Valdez, Alaska

“ Rob McIntyre had been angling for codfish at the top of Valdez dock for the past half-hour. Now, hearing the hoarse boom of the ocean vessel’s whistle out in the fog-bank which covered the mouth of the harbor, he pulled in his fishing-line, hurriedly threw together his heap of flapping fish, and, turning, sent shoreward the cry always welcome to dwellers in Alaska coast towns. ”

“ In the far-distant corners, hidden away from the eyes of man, one will come upon the scattered missions of the various churches to reach which one must journey thousands of miles! So, whenever a man from Nome speaks of Alaska he means that part of it which he himself knows,—the Seward Peninsula. The man from Cordova, [39] or Valdez, talks of the Prince William Sound country and calls it Alaska! The man from Juneau speaks of Alaska, but all that he means is the southeastern coast. This is why so much that is written of the country is contradictory. In fact, Alaska is not one but many countries! ”

“ The glacier behind the town—now called a "dead" glacier—once discharged bergs directly into the sea. The soil upon which the town is built is all glacial deposit. Flowers spring up and bloom in a day. Vegetables thrive and are crisp and delicious—particularly lettuce.
Society is gay in Valdez, as in most Alaskan towns. Fort Liscum is situated across the bay, so near that the distance between is travelled in fifteen minutes by launch. ”

“ There is always a dance in Valdez on "steamer night." The officers and their wives come over from the fort; the officers of the ship are invited, as are any passengers who may bear letters of introduction or who may be introduced by the captain of the ship. A large and brightly lighted ballroom, beautiful women, handsomely and fashionably gowned, good music, and a genuine spirit of hospitality make these functions brilliant.
The women of Alaska dress more expensively than in "the states." Paris gowns, the most costly furs, and dazzling jewels are everywhere seen in the larger towns. ”

“ There is a large salmon cannery at Orca; and the number of sea-birds to be seen in this small bay, [Pg 248] filling the air in snowy clouds and covering the precipitous cliffs facing the wharf, is surpassed in only one place on the Alaskan coast—Karluk Bay.
For several years before the founding of Valdez, Orca was used as a port by the argonauts who crossed by way of Valdez Pass to the Copper River mining regions, and by way of the Tanana River to the Yukon.
Prince William Sound is one of the most nobly beautiful bodies of water in Alaska. ”

“ There are many such lonely graves in Alaska, for scarce a winter passes that does not claim its victims in every section of the country. That same winter we heard of two men frozen on the Seward Peninsula, two on the Yukon, one on the Tanana, and one on the Valdez trail. ”

“ Through the canyon the trail is only wide enough for pack trains, and travel is by the frozen river.
The Signal Corps of the Army has constructed many hundreds of miles of telegraph lines since the beginning of the present decade. Nome, the Yukon, Tanana, and Copper River valleys are all connected with Valdez and with Dawson by telegraph. Nome has outside connection by wireless, and all the coast towns are in communication with Seattle by cable. [Pg 267]
The climate of Valdez is delightful in summer. In winter it is ten degrees colder than at Sitka, with good sleighing. ”

“ Since the loftiest and noblest peak of North America was doomed to be named for a man, it should have borne the name of this dauntless, loyal, and far-seeing friend of Alaska and of all America. Since this was not to be, it was very fitting that a young and ambitious town on the historic Voskressenski Harbor should bear this honored and forever-to-be-remembered name. If Seward and Valdez would but work together, the region extending from Prince William Sound to Cook Inlet would soon become the best known and the most influential of Alaska, as it is, with the addition of the St. ”

“ Important "strikes" are made constantly in the Tanana country, in the Sushitna, and in the Koyukuk, where pay is found surpassing the best of the Klondike.
The trail from Valdez to Fairbanks may yet be as thickly strewn with eager-eyed stampeders as were the Dyea and Skagway trails a decade ago. Never again, [Pg 243] however, in any part of Alaska, can the awful conditions of that time prevail. Steamer, rail, and stage transportation have made travelling in the North luxurious, compared to the horrors endured in the old days. ”

“ She was wrecked far to the south of Valdez, but the Japan Current carried her wreckage a thousand miles to the north and west, and threw it on the coast of Kadiak and the smaller islands west of there. It made the natives rich, they found so much in the way of supplies.”
“Are there any bears out there?” asked Jesse, wonderingly.
“Biggest in the world!” replied Uncle Dick. “You’d better keep away from them. We’re sailing now just south of the great Kenai Peninsula of Alaska. There’s bears over there, but mostly black ones. ”

“ There are saloons without end, and dance halls; a saloon in Alaska that excludes women is not known, but good order prevails and disturbances are rare.
The homes are, for the most part, small,—building being excessively high,—but pretty, comfortable, and frequently artistic. There are flower-gardens everywhere. There is no log-cabin so humble that its bit of garden-spot is not a blaze of vivid color. Every window has its box of bloom. La France roses were in bloom in July in the garden of ex-Governor Leedy, of Kansas, whose home is now in Valdez. ”

“ The Tillicum Club is known in all parts of Alaska. It has a very comfortable club-house, where all visitors of note to the town are entertained. The club occasionally has what its own self calls a "dry night," when ladies are entertained with cards and music. (The adjective does not apply to the entertainment.)
The dogs of Valdez are interesting. They are large, and of every color known to dogdom, the malamutes predominating. They are all "heroes of the trail," and are respected and treated as "good fellows." ”

“ He is a wrinkled old fellow now, and the hole left in his cheek by a wound is decorated by a large bone button similar to those that the women wear in their cheeks. When Professor Davidson, of the Coast Survey, went to the Chilkat country in 1867, on the revenue cutter Lincoln, Capt. J. W. White commanding, to gather material for a report upon the topography, 112climate, and the resources of Alaska, called for by the Congressional committees having the matter of the purchase of the territory in charge, he first made the acquaintance of Kloh-Kutz, then in his prime. ”

“ The Discovery of Glacier Bay
From here, on October 24, we set sail for Guide Charley’s ice-mountains. The handle of our heaviest axe was cracked, and as Charley declared that there was no firewood to be had in the big ice-mountain bay, we would have to load the canoe with a store for cooking at an island out in the Strait a few miles from the village. We were therefore anxious to buy or trade for a good sound axe in exchange for our broken one. Good axes are rare in rocky Alaska. Soon or late an unlucky stroke on a stone concealed in moss spoils the edge. ”

“ Many have been scared away from this part of Alaska by reports of dangerous natives, but although the Indians here were formerly ugly customers, there is now little to fear on that score. There are very few people there as yet, and it is a poor man's country with boundless possibilities, one great advantage being that its chief sea-port is open to navigation all the year round. At the newly built town of Valdes on the coast, stores of all kinds can be purchased at reasonable prices, the place being easy of access. ”

“ These boys might be called young Alaskans, for although the town of Valdez itself was not more than a few years old, their fathers had helped found the town and were prominent in its business affairs. Mr. Hardy was engaged in railway contracts on the new railroad, and Mr. Wilcox was chief of engineers on the same road. Rob’s father, Mr. McIntyre, owned the leading store, where all sorts of articles were sold, from shovels and picks to needles and pins. ”

“ From 1893 to 1895 the United States expended $55,000 to support the natives of the Fur Seal Islands. This policy threatens to become a continued necessity throughout much of Alaska. There is a small government Indian reservation on Afognak Island, near Kodiak. The white population is extremely mobile, and few towns have an assured or definite future. The prosperity of the mining towns of the interior is dependent on the fickle fortune of the gold-fields, for which they are the distributing points. ”

“ Wonderful is our latest American Continental possession—the rich territory of Alaska. Limitless are its resources, unmatchable its possibilities. One of its admirers thus sounds its praises: "In scenery, Alaska dwarfs the world. Think of six hundred and seventeen thousand square miles of landscape. Put Pike's Peak on Mount Washington or Mount Mitchell and it would hardly even up with Mount Logan. All the glaciers of Switzerland and the Tyrol dwindle to pitiful summer ice-wagon chunks beside the vast ice empires of Glacier Bay or mighty Malaspina. ”

“ The most sanguine do not expect to see Alaska enter the sisterhood of States during this century, but they claim with reason that southeastern Alaska will develop so rapidly that it will become necessary to make it a separate Territory with full and complete form of government, and skeleton rule be confined to the dreary and inhospitable regions of the Yukon mainland. ”

“ Not until long after the English, French, and Spanish discoverers had explored the country in the Temperate Zone did any European find Alaska. Even when it was found it seemed to offer little but ice-fields and desolate prairies, leading to wild mountain ranges that did not tempt men to settle. Seal hunters came and went, but generally left the native Indians in peace. Most of these hunters came from Siberia, for the Russians were the first owners of this land.
An officer in the Russian Navy named Vitus Bering found the strait that is called by his name in 1728. ”

“ The Davidson Glacier was named for Professor George Davidson, who was one of its earliest explorers. A heavy forest growth covers its terminal moraine, and detracts from its lower beauty.
Pyramid Harbor, at the head of Chilkaht Inlet, has an Alaska Packers' cannery at the base of a mountain which rises as straight as an arrow from the water to a height of eighteen hundred feet. This mountain was named Labouchere, for the Hudson Bay Company's steamer which, in 1862, was almost captured by the Hoonah Indians at Port Frederick in Icy Strait. ”

“ As we emerge from those dreary, low and watery wastes of the delta at Chatinak, the bluffs there, though desolate enough themselves, with their rusty barren slopes, yet they give us cheerful assurance of the fact that all Alaska is not under water, and that the borders of its big river are at last defined on both sides. High rolling hills come down boldly on the left bank as we ascend ”

“ It has been estimated by competent judges that, with its islands, it has a coast line equal to the circumference of the 137globe. Very few of our people, even among the educated class, have an adequate idea of the immensity of this northwestern Territory, two thirds of which abounds in available resources, only awaiting development. Were Alaska situated on our Atlantic coast it would extend from Maine to Florida. ”

“ Many a man has gone mad on the trail because he had no protection from them. That, practically, wiped out of existence one of the largest gold-hunting parties that ever came to Alaska."
"Tell us about it, Mr. Rivers," urged Roger.
"Well, I will," the chief replied, "if it is only to give you a due respect for your enemies. This party of which I am speaking had landed on Kotzebue Sound, and having heard of an alleged Indian trail to the Koyukuk, somewhere near the Selawik River, and having found out beside that it was tundra and flat, they thought it would be easy traveling." ”

“ I know not, nor have I ever found any who did know, what it is that makes one who has ever lived in Alaska, and who has left there, unhappy and discontented until they go back once more to the land of gold.
I have seen and talked with old “sourdoughs,” trappers and dog team freighters, and they all tell the same story. When the first big clean-up had been made in Dawson, I remember well, the winter following found a mob of big, boisterous, pleasure loving, money spending, carefree and happy hearted [104] Klondike miners in the hotels of Seattle, San Francisco and New York. ”

“ The steamer slides through green and echoing reaches; past groups of totems standing like ghosts of the past among the dark spruce or cedar trees; through stone-walled canyons where the waters move dark and still; into open, sunlit seas.
But it is not until one sails on "to Westward" that the spell of Alaska falls upon one; sails out into the wild and splendid North Pacific Ocean. Here are the majesty, the sublimity, that enthrall; here are the noble spaces, the Titanic forces, the untrodden heights, that thrill and inspire.
The marvels here are not the marvels of men. ”

“ All our people, even those from the locality whence I come, are beginning to appreciate a little of Alaska’s future. The men of my own age whom I am addressing will not be old men before we see Alaska one of the rich and strong States of the Union. I thank fortune that the National Legislature has begun to wake up to the fact that Alaska has interests of vital importance not merely to her but to the entire Union. Alaska contains a territory which will within this century support as large a population as the [429] combined Scandinavian countries of Europe ”