Go North, Young Man: Modern Homesteading in Alaska

264 Pages·2016·7.59 MB·English

by  Gordon Stoddard

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Text originally published in 1957 under the same title.
© Papamoa Press 2017, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
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Publisher’s Note
Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of
the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the
modern reader’s benefit.
We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do
not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.
GO NORTH, YOUNG MAN
Modern Homesteading in Alaska
BY
GORDON STODDARD

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS 5
Chapter I—Don’t Come Home 6
Chapter II—Flat Broke 10
Chapter III—The Wrong Pew 14
Chapter IV—The Search 19
Chapter V—The Homestead 27
Chapter VI—Greasy Grogan 33
Chapter VII—The Actor 39
Chapter VIII—Ski and the Crazy Cat 44
Chapter IX—The Snow Melted and There It Was 53
Chapter X—Mansion in the Woods 59
Chapter XI—Home Brew 64
Chapter XII—Neighbors 69
Chapter XIII—The Rich Homesteaders 78
Chapter XIV—Jack of All 84
Chapter XV—The Bear Facts 89
Chapter XVI—Without a Wife 98
Chapter XVIII—Civilization 103
Chapter XVIII—Spring Fever 109
Chapter XIX—Land for Sale 114
Chapter XX—Ruination of a Sport Fisherman 118
Chapter XXI—The Visitation 125
Chapter XXII—Pets and Livestock 133
Chapter XXIII—The Season’s Work 137
Chapter XXIV—Tourists 144
Chapter XXV—Fire! Fire! 149
Chapter XXVI—Winter, Art and Pinochle 154
Chapter XXVII—The Moose and Me 160
Chapter XXVIII—Spring, Tenants and Sandy 168
Chapter XXIX—Goodbye, Alaska! 174
REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 180
Chapter I—Don’t Come Home
“DON’T COME HOME until you’ve made good,” said my father.
I gulped and stepped on my starter. My last bridge was burning.
“But,” continued Dad, leaning through the car window and laying an
affectionate hand on my shoulder, “it you get into trouble or run short of cash—
drop me a line.” Good old Dad.
We shook hands—hard. I raced the motor, pulled away from the curb. Dad
was still standing there on the sidewalk beside the tall, gray apartment house, his
blue suit rumpled in the way it always was, his curly white hair lifting slightly in
the stiff morning breeze, when Ï took my last, long look at him in my rear view
mirror.
As I wove my way through the traffic of Van Ness Avenue, I wondered what
kind of a send-off my father’s father had given him in 1910, when he had headed
for the frozen north. Had it been a case of “Don’t come home” then? But he had
come home, he had made good. And now I was traveling the same old path. But
there was a difference: while my father had ended up in northern British
Columbia, I was trying to go him one better by aiming farther north—at Alaska.
And there were other differences. My father had left San Francisco with only
$58 in his purse; I was starting out with $1200. He had trekked by steamer, on
horseback and by dogsled; I was driving an almost-new business coupe which
would, I hoped, take me all the way. He was a has-been; I was a 1950 Model
Pioneer. Make good? I couldn’t help making good!
*****
When I was discharged from the Navy in 1946 I had been like thousands of
other ex-G.I.’s: restless, switching jobs at a moment’s notice, starting college
and then quitting to try something else, having no definite goal in mind but
searching, searching, searching for I didn’t know what. I was in a rut. I didn’t
like cities, I didn’t like the pace of post-war life, I was a guy whose greatest joy
had always been to get away from it all—preferably with a fishing pole as my
only companion beside a high mountain stream. Was I doomed forever to the
drab existence of the unhappy commuters I saw rushing past me on the streets?
One day in San Francisco I met a fellow who talked to me about Alaska.
Alaska—the last frontier, a place where a veteran could homestead 160 acres
and own them in seven months; where a man had to work only six months out of
a year to make a good living; where the fish jumped onto your hook without
formal invitation and the moose stood still to be shot.
“I’m a horticulturist,” I said. “Do you suppose there’s any growing land up
there?”
“Well, the Matanuska Valley’s the agricultural center of the Territory, but
that’s all taken up. But have you ever heard of the Kenai Peninsula? It’s almost
as big as California. I hear tell there’s a lot of good farming ground there, and
it’s open to homesteaders now.”
“That’s for me!” I shouted. And sending away for pamphlets, books and
government bulletins, I had started laying plans.
For two years I had made my preparations. I had gathered all the available
information on homesteading, collected maps on the Alcan Highway and Alaska
itself, stayed on my job as a plant propagator for a big wholesale-retail nursery,
saved my money, bought a new car for the trip, collected equipment I thought I
would need—a war surplus parka, a crab net, a Coleman stove, and some new
fishing gear.
And I had listened to my father. As far back as I could remember he had told
me yarns about his conquest of northern British Columbia, of how, as a
“cheechako,” he had created a town, founded a newspaper in a wilderness where
he had had to “make” the news in order to have something to set up in type. I