The Cordova daily times., 1921-05-23
Old Timer Is Said to Be Two of the Three Biggest Liars in the World and Who Will Gainsay Him?


 iginal Gordon Bettles among his sourdough friends as the Baron Munchausen of the north passed through ketchikan on the last trip of the steamer Northwestern, bound again for the Golden North writes Emery Tobin in the Ketchikan Chron- icle. Bettles used to say, There are three liars on the Koyukuk-Jim Hastings is one, and Bottles is the other two"
 Bettles, in his usual confidential air, told friends who eagerly sought him while the boat was in port last night, that he was taking a well-to- do friend 'to the biggest find yet made in Alaska, up in the Arctic where the water flows the other way"
 Bettles is nothing if not original He is famed for his live imagination his good nature, his liberality, his great friendliness and his capacity for telling interesting stories. There is hardly real old pioneer of the interior who has not heard of him He is valued as good company"
 BEETLES NAMED FOR HIM
 It was Bettles who founded the city of Bettles on the koyukuk, and named it after himself. This, pio- neers who are now in Ketchikan know to be absolutely so. And while there was a discouraging dearth of gold in the Koyukuk he kept the district alive, and through his prodi- gality in giving every poor miner who asked it, a grub stake" worked his own financial undoing. Any pros pector was welcome at the trading post of Picket, Bettles and Picket, and if they had no money it mattered naught to them.
 Bettles went to the Koyukuk-he had been in Alaska many years be- fore-shortly after the great gold rush. He went up the river with the idea of starting a trading post at the limit of steamer navigation. Arc tic City seemed the ideal spot, but the townsite of Arctic City had been staked, and Bettles could get nothing to suit him there. Undaunted by this he took his grub three miles further up the river and, at a place he named Bergman, from the accommo- dating captain of the steamer who took him up, he dropped off his out 1 fit and started the store. OPENED TRADING POST | Picket Bettles and Picket-his partners were two brothers-had con- duced their trading post about year when Bettles decided that Bergman | was not the limit of steamer navi- gation on the Koyukuk, and about 1900, upon the end ok investigations, went 140 miles further up the river and located the present site of Bet. | ties as the ideal place for another post which they opened. | Bettles was a shrewd trader, but a liberal friend. He eutentained those who came to see him with interesting I tales, and his fame spread far and wide. For instance-Bettles one year went out of the country on per. sonally conducted tour to sell mining | properties. He travelled to London England. ONE OF HIS TALEs
 When he returned he told his friends about this experience-he had stopped at palatial hotel in London. It was bewildering maze of beauty, of large halls and salons railways, and winding staircases. His room was on the sixth floor. Going up to his room he took out his jack-knife and cut rough slashes in every mahogany panel in the staircase from the first floor to the top.
 The next day there was h. to pay. The hotel officials were wild. They wanted to know "who did that" Up the winding staircase they went, away up to the sixth floor The slashes in the mahogany ended with a deep cut on the door of the suite occupied by Gordon Bettles.
 Did you do this?" the proprietor demanded, red with rage, What do you mean, sir?"
 Me? Sure, I did that-1 had to blaze a trail so I could find my way back, didn't I? That's the way we do up in Alaska"
 Bettles had to pay.
 HAD IT coRNERED
 .Bettles did lot of prospecting, but didn't seem to have any unusual luck in this field of endeavor. One winter he was prOspecting on Gold