The last settlers
By: by Jennifer Brice ; photographs by Charles Mason.
Series: Emerging writers in creative nonfiction
Publisher: Duquesne University Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Pittsburgh, PA
Language: eng
Number of pages: 171
Subjects: Frontier and pioneer life -- Alaska -- Deadfish Lake Region.; Frontier and pioneer life -- Alaska -- Slana.; Pioneers -- Alaska -- Deadfish Lake Region -- Biography.; Pioneers -- Alaska -- Slana -- Biography.; Deadfish Lake Region (Alaska) -- Description and travel.; Slana (Alaska) -- Description and travel.; Deadfish Lake Region (Alaska) -- Biography.; Slana (Alaska) -- Biography.
Description: In 1981, blocks of land totaling 30,000 acres near Lake Minchumina were opened to homesites, businesses and mineral leases. Two years later, 10,250 acres in eastern Alaska, near the Ahtna village of Slana, were opened to settlement as well. Would-be settlers besieged the Fairbanks office of the Bureau of Land Management with letters and calls. Over time, however, the hype and the illusions have faded. Fewer than 100 people now make their homes on what is truly the last federal frontier.

Of these last settlers, two families, the Hannans and the Spears, are at the center of this clear, unsentimental portrait of people whose daily existence is forged out of the crucible of myth.