The Wrangell sentinel., 1923-01-18

compiy. 4 nonresident, obviously as compared with Us residents that ne runs grave risk Of appearing ri- uicuious when he writes Tor Alaskan consumption. However, on further conslaeration, it struck me that aIter all the outsider might have a view point which would at least be inter esting.
 am just finishing my third tour or Alaska. Each time 1 have been i'm pressed with the tremendous problem or development this vast region holds for the american people. The yistas widen with eacn returning obserya- tion. The more 1 see or Alaska the more firmly convinced l am that you have nere the wealth Of an empire which Will some day support great population. l do not mean by tnls that i anticipate any great rush O. aetI4ers 10 tnls reg.on, UuI uo lnea-. that Alaska can and will grow stead fly in wealth and population for a thousand years to come. and each year will be richer in wealth and op- portunities than il is today.
 The most accurate measuring stick to apply to the future is the experi- ences Of the past. One who has seen something Of the settlement Of some the Western States and has consider ed the significance of what he has seen cannot believe that this region of the great Northwest will be left long undeyeloped.
 As boy I saw something of pioneer ing in what is now considered one Of the older states of the Middle West. Today, al the age of 51, it seems like fairy tale for me to recall that as a boy I passed through pioneer condi- tions much more primitive than those now prevailing on Cook Inlet or in the valley of the Tanana. I was born in Iowa in log cabin on my fathers homestead on the East Fork of the Des Moines River, where he had settled in 1859 At the time Of his settlement our home was 125 miles from the nearest railroad. There was no market for anything except dressed pork (frozen) which he hauled that distance in the winter and sold as low as s2.75 per cwt. 4 few years later a railroad reached point 20 miles distant and, twenty years after his settlement, came within ten miles. There were no autos. trucks. or caterpillars.
 When ten, twelve and fourteen years old I herded cattle on the wild. unbroken, unoccupied prairie lands of Iowa. At midday have been afar on the prairie where as far as the eye could reach there was no house or field or grove or any evidence of hu- man occupacy. Much of this land was marshy. In the springtime it was alive with 1ocks of ducks, geese, golden blower, and the stalking fig ures of sandhill cranes. Only one thoroughly familiar with the region could cross it early in the season and then he must have a strong saddle horse and pick his way carefully along the highest ground. In mid summer it was maze of sloughs waving with bullrushes and cattails and sentineled with brown-thatched muskrat houses in their deepest parts. Between such successions of sloughs were patches of higher land where the native grass grew sweet and the cattle grszed and waxed fat. Late in the day I would turn the cat tie homeward, so that by milking time they would reach our home which was located near the river on farming.
 Mosquitoes? Yes, indeed {, Iowa. with her warmer climate, more pro- ductive of such pests, could in those days have given cards and spades to Alaska. Yet it was a beautiful land as look back upon it and I wonder at the blindness of the Iowa pioneer who had little more faith in the fu- ture of the region than the average Panama homesteader has today.
 In that early pioneer day in Iowa , we thought the only land suitable for agriculture was the we'll drained ?and along the river. Our vast marsh IS and our great expanse of bending hullrushes and waving flags were looked upon as permanent wastes. Forty years ago we considered them as worthless as the average Sour dough" today considers your black spruce flats and your "niggerhead country. Yet today every acre of that land is ditched and tiled drained.