BIA ship North Star at San Francisco, April, 1935. Photograph by Willis T. Geisman for the A.R.R.C. [ASL-PCA-270, Mary Nan Gamble Collection, Alaska State Library]
They were transporting the tents, stoves, trucks, tractors, well-drilling equipment and other materials necessary for creating a new community in the Alaskan wilderness, along with the first group of 118 transient workers who would be building the homes, barns, and roads for the new colony.
Joining this advance guard was a young graduate from the University of California at Berkeley named Willis Taubert Geisman, who played rugby and had lettered in Political Science. Before setting sail, Geisman photographed the Emergency Relief Administration headquarters on 4th Street in San Francisco, and the workers loading trucks and farm machinery onto the North Star at Pier 50.
As the official photographer for the Matanuska Colony Project, Geisman documented every aspect of the venture, from the kitchen help aboard the North Star to the colonists’ children playing in the tent city, from officials posing stiffly for portraits to farmers working together to build homes before winter. His photographs portray proud farm wives showing their neat tent kitchens, and a small girl sitting in an Alaskan berry patch grinning at the cameraman.
In the Official Photographic Album of the Alaska Rural Rehabilitation Corporation (A.R.R.C.), Matanuska Colonization Project, Geisman’s 939 photographs are notated: “Complete Album photographed and produced in the field with portable equipment by Willis T. Geisman, official photographer, A. R. R. C. Palmer, Alaska, 1935.”
Little is known about Willis T. Geisman after 1935. He was born in San Franciso in November 1, 1911, to Clarence John and Florence N. Geisman. At some point he married, and he joined the Marine Corps, where he attained the rank of Captain. He was captured by the Japanese after the fall of Corregidor, Philippine Islands, on 6 May 1942, and was held as a Prisoner of War until his death while still in captivity. Burial was at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial, Manila, Philippines. His awards included the Prisoner of War Medal and the Purple Heart.
![Colony kids in a tent camp. Photograph by Willis T. Geisman for the A.R.R.C. [ASL-PCA-303, Mary Nan Gamble Collection, Alaska State Library]](http://matanuskacolony.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/fera-colony-kids-in-a-tent-camp-anch-mus-fera-303.jpg)
Colony kids in a tent camp. Photograph by Willis T. Geisman for the A.R.R.C. [ASL-PCA-303, Mary Nan Gamble Collection, Alaska State Library]
His photographs played a major role in the award-winning 2008 documentary, Alaska Far Away, and they were lauded by Valley historian Jim Fox, author of The First Summer, a splendid collection of some of Geisman’s most memorable photos: “Geisman’s work is of tremendous importance in its documentation of the Colony’s history and its technical skill, artistic and documentary style.”
The complete A.R.R.C. photograph album by Willis T. Geisman can be viewed online at Alaska’s Digital Archives for the Alaska State Library.
Excerpted from “A Mighty Nice Place,” The History of the 1935 Matanuska Colony Project, by Helen Hegener. Published in November, 2016 by Northern Light Media. 276 pages, 120 photos, 6″ x 9″ b/w format. Print book: $24.95 plus $5.00 shipping. Click here to order now via PayPal
In 1967, a 50-mile sprint sled dog race was run from Knik to Big Lake, in two 25-mile heats over a two-day period, with the race route including nine miles of the original Iditarod trail.
In his 1911 book, a two-volume history of arctic exploration titled Northern Mists: Arctic Exploration in Early Times, the reknowned Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen quotes from the fourteenth century Arabian chronicles of Ibn Batuta, a businessman trading near what is now Kazan in Russia. The Arabian dwelled with appreciation on the sight of sled dogs, noting that “Ibn Batuta (1302-1377) has no name for this people, any more than Abu’lfeda; but he calls their country ”the Land of Darkness’ and has an interesting description of the journey thither. He himself, he says, wished to go there from Bulgar, but gave it up, as little benefit was to be expected of it. That land lies 40 days’ journey from Biilgar, and the journey is only made in small cars drawn by dogs. For this desert has a frozen surface, upon which neither men nor horses can get foot- hold, but dogs can, as they have claws. This journey is only undertaken by rich merchants, each taking with him about a hundred carriages [sledges?], provided with sufficient food, drink and wood; for in that country there is found neither trees nor stones nor soil. As a guide through this land they have a dog which has already made the journey several times, and it is so highly prized that they pay as much as a thousand dinars [gold pieces] for one. This dog is harnessed with three others by the neck to a car [sledge?], so that it goes as the leader and the others follow it. When it stops, the others do the same.”
From 2007 to 2012 I travelled across Alaska to visit veteran mushers from the 1973 race who would share their memories of what has since become known as “The Last Great Race on Earth.” The bulk of my book is comprised of the verbatim words of these intrepid men who drove their teams on that first journey to Nome in 1973, captured through recorded and videotaped interviews and many notes and follow-up letters and emails. I am grateful to those who detailed their long-ago adventures, and I am equally grateful for the warm memories I brought away from our shared time together, when I would sit and listen, hands wrapped around a cup of coffee, as the years fell away and musher after musher relived that great adventure in March of 1973.
The historic All Alaska Sweepstakes is the oldest organized distance sled dog race in the world, with records kept by the Nome Kennel Club dating back to the first race in 1908. The race, which was held from 1908 to 1917, and commemorated with 75th and 100th anniversary races in 1983 and 2008, is the subject of 
The route from Nome, on the south side of the Seward Peninsula, to the small community of Candle on the north side and return, is 408 miles, following the telegraph lines which linked camps, villages and gold mining settlements on the Peninsula. This route’s established communication lines allowed those betting on the outcome to track the race more easily from the comfort of saloons like the famed Board of Trade in Nome, where the Nome Kennel Club had been founded.
The photo-rich, full color book covers the race from the preliminary festivities such as the crowning of the Sweepstakes Queen, Janice Doherty, and the mushers’ bib drawing, to the historically-themed finisher’s banquet and the awards, not only of the beautiful championship trophy, but also the Alec “Scotty” Allan Humanitarian Award, and the Percy Blatchford “Spirit of the Race” award. Descriptive commentaries by Race Marshal and Lead Judge Al Crane; leaderboard designer and champion musher Jodi Bailey; and dedicated race fan Marcia Claesson, who shared how the race was tracked by mushing enthusiasts from around the world, add depth and perspective to the exciting narrative of this iconic race.
Alaska & the Klondike, Early Writings and Historic Photographs, compiled and edited by Helen Hegener, and published in 2018 by Northern Light Media, is an anthology of selected writings from a dozen northland classics by early explorers and travelers in the territories of Alaska and Canada’s Yukon at the turn of the 20th century.
This 400-page book is a wide-ranging look at the many ways in which the railroad played a major role in Alaska’s growth and development. From dynamiting the railbed out of the rocky cliffs along Turnagain Arm, to spanning the deep chasm of Hurricane Gulch, and from crossing the endless miles of muskeg swamp to bridging the mighty waters of the Tanana River, the story is told through historic documents, photographs, and publications.
This is more than the just the story of constructing the railroad, this is also the story of how the U. S. Government built towns and cities across the territory, including Seward, Anchorage, Palmer, Wasilla, Talkeetna, Nenana, and Fairbanks. It’s the story of coal mining in Alaska, from the Guggenheim Syndicate’s notorious attempted monopoly of Alaska’s resources, to the government’s own private coal mine to service the U.S. Naval fleet in the Pacific. It’s the story of steamboat travel on Alaskan rivers, and how the railroad’s own fleet of steamers and gas-powered “tunnel boats” came to dominate the watery transportation corridors. It’s the story of the role a fledgling conservation movement played in dividing a major political party. And it’s the story of how steam shovels which dug the Panama Canal were brought north to claw at Alaskan hillsides.
The 500-mile long Alaska Railroad runs from the seaport town of Seward, on the Kenai Peninsula, to Fairbanks, the Golden Heart of Alaska. Along the way it crosses two formidable mountain ranges, several broad and daunting rivers, and numerous deep gorges and canyons. It winds along the tidewater edge of Turnagain Arm, past Bartlett and Spencer Glaciers, and skirts the highest point on the North American continent, the Great One, Denali. From running its own opulent luxury hotel—literally in the middle of nowhere—to developing the telephone, water, and sewer systems of Anchorage, the history of the railroad is largely the history of Alaska. Take a ride on the northernmost U. S. railroad, and gain an unusual perspective on a richly fascinating period in America’s past. ~•~
The Alaska Railroad: 1902-1923, Blazing an Iron Trail Across The Last Frontier, by Helen Hegener, published in May, 2017 by Northern Light Media. 400 pages, over 100 b/w historic photos, maps, bibliography, indexed. The book can be ordered for $24.95 plus $5.00 postage, by 
“When I went out to the villages (in the 1950′s) where there were beautiful dogs once, a snow machine was sitting in front of a house and no dogs. It wasn’t good. I didn’t like that. I’ve seen snow machines break down and fellows freeze to death out there in the wilderness. But dogs will always keep you warm and they’ll always get you there.” ~Joe Redington, Sr., in “I’d Swap My Old Skidoo for You,” by Nan Elliot (Brimm & Heald, 1989)
Joe Redington came to Alaska in 1948, settling on a homestead near Knik, south of Wasilla, with his family. He learned about sled dogs and how to handle a dog team from his new neighbors, mail and freight team driver Sharon Fleckenstein and Lee Ellexson, one of the last dog team mail drivers on the Iditarod Trail. He and his wife Grace had at one time been the operators of the Happy River Roadhouse in Rainy Pass. Ellexson had traveled thousands of miles with a dog team, and his stirring ‘tales of the trail’ captivated the newcomer.
A boat-building project took Joe to the village of Unalakleet, where he observed hundreds of huskies sitting idly around while snowmachines roared everywhere, the obvious transportation mode of choice. This alarmed Joe, and set him to thinking seriously about a one-thousand-mile race following the historic Iditarod Trail. Joe Redington promised that there would be a long-distance race to Nome by 1973, with the unheard-of purse of $50,000. Several major obstacles stood in his way, such as trail-clearing and fund-raising, but the biggest obstacle was his fellow race enthusiasts. 
As Joe and his new Iditarod Trail Committee set to work, the base of opponents and naysayers grew, and chief among them were some of the mushing world’s most prominent racers. There were claims that no dog could run 1,000 miles, and that no musher could cover that distance either.
And then, quietly at first, a few advocates emerged and said it wasn’t such a far-fetched notion, and as evidence they pointed to mushers like Hudson Stuck, the Yukon River missionary whose classic book, Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled, related seemingly non-stop travels to the farthest reaches of Alaska. Others had utilized dog teams on long distance trips, explorers like Ernest de Koven Leffingwell, who mapped the Arctic coastline, and Olaus Murie, the federal wildlife biologist who ran dog teams throughout Alaska for more than 30 years. Dr. Joseph Romig was known as “the dog-team doctor” for his extensive
Northern Light Media 