Rika Wallen and people like her couldn’t keep motorized vehicles and airplanes from killing off most of the roadhouses along the Richardson Highway. They could, though, save a single roadhouse by improving it and knowing how to run it. Big Delta where travelers ferried across the Tanana River on their way to Fairbanks hosted two …
Category Archives: Alaska Attitude
Alaska Nellie
Alaska Nellie took everything by storm. Born Nellie Trosper, she learned to take the woods that way on a farm near St. Joseph Missouri. She trapped and, a terrific shot, she hunted. In her spare time she helped her parents raise 11 younger siblings. As soon as her parents could spare her, though, Nellie headed …
Ada Blackjack—The Toughest Woman You’ve Never Heard About
Ada Blackjack travelled with four inexperienced young men on an ill-advised expedition to Wrangell Island in the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia. Stuck there for two years, the four young men died, leaving Ada to survive on her own. Link to another story “Badass Women” Ada, born Ada Deletuk, hailed from Spruce Creek just a …
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Defending Alaska
Defending Alaska? In the runup to WWII some senior officers in the United States Army thought a lot about that potential problem. Most did not. In August1941 they called the Alaska National Guard to active duty and moved most of it out of Alaska. Territorial Governor Earnest Gruening had seen that coming and he urged …
Perpetual Motion in Dawson City
Perpetual motion obsessed Jan Welzl. Most people came to Dawson City to look for gold. Jan came to build a perpetual motion machine. He filled his three cabins with pipe and fittings, axles, counterweights, and even beer bottles. Whirling drive belts ran from the window of one cabin to the door of the next. His …
The Most Unique Contribution
The most unique contribution to Skagway atmosphere probably came from “Old Man Davis”. He considered bathing an unnatural activity, incompatible with good health. Residents knew to be up wind when they encountered Davis. Harriet Pullen brought her three sons to Skagway with the miners—sold them pies. When the miners left, she opened a small hotel, …
Badass Women
Badass women, the Anchorage Daily News called the first two ladies to win the Iditarod. Libby Riddles did it first—in 1985. Her victory inspired a famous tee shirt that read “Alaska: Where Men are Men and Women Win the Iditarod”. Sled Dogs Rescued Nome In 1986 the other badass woman, Susan Butcher won, and Susan …
Sled Dogs Rescued Nome
Dogs, sled dogs, offered the only possible rescue for the dying people of Nome, Alaska. In the winter of 1925, Dr Welch, Nome’s only doctor, fought a diphtheria epidemic that threatened to wipe out everyone in Nome and the surrounding area. Through January he lost a few more patients every day. Without diphtheria antitoxin he …
Diphtheria in Nome
Diphtheria antitoxin expires. In the summer of 1924 Dr. Welch, the only doctor in Nome Alaska, discovered that his batch had done just that, and he immediately ordered more. But anything coming to Nome in 1925 came over oceans; and the Port of Nome, just two degrees shy of the Arctic Circle, closed in November; …
Inwood to Skagway
Inwood, Iowa to Skagway, Alaska—Doctor Peter Dahl moved his family to an utterly different, utterly unique world. Wife Vera liked Iowa just fine, but “whither thou goest…” The move struck eleven-year-old Lew, ten-year-old Robert, and even three year old Roger as pure excitement. Buffalo Soldiers in Skagway In his memoir, After the Gold Rush, …