 

especially noted “the efficient 

and splendid service of the 

Cordova Air Service and 

Pilots Kirkpatrick and Smith” (Cordova Daily Times, October 

3, 1938). Mudhole and Bradford 

Washburn at Cordova Air 

Service cabin in McCarthy. 

Merle Smith Collection, Alaska 

Airlines, Seattle Washington. 
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 187

In 1949, anthropologist Frederica de Laguna began a lifetime’s work on Yakutat Tlingit culture and history that 

culminated in her magnum opus, Under Mount Saint Elias–a three-volume set that embodied most of her own 

research, while also summarizing and integrating most of the relevant accounts of explorers, historians, and 

anthropologists that had preceded her (Deur, et al. 2015: 11-12). De Laguna’s interviewees were particularly 

significant. Minnie Johnson, for example, explained how to process sealskins (tsa dugu). According to De Laguna, 

“Although skins may be kept in the frames for 2 to 3 days, MJ was anxious to finish one small skin for moccasin trims” 

(De Laguna 1972: 395-397). Frederica de Laguna & Minnie Johnson seal skinning, Yakutat, 1953. McClellan photo. 

Frederica de Laguna Photograph Collection, ASL-P350-52-copy-39-sup.
188 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

By the early 1950s the transpolar air routes and close proximity to the Soviet Union had transformed Alaska from a 

bridge to the East into America’s “northernmost sentry” and guardian of the West. Eastern Alaska’s mineral potential 

to support the nation’s growing nuclear industrial complex quickly gained the attention of federal agencies such as 

the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, which targeted an array of geological minerals 

crucial to Cold War defense. Reports of nickel, chromium, silver, lead, tungsten, zinc, platinum, tin, mercury, arsenic, 

and the atomic element antimony were said to be “hidden in stores of commercial-sized quantities” throughout the 

old Copper Belt (Hillyer 1943: 23; USGS 1952). Territorial geologists sent to assess mineral prospects in the Wrangell 

Mountains in 1955. Courtesy of Jim Edwards.
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 189

The 1950s saw the first 

1:63,360-scale standard 

quadrangle mapping 

projects initiated in the 

Wrangell Mountain 

region, thanks to newly 

acquired vertical 

photography. With the 

addition of the helicopter, 

such technological 

tools revolutionized 

geological surveying and 

topographic mapping 

in Alaska (Foley 1987:4). 

Surveyors, ca. 1950s. 

Courtesy of Jim Edwards.
190 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

During the 1950 Copper River Survey, surveyors used aerial photographs to establish set points along the old Copper 

River & Northwestern Railway line to determine a pathway for a new road. Despite cold and stormy weather, 

the survey team in 1950 had accomplished in about two months what it took surveyors four decades earlier to 

accomplish in three years. Survey crew (Brown and Smith) 1950. Courtesy of Charles “Bob” Leitzell. 
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 191

Air transportation had replaced horses and hard foot travel, but above 

all, noted one surveyor, “the aerial photography has resulted in an overall 

economy of mapping effort.” CAS pilot Herb Haley transported survey 

crews at the beginning and end of each work day between the base 

stations and their survey sites. This was accomplished by a Piper Cub 

equipped with tandem landing wheels that took off and landed from, 

as one surveyor declared, “the most unbelievable places—sandbars” 

(Kauffman 1950). “Our CAS Pilot” (Herb Haley) 1950. Courtesy of Charles 

“Bob” Leitzell. 
192 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

One surveyor reported a typical fall day in the canyon: “Today 

we fought high winds, sand blowing so one could not face 

it. Winds increased hourly—pilot got report of impeding 80 

m.p.h. gale” (Kauffman 1950). Damage caused by the 1964 

earthquake eventually halted construction, but the Copper 

River Survey was, nevertheless, a significant undertaking. 

Quinn looking through lens on tripod. Courtesy of the Cordova 

Historical Museum, 02-40-30.

192 

“Job number 10591 (mapping 

the Copper River Canyon for the 

ARC) is not an ordinary topo job 

even in AERO’s wide-flying global 

operations. Job 10591 is an invasion 

of the last frontier, Alaska; it is a 

contest against cold, wind, snow, dust 

and mountains in a setting of breathtaking scenery and rich Alaska 

history.” 

 —Virgil Kauffman

 Aero Service Corporation
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 193
194 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

(Right) Scientists working on Mount Wrangell 

would meet the supply plane at a lower 

elevation. According to physicist Charles 

“Buck” Wilson, “Fred, Bob and G.I. skied 

down from 14,000 to 7000 ft. for pick up 

by wheel plane on a strip in the woods far 

below” (Benson and Motyka 1978). Courtesy 

of Charles “Buck” Wilson.

(Below) Terris Moore, the University of 

Alaska’s “Flying President,” established 

a research laboratory on the summit of 

Mount Wrangell in 1952. Such scientific 

activity, supported entirely by aviation, was 

the impetus for the University of Alaska’s 

Geophysical Institute, which transformed 

the one-time mining college into a worldclass research facility (Davis 1992; Rozell 

2004). Camp at Mount Wrangell. Courtesy 

of Charles “Buck” Wilson. 
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 195

Wrangell Mountain 

Observatory researcher, Fred 

Milan, directs the air drop. 

Courtesy of Charles “Buck” 

Wilson. 

In July 1952, the Air Force flew 

a C-124 cargo plane over the 

peak and air dropped two 

Jamesway huts and equipment 

onto the mountain (Solie 1984: 12). 

Once retrieved, the researchers 

assembled the two huts on the 

exposed rim of the north crater, 

known by then as Hut Ridge. With 

air support from Terris Moore, the 

cosmic ray research station was 

in full operation. Hitting targets. 

Courtesy of Charles “Buck” Wilson.

195
196 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 197

The scientists atop Mount Wrangell 

were primarily interested in studying 

cosmic rays and the interaction of 

geological features such as glaciers 

and volcanoes. But physiologists with 

the U.S. Air Force Arctic Aeromedical 

Laboratory—Robert Elsner and 

Frederick Milan—studied the Wrangell 

Mountain scientists. The military was 

interested in how high altitudes and 

frigid temperatures physiologically 

affected human beings living in such 

environments. As relations between 

the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. worsened, and 

a “Hot War” between the two enemies 

became a distant possibility, such 

cold weather science took on new 

relevance in terms of national defense 

(Solie 1984). “Physiological research on 

Wrangell.” Courtesy of Charles “Buck” 

Wilson.

The environment surrounding the Wrangell Mountain Observatory has 

“the most magnificent and extensive array of mountain glaciers outside of 

the polar regions.”

 —Glaciologist Carl Benson
198 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

The International Geophysical Year (1957-1958) was a public relations effort designed to bring the earth, 

atmospheric, and ocean sciences into the classrooms and living rooms of the lay public in order to attract more 

students into scientific careers. U.S. participation in international science opened the gates to glaciological 

opportunities. The new enthusiasm for the discipline also gave the Wrangell Mountain Observatory a purpose 

beyond military interests. As glaciologist Carl Benson put it, the environment surrounding the Wrangell Mountain 

Observatory has “the most magnificent and extensive array of mountain glaciers outside of the polar regions” (Solie 

1984). Soaking in the view. Courtesy of Charles “Buck” Wilson.
 199

Hoping to corner the tourism market 

in the Wrangells, Cordova Airlines 

president Merle Smith purchased 

a DC-3 airliner to transport tourists 

to mining ghost towns. Smith’s 

fly-in Sourdough Tours tapped 

America’s nostalgic perceptions of 

the Old Frontier. He promised visitors 

encounters with Alaska’s quirky miners 

and cowboy-pilots, and the chance 

to uncover their own golden dreams.

CHAPTER 10

TOURISM
200 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

With business expanding, Smith reincorporated his air carrier service in 1953. The new name, Cordova Airlines, 

matched the postwar air industry’s modern image and expectations. An early promotional photo for Cordova 

Airlines Sourdough Tours. Wrangell Mountain pilot Merle Merle Smith Collection, Alaska Airlines, Seattle, Washington. 
Soon after Smith 

reincorporated Cordova 

Airlines, he launched the 

Sourdough Tours, which 

used frontier imagery in its 

advertisements to entice 

postwar tourists to mining ghost 

towns such as McCarthy and 

Kennecott. Courtesy of the 

Cordova Historical Museum, 

92-107-32 A.

(Below) Merle Smith added a DC-3 to 

his fleet and moved Cordova Airlines’ 

headquarters to Merrill Field in Anchorage. 

After the war Smith returned aviation to 

the Copper Belt, but instead of miners he 

carried tourists. Cordova Airlines DC-3 at 

May Creek, 1958. Merle Smith Collection, 

Alaska Airlines, Seattle, Washington. 
202 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

The Alaska Road Commission built the May Creek airstrip in 1935, and extended it in 1947. The only structure at 

May Creek available to shelter guests was a small mail cabin built by Chititu miners in 1936 (Bleakley nd). Cordova 

Airlines DC-3 at May Creek. Howard Knutson (in red hat and “Alaskan Tuxedo”) and two CA pilots assist passengers 

into cars (note the 1919 Dodge) to transport them to McCarthy, 1954. Courtesy of Charles “Bob” Leitzell. 
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 203

The Sourdough Tours took off from Merrill Field in Anchorage, where 

passengers were loaded onto a DC-3 airliner. The DC-3 flew over 

the Chugach Mountains to May Creek, which maintained the only 

strip long enough to accommodate such a big aircraft. Unloading 

tourists at May Creek. Cordova Airlines Collection, Cordova Historical 

Museum, 90-86-1.

The Sourdough Tours entourage consisted of Model T trucks and Willies 

Jeeps that hauled tourists twenty miles to McCarthy along the ARC 

built May Creek Road. “Cavalcade of Tourists, May Creek airfield.” 

Robert and Wilma Knox, Papers, 1949-2001, Archives & Special 

Collections, Consortium Library, University of Alaska Anchorage, uaahmc-0461-series 15-1-1.
204 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

After a “miner’s lunch” at the “ghost town,” guests spent the afternoon 

panning for gold in a nearby stream. Tours of the McCarthy townsite were 

also provided. The tour promised to transport the visitor back in time, 

boasting that the McCarthy trip was “Alaska’s most exciting weekend 

tour” (Cordova Airlines 1955). (Harding’s 1923 Dodge is the middle car.) 

Arriving at the McCarthy Ghost Town. Robert and Wilma Knox, Papers, 

1949-2001, Archives & Special Collections, Consortium Library, University of 

Alaska Anchorage, uaa-hmc-0461-series15-1-3.
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 205

The Sourdough Tours’ 1923 Dodge was originally brought to Alaska to transport President Warren G. Harding when he 

visited Valdez in 1923. Howard Knudson filling radiator, 1923 Dodge, May Creek. May Creek Road Dodge, May 30, 

1950. Courtesy of Charles “Bob” Leitzell.
206 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

A Cordova Airlines brochure from 1955 provided the McCarthy tour 

highlights:

“When the sun is high, it’s cocktail time at the lodge, and one takes on 

the gold baring nuggets and notes. Then, after a fine dinner served family 

style, join us at the fabulous Golden Saloon where you find yourself in 

another era. With the playing of 1920s vintage records, your lodge hosts 

improvising on the violin and mandolin, you’re in for an evening of solid 

music, tasty drinks and interesting chats with the McCarthy Sourdoughs.” 

Robert and Wilma Knox, Papers, 1949-2001, Archives & Special Collections, 

Consortium Library, University of Alaska Anchorage, uaa-hmc-0461-

series15-1-4.
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 207

On the second day of the Sourdough Tour, visitors made the six mile trip to Kennecott for a picnic and to hike 

around. Travel between McCarthy and Kennecott took place on The “Kennecott Express,” a Model T automobile 

mounted on railroad wheels that pulled tourists riding in wooden rail carts around the deserted structures. Cordova 

Airlines pilot Howard Knutson preparing tourists for the featured ride on the “Kennecott Express.” Courtesy of Charles 

“Bob” Leitzell.
208 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Travel writer Kathryn Winslow wrote that, during the Sourdough Tour, the ghost town evoked “an appealing eeriness. 

In some of the homes the curtains still hang in the windows. In the community building, which housed the school 

and library, the books and periodicals date back over thirty years. The railroad station, jail and general store are 

ready-made for your camera” (Winslow 1957: 108). Kennecott Express at Kennecott, 1954. Courtesy of Charles “Bob” 

Leitzell.
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 209

Merle Smith conceived the idea for the Sourdough Tours after a visit to Knott’s Berry Farm amusement park in 

California. The first year running the Sourdough Tours, Smith and his airline hauled over 900 passengers into the 

Copper Belt, most of them visiting McCarthy and Kennecott (Janson 1981). Courtesy of Charles “Bob” Leitzell.

 “The railroad station, jail and general store 

 are ready-made for your camera.”

 —Kathryn Winslow
210 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Visitors wandered freely through the industrial buildings, including the 14-story gravity-fed ore concentrator building 

that dominated the skyline above Kennecott; the leaching plant where the Syndicate pioneered the use of sulfur 

ammonia in processing copper tailings; the power plant, with its four huge smokestacks resembling a steamship; the 

hospital, which saved numerous patients flown into McCarthy by Harold Gillam; the superintendent’s office, the only 

log-cabin on site and the oldest building in Kennecott; the multi-story bunkhouses; the general store; the two room 

school house; the community center that functioned as a theatre and indoor gymnasium; and the several private 

residences for families of the teachers, medical staff, and upper management (Ringer, 1993:33). Robert and Wilma 

Knox, Papers, 1949-2001, Archives & Special Collections, Consortium Library, University of Alaska Anchorage, uaahmc-0461-series15-1-12.
 211

Residents of the Wrangell Landscape 

engaged in play in numerous ways. 

Holidays and American celebrations 

were important for they gave miners 

and other laborers time-off from hard 

work and connected them to their 

far-off homes. Some played games to 

come together, while others recreated 

for solitude. Adults used play to cope 

with reality, while children used it to 

create a world of imagination. Today, 

as hikers traverse mining trails and 

campers wander among prospectors’ 

ruins, recreational activities and 

play tend to re-create or mimic the 

Wrangell working past.

EPILOGUE

PLAY
212 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

The centerpiece of American holidays in Alaska was the Fourth of July. Independence Day festivities offered miners 

a break from their grueling work and re-created traditions from home. July 4, 1914. WRST History Files, “Chisana 

Bonanza Creek” Folder, 276.
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 213

The Fourth of July celebration often centered on competition and 

games. Game-playing gave miners working in isolation a sense of 

community. Swimming race, at the Mouth of Little El, July 4, 1914. WRST 

History Files, “Chisana Bonanza Creek” Folder, 289.

A thrilling foot race at Hamshaw’s camp formed a sense of camaraderie 

among miners, many of whom came from different places and 

represented diverse backgrounds. “4th of July race, Mouth of Little El,” 

1914. WRST History Files, “Chisana Bonanza Creek” Folder, 276. Original 

photo in the Stanley-Mason Collection at the Tacoma Public Library.
214 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Although Franklin D. Roosevelt had not yet proclaimed Thanksgiving a federal holiday, it was still considered the 

nation’s day to give thanks. Fletcher Hamshaw and his wife hosted a Thanksgiving gathering of Chisana miners 

in 1914. Because the ratio of men to women remained heavily in favor of men, according to one account of the 

Thanksgiving Day dance, “it was not amiss to see many of the men dancing together” (Hunt 1996: 110). WRST 

History Files, “Chisana-Other” Folder, 326.
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 215

Although the Kennecott Copper Corporation ran year-round, employees 

still made time to celebrate Christmas. Kennecott Kid Mary Ellen Duggan 

Clark remembered that school children put on a Christmas pageant 

for their families at the Recreation Hall where a big Christmas tree was 

displayed. “And after the program was finished,” explained Clark, “Santa 

Claus would come through the [artificial] fireplace, come out and he’d 

have a gift for each child and a stocking with some fruit and some candy 

in it” (KKOHP 1991-Clark: 7-8). Christmas at Bonanza Mine Bunk House. 

WRST History Files, “People” Folder, 863.
216 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

“There were summertime 

tea parties outside on 

the grass where my little 

tea table was set with 

refreshments for my toys,” 

recalled Kennecott Kid 

Jean Elizabeth McGavock 

Lamb. Playmates included 

“various dolls, toy dogs, 

bunnies and bears” and 

her brother James (KKOHP 

1991-Lamb: 2). Most of 

the children at Kennecott 

belonged to the managers. 

Most the ordinary miners 

did not bring families 

to their worksites. Tea 

party. WRST History Files, 

“Kennecott Millsite” Folder.

216

"There were 

summertime tea 

parties outside on the 

grass where my little 

tea table was set with 

refreshments for my 

toys: various dolls, 

toy dogs, bunnies 

and bears." —Jean Elizabeth 

McGavock Lamb
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 217

George Flower was one of 

the few African Americans in 

McCarthy in the 1920s. Oscar 

Watsjold’s family came from 

Norway to open a hardware store 

in McCarthy in 1929. As a child, 

Oscar recalled that George was 

the first black person he had ever 

seen. He and his friends would 

visit George at his cabin near 

Long Lake (KKOHP 1991-Watsjold: 

10). “Jevene, George, Ringer.” 

WRST History Files, “People” 

Folder.

217
218 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

Few Kennecott employees 

“hiked” for fun. Some of the 

Kennecott Kids recall that they 

“liked hiking,” but admitted 

that they rarely took long 

hikes. Children tended to stay 

close to home. “We’d just go 

out in the woods and play and 

build brush houses and things 

like that” (KKOHP 1991-Clark: 

13). Bob Sullivan and son. 

WRST History Files, “People” 

Folder, 864.

218 
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 219

When asked what people 

did for fun at Kennecott, 

Mary Ellen Duggan Clark 

recalled that in winter 

“It was skiing, skating, 

sliding—things like that” 

(KKOHP 1991-Clark: 12). 

Snowbunnies. WRST History 

Files, “Ethel Lecount AlbumKennecott” Folder.
220 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 

On the Fourth of July at Kennecott the big event 

was the baseball game against McCarthy. To give 

the older McCarthy residents an advantage over 

the young bucks of Kennecott, the McCarthy team 

imported a so-called “ringer,” a pitcher from another 

town (KKOHP 1991-O Watsjold: 21). Tournaments 

alternated between the Kennecott and McCarthy 

fields. When the rival teams met at Kennecott’s 

millsite, they played on a diamond built on the most 

rugged and unlikely location: atop of the Kennicott 

Glacier! Alaska State Library, asl_p425_12_146.

During the winter, the baseball field was boarded 

and flooded with both water and lights for 

wintertime skating (KKOHP 1991-Lamb: 5). Kennecott 

Kid Mildred Erickson Reis recollected a beautiful pair 

of skates her mother used that her father had made 

out of a round saw blade that attached to her 

boots (KKOHP 1991-Reis: 16). “Once a year they had 

a carnival. Everybody dressed in costumes...They 

brought the piano in from the hall and the orchestra 

would play” (KKPHP 1991-Reis: 22). Night Scene, 

Ice Carnival, Kennecott Alaska. WRST History Files, 

“Friends of Kennecott Collection” Folder.
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 221
222 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 223

Kennecott Kids Jean McGavock Lamb and her 

brother James McGavock recall day trips when the 

family would go “picnicking” and “fishing” (KKOHP 

1991-Lamb and Mcgavock: 6). Fisherman. WRST 

History Files, “Hunting” Folder, 492.

223
(Below) The local watering hole often times 

doubled as community centers. According 

to author Doug Vandergraft, “The remoteness 

of Alaska, seasonal darkness, isolation, 

and loneliness created a need to socialize, 

which provided a unique niche for bars” 

(Vandergraft 2014: 15). This photo was taken 

one year before Congress repealed Alaska’s 

first prohibition laws on liquor (1868-1899). The 

Opera House Saloon in 1898. WRST History Files, 

“Copper Center” Folder.

Alaska’s gold rush attracted people from all 

over the world. The thousands of prospectors 

who came to seek their fortunes wanted a 

drink, whether they hit pay dirt or not. By 1899, 

Congress finally realized that it was impossible 

to keep liquor out of Alaska. Nizina Mines, 

1903. WRST History Files, “Chititu” Folder, 1678.
With the rise of the Woman’s 

Christian Temperance Union 

and the newly acquired 

power of the vote, female 

Alaskans pressured the 

territorial legislature to once 

again ban alcohol. Although 

“Bone dry” laws prohibited 

liquor between 1918 and 

1933, McCarthy had become 

a hotbed of moonshining 

(Vandergraft 1914: 18). Men 

who worked up at the mines 

rarely came down to the 

Kennecott millsite to recreate 

with employees. “They, 

as a rule,” recalled James 

McGavock, “passed right 

through and made a beeline 

for McCarthy” (KKOHP 1991-

Lamb and McGavock: 25). 

Happy Hour. WRST History 

Files, “Miscellaneous” Folder, 

1602.
226 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 227

O.A. Nelson had a surprising 

wit, which would later be 

expressed by Chitina’s 

haunting ghosts. Survey 

crew and skeleton at Chitina, 

1950. Courtesy of Charles 

“Bob” Leitzell. 
228 AT WORK IN THE WRANGELLS 
INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF WORK 229

Like anywhere, in the Wrangells there was a time 

to work and a time to rest. The next generation of 

Wrangell “workers.” Stephen R Capps, WRST History 

Files, “Ahtna” Folder, 204.
Kennecott employees ride 

the tram to work. WRST 

History Files, “Trams” Folder.
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At Work in the Wrangells

As the nation’s principal conservation 

agency, the Department of the Interior has 

responsibility for most of our nationally 

owned public lands and natural and cultural 

resources. This includes fostering the wisest 

use of our land and water resources, protecting 

our fish and wildlife, preserving the environmental 

and cultural values of our national parks and historical places, and 

providing for enjoyment of life through outdoor recreation. 

The Cultural Resource Programs of the National Park Service have 

responsibilities that include stewardship of historic buildings, 

museum collections, archeological sites, cultural landscapes, oral 

and written histories, and ethnographic resources.