STORIES OF COURAGE & BRAVERY IN ALASKA'S RUGGED COPPER RIVER VALLEY

What's Inside This Site About Alaska Life, Courage & Rescue

Copper River People Extreme Rescues Looking Back The Copper River Way
Showing posts with label Copper River People. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Copper River People. Show all posts

Copper Valley Alaska EMT's. If You Didn't Help, Who Would?

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EMT's In The Copper River Valley: Above & Beyond The Call Of Duty

Copper River EMT's in 2014, including Bill Bowler (left) who was an EMT
back in 1991, too. 


 In a place like the Copper River Valley, helping people was a way of life. The obligation of stepping up to the plate was taken very seriously.

Take for example, emergency medical assistance. In 1991, Dozens of volunteers took courses spanning weeks in order to learn how to help their own famlies and their neighbors. 

A May, 1991 list was printed in the Copper River Country Journal, and revealed the extent to which locals were willing to put themselves on the line. 

Copper Center: Pinky Becker, Tom Carew, Bob Olson, Margie Steigerwald, Chuck Thomas.
Gakona: Danese Devenport, Suzanne McCarthy, Fran McMahan.
Glennallen: Cherie Ansell, Rocky Ansell, Bill Bowler, Terry Cunitz, Dan Hoadley, Patty Hutchings, Milt Peters, Sarah Rush, Larry Scribner, Win Stieffel, Tom Symmes, Mike Thomas, Darlene Windsor.
Kenny Lake: Rick Ackerman, Janelle Eklund, Jim Fant, Mollie Flack, Craig Gardner, Terry Gilmore, Mike Huntley,  Jim Jordan, Curt Lain, Sharon Lain, Janet Luce, Earl McClanahan, Crystal Pwoning, Daryl Schierholt.
Chitina: Catherine Fletcher, John Gilbert, Art Koeninger, Darlene Wright.
Nelchina: 
Cheryl Holland, Jim Manning, Elaine Manning, Jim Odden, Mary Odden, Kahren Rudbeck, Lisa Smayda. Tom Smayda, Joe Virgin, Peg Virgin.
Paxson: Gary Alcott, Stan Brown, Wanda Brown, Nate Callis, Wndy Callis, Larry Gondek, Hannah Hays, Bob Hays, Kris Howk, Murray Howk.
Slana: John Beeter, Marilee Bibeau, Jim Hummel, Mary Hummel.

This list may not mean much to you, the reader -- but, to residents of the region, it was a list of their neighbors. Men and women. Ordinary people: ordinary neighbors; teachers, grocers, gardeners, store owners, nurses....over 60 people, who intuitively understood it was important for them to be available in every portion of a far-flung community, to be at the ready. 

These were people who would never be "recognized" for their willingness to take time from their home-building, their families and their work.  There was no pay. No honor. No status. No financial reimbursement. But, each of them -- just to be trained as EMT's -- had to leave their homes on evenings and weekends,. They had to contemplate the possible problems they and their family might find themselves faced with -- such as drownings, frostbite, fire, car accidents, heart attacks, and exactly what they had to learn what they, personally, would have to do in each circumstance.

Then, after they successfully passed training tests, they basically offered themselves up on the front lines. When anything happened, they had to be ready to drive dozens of miles, to a neighbor's burning home. Or rush to a mangled car crash 30 miles from Glennallen. Or arrive at the site of a grizzly suicide -- of somebody they knew --  in a cabin up the road. Not every local EMT had what is known as the "first responder personality" -- that confident, efficient air that self-selected paid professionals have. A paid emergency fireman or ambulance drivers  in a large city somewhere, is drawn from a pool of millions -- and, if the work doesn't suit him (or her) they can move on to something else.

But in an all-volunteer corps of Copper River people, where one out of every 50 people (and that's counting men, women and children) were volunteers and underwent the arduous training as an EMT, there was no EMT personality  These people's personalities were a mixed bag -- with many ordinary moms mixed in -- women who lived out along the roads who were motivated by a desire to be able to keep their children alive, on their own, if necessary.

Their job -- if this could be considered a job -- was to arrive at their neighbors' homes  or car crashes, or at personal tragedies -- well before the Troopers showed up. 

It was a  commitment that involved a full understanding of the precariousness of life in general -- and Copper River life in particular. 

In the Copper River Valley, there was nobody else. If you didn't do it -- who would? 

 Copyrighted by Copper River Country Journal, 1991-2017. All rights reserved. 

Jim Frey Sr. of Slana, Telling A 1914 Nelchina Gold Rush Story

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  The Little Nelchina Gold Rush Of 1914:

The Tarp, The Snow & The Wise Horse 

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Some Things Never Change. A Snow-Covered Cook Shack At A Copper River Valley Camp, In 2014. A Hundred Years After Jim Frey's Story.
It's hard, when you're traveling cross-country in the Copper River Valley, to know where to find help, or shelter, in the wilderness.

Jim Frey, Sr., of Slana, enjoyed recounting stories of his long life in the Copper Valley.
 
One of his stories was recycled. It was a retelling of a story he had heard in 1946. 

Jim recalled:

"I met an old gold miner from Chisana. He told me of the Gold Rush to the Little Nelchina in 1914. Today, the area is known for caribou. He did not see any in 1914. But there were lots of rabbits.

"They prospected all summer, without much success. Only a few creeks had mineable gold. 

"When they were leaving the area, they were trying to find a cabin they heard of. But it was snowing hard, and getting dark, so they hobbled the horse and made camp. Next morning, the tarp was down on them, heavy with snow. 
"The cabin. It was only a few hundred feet further on. And the horse was standing in the doorway. Looking out."

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Fred Rungee And How He Skinnied Up A Dwarf Spruce To Escape An Angry Mama Grizzly

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Fred Rungee in 2007. Photo By Tom Sadowski.

 

Downplaying His Mauling By A Bear, Fred Rungee Remembered The Incident Like It Was Yesterday

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Many an 1898 Alaska prospector lay on the cold ground, wrapped in an oilcloth, and worried about being attacked by a bear. But their most dangerous problems were not bears. Their most dangerous challenge was water.

In Alaska, winter or summer, water is the enemy.

Bears are statistically not as dangerous as Alaska's treacherous icy waters, in part due to their short season of activity. Lengthy winter hibernations limit bears to the summer months -- and the Copper Valley’s norm is winter, when bears are asleep, and there's still water under the ice of rivers and lakes.

But of course, ‘Bears Happen.’ And, generally, a bear encounter requires you having to save yourself. 

For example, Fred Rungee, a Copper Valley Bureau of Land Management ranger, came to  Alaska in 1953. Fred was working on a fire, alone, around 150 miles from Anchorage one July in the 1960’s. Over 50 years later, he could still clearly remember being treed by a 400 to 500 lb., ferocious female grizzly, like it was yesterday. And he recalled the bear standing under the little spruce he had climbed, and bear whipping it back and forth, clawing at his legs,

In 2013, Fred Rungee told me:

“It was a female bear, and she had a couple of cubs. About 200 lbs apiece. She was very protective of those cubs; she thought I would be a menace to them. She stopped in front of me; about 200 yards, and stood up. I thought, I’ll just back up a bit and get out of her way. She dropped down and started coming to me.

I didn’t have a rifle. It was thick grass and an old berm. So then I stopped and backed up to a tree, a living tree. I thought, ‘Well, I’ll just stay here and bat her down with my polasky -- which is a fire tool.’

She came up. Usually a bear will stop and check you over with your eyes; they have bad eyesight. She stopped about 15 feet away, and looked me over.

When she stopped, I thought, ‘It’s time to go up in that tree.’ She shook the tree, and shook it. She shook it pretty good. It didn’t break. I held on. I waited fifteen to twenty minutes. I went back where I had the pickup--which was about 2 miles from there...”

Fred Rungee was injured on his leg by the grasping bear. But he was relieved to have survived, and decades later, he still downplayed the injury: 'It was just cosmetic; I only had thirteen stitches.'


Fred Rungee Playing His Piano. (Tom Sadowski)
Fred Rungee died two years after this interview, at the age of 93. 

Born in Connecticut, he was a college educated New Englander who was a gentleman scholar/woodsman. 

He was as handy with a piano keyboard as with a double-bitted ax.

Copper Valley Black Spruce. 

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©Author Interview with Fred Rungee, November 24th, 2013

Keith Murray, The Goat Man Of Kenny Lake

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Keith Murray Of Kenny Lake 

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Jean "Keith" Murray, On His Kenny Lake Homestead, Probably In The 1990's.

Jean "Keith" Murray came to Kenny Lake decades ago to homestead and start a new life in Alaska. He built a small log cabin -- and liked to tell people it cost less than the one built by the great American writer and proponent of self-reliance, Henry David Thoreau, at Walden Pond. 

Keith Murray had worked in California as an artist, making models of Ice Age animals that got enmired in the La Brea Tar Pits. When he moved to Kenny Lake, he had a herd of goats, a barrel stove he outfitted himself -- and he stored root crops he had grown between the struts of the log cabin floor where they could stay cool.

We first ran across Jean Murray back around 1976, and wrote a story about him and his cabin for the Anchorage Times. This photo was probably taken in the late 1980's or early 1990's by Bearfoot Travel Guides (and the Copper River Country Journal -- both of hem among our publications) at his Kenny Lake homestead, which is in the Copper River Valley, where Bearfoot Travel Magazines has its home base. We are pleased that our photo triggered a dramatic family reunion.


On May 31st, 2014, Jean "Keith" Murray's long-lost daughter wrote us the following:
Hello,
"THANK YOU! The significance of this photo – one that pops up on the internet related to Alaska’s Bearfoot magazine – is one I had to share, as it literally changed my life: I am the 58 year-old daughter of Jean Keith Murray and I have not seen my father since I was 2 so, effectively, I had never really “seen” him. I had looked for him often over the years and it is no wonder he was hard to find: having moved to Alaska in 1968 to homestead in the remote Kenny Lake area made him nearly “lost”. It was through family obituaries that I found he was in Kenny Lake, but it was through this photo that I experienced my first look at him as a man still alive and well; I was stunned, utterly stunned. I thought immediately of the movie “Heidi” and wished I were Shirley Temple. This old bearded man on a mountainside with a goat captivated me. And introduced me to the man my father had become. I stared and wept. I became excited. One call to the Kenny Lake Mercantile and I was on the phone with him within a day. Thank you. Thank you.
In your debt...
Sandy Murray
(Still in California, but visiting Kenny Lake every chance I get)"

Later in the summer, Sandy wrote:
"My last trip up was in early June and it was a family reunion of sorts. Keith's great-granddaughter (my granddaughter, Sacoya) and one of his other daughters (my half-sister, Alice), along with her son and grandson all made the trip and spent about a week at the homestead, with brother Bob and family driving in from Anchorage for an overnight as well."

Jean "Keith" Murray dropped his French name a long time ago, and in 2016, he celebrated his 98th birthday, still in Alaska.  

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© 2016, Northcountry Communications Inc.  Linda Weld, Editor All rights reserved, including photographs and maps. 


Millie Buck Grew Up In Old-Time Chitina

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Looking Back At Chitina's Heyday

The Chitina Emporium was once a grand store along the railroad track. 

Memories Of Watching The Train Go By, As The Conductor Tossed Out Fresh Fruit For The Kids

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The ghost town of Chitina, located at the start of the 61-mile long McCarthy Road, was once a major small Alaskan city. 

Its heyday was between 1910 and 1938. It was a supply town; a turnaround point for the Copper River & Northwestern Railway (the "Can't Run & Never Will"). The railroad linked the copper mines at Kennecott to the seaside town of Cordova, running precariously over miles of trestles and bridges. 

Today, Chitina is known mainly as an empty stop along the road to McCarthy and Kennicott, in Wrangell-St.Elias National Park. Or as a place that Alaskans (mainly from Fairbanks) go to dipnet for salmon, or to catch salmon in fishwheels. 

An Ahtna girl, dipnetting for salmon with a traditional dipnet.

The original dipnets were made by the Ahtna Athabascans, from willow, tied together with a spruce root rope. Fishermen (or, probably most likely, fisherwomen) stood out on a platform, with their 20 inch by 30 inch nets at the end of a nine foot wooden pole. The fish were channeled to the dipnet through channeling fences. Still handmade into the 1950's, dipnets were eventually replaced by modern nets that you can buy in Anchorage, at Fred Meyer.

Back in 1910, though, Chitina was a stagestop on the Orr Stage Line. The manager of the line used the cabin that was later a visitor center for the U.S. National Park Service, which took over the Kennicott Mines as a national park in 1980. The park's name, "Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve" is a mouthful. To the Ahtna people who lived nearby, the mountains had a simpler name: "Keltaeni." Which sounds remarkably similar to that other important mountain in Alaska that recently got it's true name back: "Denali."

The Orr Stage Line manager's cabin in Chitina.


Millie Buck grew up in Chitina. Before she died, in 2011, I interviewed her about what life was like in Chitina as a little girl, of around 6 years old. Mainly, she remembered how grand it was way back then. There was the Overland Hotel, the Chitina Hotel, and Breedman's Hotel.
 

And, she remembered the train coming in:

"They didn't stay too long in Chitina, but went up to the mines. It was pretty exciting when they were coming in. They used to throw candy, and apples and oranges out in the snow for us. The conductor always threw something for us."

Chitina was nothing like it is today, with its empty log buildings, and frame homes, and its small population:

"They had everything. They had a pool hall, meat market, a fairly large store, a clothing store. That's what some of those movies remind me of. The Western cowboy films. (They used to have silent movies, those days.) They remind me of Chitina. It really was exciting, downtown, watching the train come in!"

 © Copper River Country Journal, 2015, Linda Weld, Editor
All rights reserved, including photographs and maps.

From Madison Square Garden To Gakona, Alaska: How Ken Sailors Invented the Jump Shot

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Everybody Used To Throw Like A Girl Before Ken Sailors Showed Up

Looking Back: 1987 Copper River Country Journal

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Ken Sailors, in 1987 at home in
Gakona, Alaska.

January 30th, 2016:

Copper Valley longtime resident Kenny Sailors died in his sleep in an assisted living home in Laramie, Wyoming at the age of 95. Only 5 feet 10 inches, he developed the jump shot to compensate for his height. He played basketball in 1943 at the University of Wyoming, and won the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship, and Most Outstanding Player award. He was the College Basketball Player of the year in 1943 and 1946. He played for a number of basketball teams from 1946 to 1951, including the Boston Celtics, and was named to the National Collegiate Basketball hall of Fame. In the Copper Valley, he was known as "Coach," and worked with Glennallen basketball teams.

 


Wyoming - When Ken Sailors was a little boy, growing up on a ranch in Wyoming, he and his older brother used to play basketball through a hoop attached to a windmill. Kenny was the little guy in the family. He was 5 years younger, and never topped 5 foot 11. His brother, on the other hand was 6 foot 5. "He'd tease me because I couldn't shoot over him. He used to tease me a lot, and call me a little runt. I was determined to show him...That's why I invented the jump shot; to get over big men."


They haven't always had a jump shot in basketball. Before Ken Sailors came along, they used to coach that if your feet left the floor when you make a basket your form wasn't any good.

But somehow Kenny Sailors managed to take his windmill-tilting style into high school without having his shoelaces tied. "When I started jumping, my high school coach never tried to change me," he recalls now.

Later, the coaches weren't so kind. "The 1st year he was in pro ball, he played for Cleveland," Marilynne Sailors recalls. "He sat on the bench..."

But good luck intervened. Before the season was over, they let the old coach go, and Ken Sailors, - and Cleveland - made it to the finals that year.

The Sailor's still have newspaper clippings about Ken Sailors' basketball career. "You may have to tone it down," his wife warns. "Some of it sounds a little unrealistic."

But it's all there. He was famous. He was more than famous. He was a super star.
Ken Sailors, playing for the Boston Celtics.


The clippings say it all: "'He's one of the best I've ever seen,' said Ray Meyer of DePaul, 'and I mean in play making above all. He's the boy who sets everything up.'"

Headline after headline screamed his ability: "Nuggets' Sailors Jumps to 6th in Scoring Race"; "Sailors in Charge of Court School"; "Sailors is Chosen for Second Team of BAA Star Five"; "Sailors Looms All-Pro Team Contender".

Ken Sailors was a one-man band. He was a Boston Celtic Globetrotter before Harlem ever came up with the idea; a flashy, dancing, athletic basketball player who didn't make it pro until he was 27 years old and had put in time with the Marines.

But when he went into the big time, he went there all the way. In the 1940's the country was wild about basketball. The place they went wild was Madison Square Garden. And the guy who drove them wildest was Kenny Sailors. In 1943, Ken led his team to the Garden with his one-handed jump shot. "We were the only team around in those days where everybody shot one-handed," recalled guard Floyd Volker. "You know, the Easterners all clicked their heels and shot two-handed. But we shot everything with one hand, even our free-throws. They loved our style at Madison Square Garden. We were voted the most popular team to play there that year...No team could press us because of (Sailors') ball-handling abilities. No one or two men could get the ball from him, he was that good. We would spread out and just turn him loose and listen to the crowd applaud."

In the NCAA playoffs, Sailors won the most valuable player award, and many called him the "greatest basketball player" they had ever seen. "This Sailors can do everything with a basketball but tie a seaman's knot," said Joe Cumminsky, sports editor of the New York PM, "and given a chance to dribble two steps, he'd probably be able to do that."

Even now, forty years later, Ken Sailors - who is a 66 year old guide and lives in a log cabin in Gakona - is still acknowledged by the world as a basketball great. He regularly receives letters inquiries, and telephone calls from people who are hot on the basketball trail. Famed Coach Ray Meyer recently wrote him, "Kenny, you were the first one who actually used the true one-handed shot."

"I'm sure somebody jumped in the air and shot a basketball before me," Sailors acknowledges.

But the trail to Ken Sailors' door is clear enough. And Yankee Magazine, among others, is hot in pursuit, attempting to document how basketball literally got off the ground. Last Spring, Bob Trebilcock, of Yankee, wrote to Ken Sailors about a story he wants to  include him in, called "American Ingenuity".

Sports Illustrated writes to Ken Sailors. The Associated Press writes to Ken Sailors. The Los Angeles Times writes to Ken Sailors.

They don't write because he's a self-acknowledged "health nut" who likes to spend time outdoors and with  his wife. They don't write because he taught school here in Copper River for 9 years, and because he's volunteered for several years to show Gakona Elementary students how to make baskets. They don't write because he raises horses and leads a quiet and unassuming life...

They write because he won the Sullivan Award as the best athlete in the United States in basketball. They write because he was selected by Madison Square Garden as one of the top 10 players to play in New York City at Madison Square Garden between 1933 and 1943. They write because he won the Chuck Taylor Award, as the best basketball player in the nation, and the Helms Award, and because he was selected the most valuable player on the All-American Team.

And when they write - or call - Ken Sailors always offers to take them fishing if they ever come up here and visit Alaska

 Copyright, 1987-2016: 
Copper River Country Journal,  April 1st, 1987
All Rights Reserved.

Celebrating The Life & Wisdom Of Walter Charley

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The Years Following The Alaska Gold Rush Into Modern Times, As Told By Walter Charley

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Walter Charley was an Ahtna Athabascan. He was a handsome, articulate spokesman and hard worker who had toiled as a section hand on the Copper River and Northwestern Railway in the 1920's and 1930's. Later, he worked with the Alaska Road Commission, surveying the Glenn Highway -- starting in 1941. Then, Walter Charley had gone on to work for the Road Commission's new form, the Department of Highways, until retiring in the 1970's. He was 84 years old at his death. 

 His life spanned the entire post-contact time of turmoil and change after the arrival of outsiders in the Copper Valley.

Walter Charley had been born at Wood Camp, in 1908. Wood Camp was a Native village near Copper Center, where Natives brought wood to fuel the steamboats that traveled the Copper River for a short time.  Struck by the all-too common tragedies of  the great world-wide epidemic of 1918, his family died from the flu. Young Walter was brought up by an aunt and uncle.  
An "Indian" brand motorcycle. (Wikipedia)

 Capable in every way, Walter Charley moved easily between the white and Native worlds. As a young man, he had bought and ridden a flashy "Indian" brand motorcycle up and down the Copper Valley's dirt roads -- a high energy, self-defining statement about himself, his place in the modern world... and his Athabascan cultural heritage. 

 A proponent of Native culture and rights, Walter Charley was one of the first Ahtna to join the Alaska Native Brotherhood, and served on numerous boards. He was named the Alaska Federation of Natives Citizen of the Year in 1988.

Like many Ahtna elders, in his later years he was a natural-born speaker and historian. This grew out of a heritage of oral traditions, and an expectation that a person -- any person -- who grew up in the Copper Valley would be required and expected to show leadership skills, as a matter of course. Like so many Ahtna of his time (and. before that, like the great U.S. President, Abraham Lincoln) Walter Charley was a self-educated man; yet a man who truly valued knowledge, insight and respect for oneself and for others.

Walter Charley gave a speech at the Captain Cook commemorative lecture in 1978, where he discussed what it was like growing up in the days right after the Gold Rush,  when the Ahtna were still dealing with the problems of the Kennicott Copper Mine and its impact on their copper resources.
"Then came the influx of people about the turn of the century -- the miners and prospectors came into the country. Before then, they say... there was caribou and moose; plenty of it. But the turn of the century, when the influx of people came, the caribou and moose is no longer there.

 "By the time I was a boy, I didn't know what moose or caribou looked like. Not until 1930, the moose came in Copper River. And there was a caribou that moved back in Copper River in 1925," he wryly joked. 
"So this is one of the problems that we have in the hunting and fur trapping.

"There there is the Kennicott (Mine.) Back in the teens, the Kennicott people came up and took the mines away from them Indians. And they made quite a hole in Kennicott, and took several million dollars out of there. And the Copper River people didn't even get one copper cent out of the whole millions of dollars that came out of there...

"If we had to go back to our ways of life, today, we  would have nothing to go back to... the old gentleman's agreement was the way of the Indian life...."

 Well-known throughout Alaska, Walter Charley was popular enough to pose good-naturedly for a statewide restaurant ad, in 1991. He was working with the Alaska Federation of Natives on "subsistence" issues. Normally beardless, in the ad he was shown sporting the ragged and unkempt "Sourdough" type beard he had just grown.

 Walter Charley was shown,  sitting at a table, wearing suspenders, with "Alaska" written on them -- and holding up a knife and fork, preparing to chow down.

When You Can't Eat It Where You've Killed It...
You'll Enjoy the Downtown Deli and Cafe," the ad said.

The grizzled trapper look was effective, but seeing himself in the ad startled the normally elegant and clean-shaven Walter Charley. He shaved his beard off the day after the ad appeared in the newspaper. "it was bothering me, "he explained to the Copper River Country Journal.

 Walter Charley died in 1992.


Ruth Johns Of Copper Center Alaska: Mother, Philosopher, Ahtna Historian

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The Joyous Day-to-Day Life Of Ruth Johns & Her Family, As They Traveled The Woods Of Alaska In A Simpler, Harsher Time

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Ruth Johns, Copper River Country Journal 1988 Woman Of The Year
Life for the Ahtna Natives of the Copper Valley of Alaska was a difficult one. As the years passed, and westerners arrived, the Ahtna people continued gathering food in the wilderness; but they also started coming to the lodges to trade. Ruth Johns, of Copper Center, looked back at her changing life in 1988. In her story, told from afar, Ruth's world of Copper Valley hardships were softened by the perspective of a child. A child with parents who protected her from worries.As a child growing up in the Depression in wilderness Alaska, life for Ruth Johns was a happy blend of hard work and wonder.
With her brothers and sisters, Ruth hauled the entire year's supply of firewood by dogsled in the winter time. She lugged water from the river. She helped her family in their harsh and unyielding world. And she loved every minute of it.

"We had everything the old fashioned way," she recalled. "When I was a young girl, people used to come down at Christmas time, and bring their furs down to the lodge. They used to sell their fur and get their food for the months ahead. Everybody had their own trail. I remember Tazlina Joe and their family, they used to go out to Tazlina Lake -- that was their area -- trapping."

Ruth's parents -- Estaco and Jessie Ewan -- took their children with them across the Copper River wilderness to distant winter homes. In the winter of 1926-27, the family stayed in the wooded timberline near Mt. Drum. Another year, they stayed with Jim McKinley and his family at Klutina Lake. 
 
Her parents were the biggest influence in her life. "I had really good parents. What I am now is because of my parents."

Ruth John's parents taught by example. And they were satisfied with their handiwork. "They really didn't TELL me anything until Dad was on his deathbed. I was 18 years old. He looked at us. He said, 'I'm not worried about you, leaving you, because I know you're going to take care of yourselves.' That really stayed with me, my father, thinking, 'Okay, you can do it.' We looked at him in tears, and he said, "'Don't cry. I know you'll do well.' Maybe that's part of the  thinking. Maybe that's what really helped."

Traditional life was a hard life, but a good one.

"Dad and them were busy all day. I didn't see anybody get depressed. There was no time. It was time of survival! People were doing something!

What was Copper River life like in this days that now seem so long ago? "What I enjoyed with my parents was it seems like it was an adventure, each day, when we were out there together."

One especially exciting fall was the season that the Ewans and Jim McKinley's family walked to their winter home at Klutina, accompanied by their pack dogs.
 
Lowbush (lingonberry) cranberries
The families traveled about 8 miles a day. They were on the way to their second camp when they saw moose tracks. Ruth's mother was making tea from a stream. The fathers told their children to be quiet. And then they disappeared with their guns.

These were thrilling memories for Ruth. "Everything we were doing was something we enjoyed...." A little while later there were two... three shots.

The men came back, and took their families to a lake where there were two dead moose in the water. Somehow, the men put a raft together, and hauled the moose in, while the children tore around, gathering wood for a fire.  "We were happy, running around, getting wood -- deadfalls."

Then, even the children helped beach the moose. "We had a part in it. They threw a rope, and we pulled that moose to the shore!'

The memories of wilderness life as a child were glorious for Ruth Johns. "Everything we did was fun to me. Just nice and peaceful. We spent the next few days, picking berries. We picked and picked, and my mother put it in a 50 lb. sack. Lots of big berries." Then Estaco Ewan and Jim McKinley made a big cache from round green logs, and the families cached their cranberries and dried moose meat for the winter.
 
But life then -- as now -- was far from perfect. A wolverine tore into the cache and destroyed and meat and berries. "My sister and I felt really bad about 'our' berries." 

The Depression Years were difficult. Yet, it wasn't until World War II that the worst changes came. And those changes were brought about by alcohol. The war sent young men into the army and brought good paying jobs. But it also brought whiskey -- and the final blow to traditional life....

Years ago, a lodge owner named Mrs. Barnes lived nearby. Ruth always remembered her kindness and thoughtfulness. Mrs. Barnes was a true Copper  River person, Ruth Johns remembered,  "She was like a grandma. A mother to the people."

Kind of like -- well -- Ruth Johns herself. 

Jim McKinley Of Copper Center Was Born In The Gold Rush & Lived Into Modern Times

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The Copper River Chronicles: Alaska Lifestyles

Ahtna's Traditional Chief  Lived A Life That Mixed Longtime Athabascan & Western Work

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An outbuilding from Jim McKinley's cabin, beside the road in Copper Center.

Historian, Trapper, Road & Railroad Worker

Jim McKinley was born at the height of the Gold Rush, on May 3rd, 1899, in Copper Center. His life spanned the years from the Gold Rush to the computer age.

His obituary, when he died June 17th 1991, was a chronicle of the history of the Copper Valley, and the interface between Ahtna Natives and the settlers that came to the region.

He went to school in Copper Center in 1903. In 1906, when he was 7 years old, his grandfather, and many other Ahtna people, tragically died in a great flu epidemic -- a precursor of the better-known 1918 epidemic.

 In 1907, he saw his first western-style "boat" -- which  came up the Copper River to Copper Center, and was probably one of the short-lived sternwheelers that plied the region for a few years.  

In 1908, a Russian Orthodox Church was built in Copper Center, near the river, at the spot where eventually a nondenominational church would replace it. 
Historic photo of Ahtna girl with dipnet. (UAF)

 In 1909, the 10-year old Jim McKinley traveled to Chitina, by boat, for the first time in his life. There was no road to Chitina at the time.

In 1910, young Jim and his family moved to Upper Tonsina, where they spent the winter. They came back to Copper Center that summer to dipnet.

 In 1912, Jim remembered that he saw his first fishwheel in the Copper River. 

Demonstration Fishwheel at Ahtna Cultural Center.

Both dipnets and fishwheels have gone on to become symbols of Copper River Valley "subsistence" fishing. The dipnet was an Athabascan invention. It was a longhandled, willow "net" which was used to scoop salmon from platforms jutting out into the Copper River. People still use dipnets (though now made of aluminum) to catch fish at Chitina.

The fishwheel is an invention that is also still in use. It is a large, turning wheel that runs with the current. Fish headed upriver along the bank swim into the wheel and are trapped and shunted into a sidebox where they are later removed by the fisherman.

 Jim McKinley's life story shows the precarious ups and downs of Copper Valley life. During the pre-World War I years, stylish Americans wore furs, and fur prices soared. Jim McKinley and his family hunted for live wild foxes during 1913, and 1914, when prices were high. But prices crashed.

In 1917, he worked at the Copper River Canyon Cannery, dip netting fish and selling them for 8 cents apiece to the canneries.

1918 Spanish Flu story in the Chitina Leader newspaper.
On display at the George Ashby Museum in Copper Center. 

In 1919, there was another flu epidemic in Copper Center, and many local people died. 

 By 1920, Jim had found work in Paxson, north of Gulkana on the Richardson Highway, toward Fairbanks. Then he went to work for the Copper River Northwest Railway for 3 months. The railway connected the Kennicott copper mines to Chitina, and from there, to the port of Cordova, where copper was shipped down the coast to the rest of the United States.

 In the winter of 1920, Jim McKinley trapped.  In 1921, he worked for the Alaska Road Commission. In 1923, he was hired to groom the Richardson Highway;  President Harding was coming to Alaska, and it was thought he might come by way of the the highway. Instead, the president traveled on the Alaska Railway. 
Jim McKinley sits in the spring sun outside his cabin.

That year, too, Jim McKinley's father bought him a Model T. He was married to Ellafina Joe, who was born in Knik. In 1924, he worked on the Copper River Railway in Chitina, and on the highway.

In 1929, he worked in a cannery at Valdez, with Bill Egan, who was later to become governor of Alaska.

In 1930, he worked at the Dadina Gold Mine, trapped in the winter, and then worked on the road again in the spring.

And, also in 1930, he again worked on the Copper River Railway. In 1934, he worked at Chistochina for the Nabesna Mining Camp. In 1935, he worked at Paxson all summer, and trapped all winter at Klutina.

In 1936, he spent the summer taking care of a sick uncle, and trapped in the winter. In 1939, he worked at Valdez all winter, and in the fall he worked on the road. In 1940, he trapped again at Klutina, and in 1941 he worked in Kenny Lake. When the  Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, he worked on the Glenn Highway all summer long, as part of the effort to make sure there was a strong overland connection from Anchorage through the Copper Valley and into Canada, down to the rest of the United States.

 In 1946, Jim McKinley converted to Christianity.

Jim McKinley was an ardent Christian who was pastor of Copper Center Chapel for a long time.

He was also traditional Chief of Copper Center Village, and an official spokesman, who recounted historical events at potlatches and other meetings. Jim McKinley died in 1991.

 © Copper River Country Journal, 2015, Linda Weld, Editor
All rights reserved, including photographs and maps.

How The Odds Were Overcome & Alaska's Salmon Were Saved For The Future By Ken Roberson

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The Copper River Chronicles: Alaska' s Unsung Heroes

Plastic Buckets, Warm Water, & Copper River Ingenuity Built Alaska's Gulkana Hatchery

  Northcountry Communications. All Rights Reserved. 





The Gulkana Hatchery.

The Story Of Ken Roberson & The Saving Of The Salmon Of The Copper River Watershed



Digging the groundwork for the world's largest wild salmon hatchery. With shovels.
Ken Roberson was the fish biologist for the Copper River Valley. Several years ago, he retired and moved with his wife, Vera, to warmer climes.

In the time he worked for Fish & Game out of the Glennallen office, he practically single-handedly led the charge to preserve and enhance the red salmon run in the Copper River by finding a good location, in (somewhat) warmish spring water north of Paxson, Alaska in which to start a home-grown, from-the-ground-up fish hatchery for the Copper River.

The Gulkana River Hatchery was begun in 1973 with Copper River ingenuity.

It was only a fluke that Ken Roberson was also a state employee.
First and foremost, he operated with a seat-of-your-pants innovative drive that had nothing to do with how government does things. 

Everything he did when he began that hatchery was based on sheer intuition, ingenuity and bravado -- the Copper River way. He worked to invent homemade incubators for the fish to thrive, banging together plywood and whatever was available in the sparse world of the Copper Valley, far from easy supply lines of specific scientific gear and equipment. 

Plan For The Gulkana Salmon Hatchery. (From Ecotrust.org)
He ran bucket brigades, with a rope tied across the creek. Workers stood in the water, moving the buckets across the stream. The workers were protected from falling into the icy water only by holding onto the rope, as they physically transferred eggs and fish.

The entire operation was put together on a shoestring. It was a duct-tape operation of the first order -- the quintessential "Copper River" style enterprise. By 1984, this little hatchery on a lonely creek just north of the scrappy little roadhouse of Paxson Lodge had turned into the largest operation of its kind in the world. 

It was a facility with heart, firmly tied to the needs and peculiarities of Alaskan rural life. For example, for years, the salmon that had been stripped of their eggs were piled up on the riverbank, and local dogmushers (who were paying dearly for the commercial dried dogfood eaten by their teams) were encouraged to drive on out to the hatchery and retrieve the salmon. The spent fish were then taken home and boiled up for their animals throughout the winter. It was a small touch -- caring about the region's sled dogs and the mushers -- but vitally Alaskan; the hatchery was a part of the upper Copper Valley community.

What Came Before Ken Roberson
Ken Roberson's is one of the few positive stories about the Copper River watershed and its salmon that exists.

The impact of outsiders on the Copper River fishery has a greedy and  shameful history.

In 1885, Lt. Henry Allen struggled his way through the Copper Valley, and  successfully became the first outsider to enter the region. 

The young Lieutenant's success started a debacle. Two years later, in 1887, a commercial cannery was put up at the mouth of the river, by Pacific Packing Company, a San Francisco firm. In 1889, there was another cannery, by another San Francisco firm. By the 1890's, before the gold miners arrived, there were two hundred  outsiders living at the mouth of the Copper River, taking salmon.


Salmon can labels at a B&B in Cordova, Alaska.
In 1916, an estimated 300 Copper River Athabascan Indians were living along the rivers -- the  equivalent of one for every mile of the 300 mile long river's length. They lived along tributaries --  the most significant being the 75 mile long Klutina, and the 80 mile long Gulkana.  The Copper River was like the trunk of a mighty tree, and its branches, its tributaries,  came from glaciers deep in the valley. Every salmon in every river in the Copper River Valley was a "Copper River" salmon, and all of them had to pass through Abercrombie Canyon on their migrations back and forth to their spawning grounds upriver.

At Abercrombie Canyon, 55 miles upstream from Cordova, entrepreneurs built an inland cannery, to block the salmon entering the Copper River Valley. They used the Copper River & Northwestern Railway to transport their product back to Cordova, where it was shipped south.

Salmon were railed across trestles like this.

The Copper River Railroad, which started in Cordova, crossed over the upper delta 20 miles upstream, and traveled along the river banks, 131 miles upstream to Chitina. It was a perfect means of transport. 


The canneries grew exponentially. In 1914, 299,699 salmon were caught. In 1915, 670,416 salmon were snagged. By 1916, the thousands of fathoms of gill nets, and 48 dip nets where "one fisherman may dip as many as 1,000 salmon in a single day, when the run is heavy" according to the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, brought in 869,350 total salmon to the 5 canneries that were filling the railcars with food from the Copper River Valley.

While all this was happening, people upriver -- the original people -- were desperate. 

At that time, when there were those estimated 300 Ahtna living upriver from the canneries, the Ahtna  complained that their livelihood, their fish, were being blocked.  The U.S. government scoffed at the idea. "With respect to the complaints of the Indians, it may be said that as long ago as 1905, when but one cannery was in operation in the Copper River district, the same story of shortage of food  was heard and the same cry of destruction of the salmon fishery was made as at present when  five canneries are in the field, yet the Indians have lived through the intervening years and  have had an ample supply of salmon whenever they made reasonable efforts to get it." 


The muddy Copper River. Photo, Neil Hannan.
By 1918, a million salmon were being hauled from the lower Copper River, and shipped out from the canneries, through the use of 50,000 fathoms of gill net. (That's 300,000 feet of net, crisscrossing the Copper River.)

The growth of misuse of Alaska's big, muddy ice-cold salmon stream, with its 5 types of the fattest, highest quality fish in Alaska, was phenomenal. The 2-mile long 1,000 foot wide Abercrombie Canyon was a squeeze point where wholesale slaughter could take place. 

(There are photographs on the internet today of Abercrombie Canyon at its worst, They are used as examples of "Proof of Traditional and Customary Use" on Alaska dipnetting websites. The photos show dozens of paid dipnetters at dipnetting stations in the canyon, scooping up fish.  It didn't seem like it was a problem back then. And to many, it doesn't seem like a problem even now. Above a photo of an early commercial dipnetter with a trough full of Copper River salmon, a modern-day dipnetter has wryly quipped: "Check this out, subsistence fans. Is 1914 far enough back to qualify?")

Then, in 1918, it began to be obvious that something very wrong was happening.


Workers at the Gulkana Fish 
Hatchery, north of Paxson.
The Native Ahtna upriver were right.  Even the U.S. government agreed, writing (somewhat
defensively):  "While there may have been some disagreement with regard to details there was a unanimity in opinion in respect to essentials -- the run of salmon was being depleted and something should be done to stop it."

 During that long-ago crisis, U.S. Secretary of Commerce had completely taken over control of the Copper Valley's salmon, and was holding hearings -- not with the Ahtna and people in the Copper Valley -- but in Seattle.

As is so common, local people who actually live in the Copper Valley are considered non-important -- or even non-existent. This problem continues to this day. 

Anchorage Fred Meyer Grocery brags about having "Copper River Salmon."
The Right Person In The Right Place

Like all of us who have come to the Copper Valley and who grew up elsewhere, Ken Roberson was an "outsider." But, unlike many outsiders (and this includes the confusingly-named "Chitina Dipnetters" who are not from Chitina, but mainly from Fairbanks) he decided to give. Not to take.

In this brief review of what happened upon the "discovery" of the Copper River's salmon, it's pretty clear that "taking" was what it was all about. 


Ken Roberson (right) was also a longtime 
volunteer at the local Chamber of Commerce, as well
as head of the Copper Valley EMS program.
Ken Roberson went in the other direction. Every single person who uses Copper River reds -- including Chitina Dipnetters, Cordova fishermen, sports fishermen, Copper Valley immigrants and the Ahtna people, who continue to see these fish as a cornerstone to local life, culture,
health and basic everyday survival --  owes something to Ken Roberson for working to right the wrongs, and to bring a steady stream of high-quality fish to the region. 

Photo of low-tech wooden hatcheries from a 
report by Ken Roberson on the internet.
Enlisting the professional advice of others, Ken Roberson worked in a manner that dramatically reversed the type of decimation that the canneries had inflicted on the river. He began to work out a plan for how to replenish, and ensure the future of, Copper River salmon.

In 1973, with a single homemade incubator, there were 220,000 salmon eggs at the fledgling Gulkana Hatchery. The next year, Fish & Game added four more units, with a capacity of 1.25 million eggs. By 1979 there were 10 units. In 1980, 20 units. 

By 1984, there were 50 units, with a capacity of 25 million eggs. In 1988, it had shot up to 70 units, with a capacity of 35 million salmon eggs. Tens of millions of salmon fry came out of that little roadside hatchery -- stocking Paxson Lake, Ten Mile Lake, Summit Lake, and Crosswind Lake. And showing that human beings -- Copper River Valley human beings -- can choose to right wrongs and to go forward, instead of backward. 

Today, Cordova, the small coastal commercial fishing town that is just outside the Copper River watershed, near the delta of the Copper River, has organized what is known as "The Copper River Watershed Project." The group recently began looking for "Watershed Heroes" but, to date, they hadn't tripped over the obvious. They had yet to choose the Copper Valley's Ken Roberson for the honor.

So what's a "hero?" A hero is somebody who doesn't even know what they're doing is heroic. Somebody who is quite ordinary, but driven. A hero is not a "good" or "cool" person. Or a charismatic person. Or a totally beloved-by-everybody person. Heroes are more complicated. And most heroic deeds are never seen, understood, or formally noted -- by the hero himself, or by those around him.  Especially in the Copper River Valley, which, per capita, is crowded with the most unlikely bunch of genuine heroes that you can imagine. It's a place that is so difficult to live in that it lends itself to heroics all the time -- in everyday life. 
People cleaning fish on the Gulkana River, downstream 
from the Gulkana Hatchery. 
In this overlooked world of unheralded heroes, if you want to officially name somebody -- especially for the specific work of doing something positive about enhancing the Copper River watershed, Ken's a really good choice.

Ken Roberson is a hero because he was in the right place, at the right time -- armed with some sheets of plywood, some rope, some drywall buckets and a determination to set things straight with the Copper River watershed.

Before there were awards, or committees, or organizations dedicated to the Copper River, Ken Roberson did something that turned around the river's history. The entire Copper River watershed would be very different right now if Ken Roberson had not been working out of that little office in Glennallen in the 1970's, and then followed through on his idiosyncratic, bullheaded and incredibly effective ideas to build -- from the ground up -- the world's largest salmon fry production facility. In the wilds of Alaska. Because it was the right thing to do.

© Copper River Country Journal, 2015, Linda Weld, Editor
All rights reserved, including photographs and maps.
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