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 …
Tag Archives: Stories from History
Wyatt Earp
Wyatt Earp. The name brings to mind Tombstone, Arizona and the gunfight at the OK Corral. In 1881, Wyatt, two of his brothers and Doc Holliday permanently ended the careers of five outlaws there. Few people know that Wyatt Earp had as much impact on Nome, Alaska as he did on Tombstone. Link to another …
Bishop Coudert’s Frozen Dinner
Bishop Coudert grabbed a plate of hot food in the kitchen tent. By the time he got it to the mess tent, 120 feet away, it had frozen solid. William Griggs spilled gasoline on his clothing, it evaporated so fast that when he hurriedly peeled it off, skin came with it. No mere thermometer …
Completely Crazy
Completely crazy, Keith Ingram called the “masters of the air” from my story two days ago. And then he moved on to another group of completely crazy guys, a group he clearly belonged to, truckers on the Alaska Highway. A link to another story “Albert Herda’s Idea” “In the ‘60’s on the highway,” he reported, …
Albert Herda’s Idea
Albert Herda had an idea. He knew about the Alaska Highway. In 1946 it approached its fourth birthday. If a trucker, Albert thought, could load his truck with things tough, and expensive, to get in Fairbanks, Alaska and then get his truck to Fairbanks over the new highway he could make a nice profit. Link …
Nellie Hadn’t Finished
Nellie, the Angel of Cassiar, had just got started. Her path through life, one long adventure, would wind up taking her to the Klondike Gold Rush and then on to the Gold fields of Northern Alaska Angel of Cassiar. When Cassiar mining petered out, Nellie headed south to try out the Silver fields of Arizona. …
Keeping Clean
Keeping clean isn’t easy when you live and work deep in the wilderness of the far north. Soldiers building the Alaska Highway tried keeping clean. They did not always (more accurately, they did not often) succeed. ‘Big John’ Erklouts of the 340th dealt with icy cold rivers and streams by washing half of his body …
Malodorous Canvas
Malodorous Canvas supported life in bivouac on the Alaska Highway in 1942. Tents provided barracks, mess halls and offices. Men slept on folding canvas cots. Canvas “lister bags” stored treated drinking water. Canvas enclosures became mechanical repair shops. In malodorous canvas enclosures, soldiers transformed empty fuel drums into stoves, showers and bath tubs. Bivouac in …
Spinning Steel
Spinning steel blades shrieked as they sliced through trees harvested along the path of the Alaska Highway. Men stood above and behind the blades, pulling levers, guiding the logs through, and the spinning blades helped roaring trucks and dozers demolish the quiet of the deep north woods. Sawyers proved as essential to the massive project …
Blazing the Path of the Alcan
Blazing the 1800-mile path of the Alaska Highway, soldier topographers led the way into the subarctic wilds of Northern Canada and Alaska in 1942. The first road builders rushed into frigid British Columbia in March. The soldiers of the 29th and the 648th Topographic Battalions had come in February. Instead of maps, the topographers had …