The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1906-03-05
YUKON LAND POSTMASTERTNG.
JUST AS AMERICAN IN LAT. $3.50
NORTH As ANYWHERE.

Cum, At So. Is Going There 20 Grow UP
With the COuntry-Eleetric Lights, Two
Railroads. CRwhammer COats, Course
Dinners and Crops Of Placer Gold,
John p. Clum, post Office inspector by
profession, Is once moro going out on the
frontier. Mr.. Clum was born a little over
fifty years ago. He has taken the post
mastership Of Fairbanks, Alaska, in lati-
tude 81 degrees 80 minutes north, nj Is
going out to grow up with thu country.
Fairbanks Is on the Tanana River. about
1856 miles east Of the junction Of the Tanana
and the Yukon.
ANY one who thinks it's a bowling wilder
ness up there Is mistaken, /" Mr.. Clum said
the other day. Fairbanks is the brightest
little city OF 1000 inhabitants that ever
looked into a big future. 1t has a national
bank, two private banks, an electric light
plant, a steam heating plant, telephones
and all the other c~onveniences a similar
tow has in Washington, say. More than
that, it is full Of pleasant little homes that
are homes the year round.
1.-THE town is in the centre OF a splendid
fur, wood and mineral country. WIG
grasses grow around there that can sustain
American cattle. SO do most OF our vege-
tables. The mines around Fairbanks are
all connected by the Tanana Mine Railroad,
forty miles long. and the Central Alaskan
Railroad is pushing up from Valdez at a
rate that will connec Fairbanks and the
whole Tanana Valley with the coast In
eighteen months.
indications are, too, that the yield OF
gold in the rich places around Fairbanks
will be very large next year. During its
first season, two years ago, the yield was
81, 200, 900. Last season it ran up TO SO, 900 900
and this coming spring the cleanup should
be twelve or fifteen millions.
~In short, there Is a thriving little Ameri-
can city up there on the Tanana which
Ia going to become a good sized one pretty
soon. When you are invited out to dinner
there now you wear the clothes you would
in New York, and sit down to much the
same course dinner that would be served
here. Yet in 1893 a lieutenant and half a
dozen men from Major A~bercrorhbie's
expedition went in and got lost in a barren
INC impossible wilderness in that same
territory
Clum was 20 years old when he ven into
the Government service; That was N -,
and he became connected with the meteoro-
logical service. In 1874 he became agent
TO the Apache indiana at San Carlos, Ariz
He consolidated four tribes There and
finally got 5000 Apaches into the one reser-
walton. When trouble came after putting
the irons on Geronimo he captured Pieon,
senay, another bad Indian, and killed DIS
ain, still another who wouldn't be taker
peaceably. He quit The Indian service
In the later '70s. On May l. 1880, he
printed the first number Of the Tombstone
Epitdph in a tent that was composing
editorial, dining, stock, sleeping and living
room. He became postmaster OF the town
then Mayor. Then he got restless anc
went to California.
In 1891 he became a post office inspector
and proceeded to get into a lot OF trouble
putting out of business in the United State
the Juarez Lottery Company OF JuareZ
Mexico, just across from FL Paso. When
he got through the president of the com
pany was in bed with nervous prostratioI
with SIS indictments against him.
In 1893 Clum was sent to Alaska as a sor
Of special postmast ter general for the terri
tory, with practically limitless powers T.
organize an efficient postal system. III
did it. SO the call Of the frontier is some
thing with which Clum is familiar.