In the 1970’s, Hope was a small town consisting of about 40 structures, with a small country store, a log “social hall”, another store selling gas and sundries, and a small one-room schoolhouse.  A small number of permanent residences surrounded the main area of town which was at the mouth of the Resurrection Creek.  A State campground area sat overlooking the Creek and town. 
Hope sat opposite Anchorage on the Kenai Peninsula and required a visitor to travel 90 miles around Turnagain arm, up Turnagain Pass, and then down a 19-mile dirt road.  The trip was scenic and always punctuated by some excitement, whether it was a moose siting, a pass closed due to avalanches, or a porcupine crawling under your car as you stopped to observe him.  A side trip to Portage Glacier for some “Russian Tea” and a glacier viewing was always called for.  (Today, a wonderful visitor/observation center replaces the old log lodge. Named after Senators Nick Begich and Hale Boggs, who were lost in a plane as they crossed the glacier, it is an impressive structure for tourism. But the glacier receded and is no longer viewable across the lake.  After a massive search, the Senators were never found.)

Resurrection Creek had been a source of gold at the turn of the 20th Century, with several thousand hopeful miners congregating along the road into town and claiming rights to mine along the creek.  While some miners were finding gold, when the Yukon became accessible, most moved north, leaving little more than a ghost town behind.  In 1970 there were probably less than 50 year-round residents.  Only later did it become developed enough to have a proper school. Today there are several people re-working the old mining tailings, and tourists and locals can pan for nuggets.  I tried this once but never again.  Hours bent over with hands in ice-cold water did not produce enough gold flakes to warrant the effort!


Hope was off the beaten track.  I was a summer and weekend resident as were a number of us who built cabins a few miles outside of town near a small airstrip.  The road that led to our cabin area went on for a mile to end at a spot further up Resurrection Creek where there was still an active mining operation as well as the trailhead for the popular Resurrection Trail System managed by the US Forest Service. Our time in town was sporadic, usually visiting the town store for a few incidentals and to schmooz with Coolidge Fuller and his wife, both living above and managing the store.  They were a friendly older couple who subsisted on little, but made the town a friendly place for all visitors.

The few permanent residents occasionally interacted to try to bring tourists to the area to support hunting and recreational fishing.  Pink salmon spawned in Resurrection Creek, and it was not unusual to find dozens of families lined up along the creek opposite the store, casting and catching salmon easily.

These same residents often interacted with the “summer residents” who had cabins in the wilderness and in the Forest Service lots.

Three interactions – events – have always reminded me of the Alaska that was the Wild West of the 20th Century.

The first and most notable was an infamous New Year’s Eve party held at the Hope Social Hall in 1978.  It was a party my family did NOT attend due to heavy snowfall beginning. I feared being trapped in Hope if the snowfall was deep, keeping me from returning to teach on January 2nd.  Indeed, the snow fell hard enough that even as we left, 9 miles from civilization, I found myself pushing snow with our station wagon’s bumper.  By the time we managed to get to the main paved Seward Highway, only first gear was operational in the car, and I had to travel back to Anchorage in first gear.  A new transmission was required, but we had returned safely.

Meanwhile, back in Hope, the party commenced.  It was a raucous affair, attended by hard drinking locals and cabin residents.  Everyone was deep into the music and liquor when two locals named Rusty and Chuck decided to kill Goose.

To explain…. Rusty was not only alcohol impaired, he was also somewhat mentally impaired.  But he had a large .357 pistol and thought of himself as the “protector” of our cabins.  He was often welcomed with barbecue and beer at our cabin sites as his presence indeed kept strangers from visiting our properties.  Chuck, meanwhile, was lesser known.  He had a back condition that had him in a half-body cast at the time of the party.  Like Rusty, Chuck had some limitations but also owned and used firearms.

Meanwhile, squatting in an old miner’s abandoned cabin outside of town, lived Goose with several lady friends.  He had a large goose tattooed on his right arm, hence his name.  During our winter visits we would often encounter Goose and his friends at the store covering for Coolidge and enjoying discussions with visitors.  Several nights we spent in town playing board games with him and his women friends, enjoying hot popcorn and soda.  They seemed like nice people, like many who found Alaska to be a place to escape whatever ailed them in lower 48 society.

Sometime during the New Year’s Eve party, Chuck and Goose crossed paths and had words.  I don’t know of anyone who knows exactly what transpired, but the cabin residents I later talked with explained what happened this way:

Chuck decided he had to kill Goose.  He left the party to retrieve his firearms of choice… a shotgun and a .44 pistol.  Rusty backed him I heard but wasn’t actively involved.  Since Chuck announced his intentions, the partygoers who were not too inebriated relocated Goose behind a 50-gallon drum two doors away, behind the store.

When Chuck returned, several people tried to talk him down.  He would have none of it and threatened several with his pistol.  He walked them backwards toward the store, believing Goose was in the store with Coolidge. He marched up the stairs onto the deck in front of the store’s main doors. There he encountered Coolidge, who tried to face him and calm him.
As Coolidge had the attention of Chuck, Goose emerged from the corner of the store, came up behind Chuck, and conked him over the head with a beer bottle.

Chuck went down, but in so doing, involuntarily pulled the trigger of his .357.  A bullet emerged and passed directly through Coolidge’s colon.  Coolidge went down.  Someone jumped on Chuck, who promptly bit off the end of his little finger.  Someone else picked up the shotgun Chuck had dropped and broke it over his head.
Chuck was subdued and Coolidge injured.  A call was made to the nearest lawman.. a State Trooper in Seward.  It took the trooper three hours to arrive at the store, at which time he was able to call for a helicopter to be dispatched from Anchorage to pick up Coolidge.

The outcomes of this incident were that Coolidge, with no vital organs or arteries involved, ended up with a colostomy.  He left town with his wife.  Chuck got off lightly since the shot was involuntary, and he still lives in Hope today.  The bullet was located two years after the incident, lodged inside the leg of the wood stove in the center of the store.  A visit in 2014 was interesting when I asked a resident of that time what she knew of this story.  She knew Chuck and had heard a rumor that he had once killed a man in town.
 Almost.

Wilderness?  Wildness?  Alaska can be dangerous as well as offering awe-inspiring beauty.
 
The second event is not as graphic, but still of interest.  In the summer of 1978, a few enterprising town residents decided to hold a “bluegrass festival” in town.  They advertised this as a weekend event throughout Anchorage and surroundings.
Several hundred people came, which of course swelled the town population by at least double if not more.   Wagons were set up for music groups to play and a very large firepit was established on which a large grate was placed.  There, over the two weekend days of the festival, large chunks of prime beef were slow cooked to provide large slices of barbecued beef to paying participants.
 
A row of porta-potties was set up to accommodate the crowd.  Given the amount of alcohol being sold and consumed, this was a most necessary addition.

Sometime late Saturday night, after many festive rounds of music, beef, and beer, a local resident who preferred the quiet of the wilderness, took issue with the Festival sponsors.  He left in a huff to return to his mining operation just south of town.
By the morning, he had walked his small bulldozer into town to take revenge upon the promoters.  Still inebriated, he was able to mow down the whole row of port-potties before other locals were able to jump on him and remove him from his weapon of choice.

Fortunately no one was using the facilities at the time.

And we had left the party early Saturday after partaking of a fine slice of beef and some foot-stomping bluegrass music.
 
The third event was not as exciting as these two, but definitely memorable.

This happened on a summer day when all the cabin dwellers were hearing rumors that the Kenai Native Land Corporation was going to “select” our Forest Service land as part of the Alaskan Native Land Claims Settlement.  We knew that the US Government wanted to divest itself of this land and program.  So, what would happen to our leases?

A State Senator from Juneau was dispatched to Hope to meet with us and discuss possible divestiture of this land.  While the Native corporation could select it.  It was also possible that the State of Alaska might end up with the property.

The Senator brought along a young female recorder. Both were dressed appropriately for a Congressional hearing.  Their audience, however, were in jeans and wool shirts, male and female alike. The politician was out of place and looked at askance.  Young children raced around the Hope Social Hall as a large dog fight took place outside the entrance.

As hard as the politician tried to explain what MIGHT happen, he had no real answers.  The crowd grew raucous and shouted he and his young female recorder out of the building, into his rental Cadillac, and back to Juneau.

Later, the State did take possession of the property, and the Native corporation board did not choose the properties.  The State then offered the one acre lots to the lease holders for $850 each and agreed to use monies from a special rural electrification program to bring powerlines into the area.
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So the meeting represented raw politics done Alaskan style.  And the outcome brought unmanaged “civilization” to the wilderness.
 

 
In the summer of 1971, I signed a contract with the Federal Government to lease a one-acre plot of land in the Chugach National Forest.  I was obligated to build a cabin according to plans I had submitted along with my lease application.
I had taken on a larger task than I had imagined! 

Fortunately, I had good friends with resources.  Ron, who managed all the State Farm agents in Alaska, had a beautiful wife, a wonderful child, a Cessna 180 on floats, and lived larger than life.  A past college football player, he was strong in body and spirit and encouraged me and worked beside me as I began my new journey as a builder.

The first step in building a cabin in the woods of Alaska was to clear a path to the spot on which it would be built.  This was my first hurdle since a rudimentary road ended two lots before my leased land. I had to learn to handle a chain saw and cut down trees.  This was manageable as I learned how to keep the chain saw running without losing the chain, without crimping the chain in a tree, and without landing a tree upon myself!  Ron and I spent one weekend with this task alone, after driving the 90 miles from Anchorage, over Turnagain Pass, down the 19 mile dirt road leading to Hope.

We managed to clear the trees in two days.

But now we had to lay gravel over the mossy ground to create a road for our vehicles. Fortunately there were several brave souls who were moving old mining tailings with a small D4 Cat, retrieving small amounts of gold that the 1900 miners could not extract from the nearby Resurrection Creek.  I was able to contract with Don to walk his Cat to the cleared trail. There, I had several truckloads of dirt and rocks dumped so a base could be spread.  That weekend saw our road extended to the plot we cleared for the cabin.  I was pleasantly surprised that our section was substantial, thicker than the gravel laid for the first two lots leading into my leased area.

We now could begin construction.

A rented truck hauled the basic materials from Anchorage.  A borrowed generator supplied power for power tools, mostly circular saws and drills.  There were no powered hammers in those days. Shovels provided our first attack upon the land as a small crew of friends and I dug 12 holes, each about 3 and a half feet deep, set in three rows.  Into these holes we placed Sonotubes which looked like 6 foot long toilet paper rolls.  Very thick, these were heavy-duty cardboard structures into which concete is poured to create smooth columns.  Rather than use pre-made footers, we braced the tubes into the holes so they did not quite reach the bottom of each hole.  In this way, when we mixed and poured concrete into these tubes, some of it would spread out from the bottom to create a footpad that was a bit wider than the tube at the bottom.  At the top, we inserted short pieces of steel rebar so that each pillar had a 7 inch “stick” of metal jutting up.

Once each pillar was leveled and the concrete set, we were able to nail together the long 2x8 pieces of lumber we had purchased to create three 4x8 girders.  These were then pounded down onto the jutting metal rebar, creating a stable base on which to build our floor and front deck.

The floor was a 16x20 platform created using 2x6's and sheets of ¾ inch plywood transported from Anchorage.  I remember those particularly, even today.  Ron, using his football player physique, was carrying two sheets at a time from our road to the cleared area for the cabin.  Only about 100 feet, this was not a long walk, but the sheets were heavy and we carried them bending over with one hand down and the other up, balancing the weight on our shoulders.

Unfortunately, I attempted to match the physical feat of my friend.  I did one carry and must say that I still feel the resulting back injury today, 50 years later.
 
We built our floor and then marked on it one frame shaped like a diamond with the bottom third cut off. This was to be the skeleton for our modified A-frame structure, one which had a base of 16 x 20 feet.  When erected, 5 of these would form the cabin, propped up like a deck of cards, and then tied together with plywood sheets to form a large roof.

It took one summer of work, with help from various friends on weekends, to build the structure.  Windows were placed on either end, with a back window being framed in vertically, when it was meant to be horizontal.  As I looked at the work to reframe that end window, I panicked. Ron, who was partly responsible for the error, taught me a lesson for life in that moment.  He said simply, “We can do all the work of taking it apart and reframing it, OR YOU CAN PROP IT WITH A STICK.”  A simple lesson when faced with a difficult decision.  We whittled a fancy stick!  The phrase “prop it with a stick” has found many uses in our lives since.

Back in town, Wayne and friends helped me in the school auto shop.  There, I provided a “kit” I had purchased from a Montgomery Wards catalog for creating a wood stove using a 50-gallon barrel.  This consisted of a collar for the pipe, a door, and two legs.  We debated whether to cut the barrel down and weld a plate to it so there was a flat surface.  The answer was no since I had a propane stove already in place, donated from a building Ron had torn down earlier in the summer. The demolition provided a large swatch of shag carpet, a sink, and a countertop too.

We attached all the parts and painted the stove flat black.  Metalbestos insulated pipe was purchased to carry through the 12x16 loft area, necessary so no one could be burned when passing by the pipe coming up through the middle of the cabin.
A deck was completed, roofing shingles attached, plywood painted, and the cabin was completed by the end of that summer.  Altogether the materials cost was just a bit over $3,000.

After 8 years of use, we transferred the lease to a new couple who purchased the improvements for $20,000. 

40 years later, we revisited the lot.  It was now owned by a real estate investor in California.  The State of Alaska had taken over the property from the Federal Government in 1982 and sold the lots to the prior leasees for about $850 each.  A rural electrification project provided lines for electricity at no cost to the owners.

We discovered several things: Our cabin had been almost untouched in 40 years.  My son’s plastic sled was still underneath alongside the Sonotubes.  The same table and chairs, drapes, and tablecloth were viewable through the front window.  The roof was intact, though moss covered. The front deck was rotted and not safe to walk upon but the main structure looked solid.  A neighbor informed us the lots were worth in excess of $100,000 in 2014.

All around were various structures built without regard to the rules and regulations of the Forest Service leases.  There were ramshackle shacks beside nicely built homes.  This was not the wilderness any more, and my wife and I both agreed it would not be a desirable cabin location today!

Did I mention… our original lease purchasers were a couple from Juneau, where one was blind and the other deaf?
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Perhaps this story was too “concrete”  There are more interesting stories to come.
 

 
My new teaching buddies and I sat around the table in the Service Hanshew JSHS faculty lounge, newly built in Anchorage.  We were discussing how we wanted to experience the wilderness of Alaska.  We were all newly hired to meet the educational demands of a large influx of children, coming to us because of the birth of the Alyeska Pipeline and the boom-time jobs that were being offered.
 
Exploring my new world, I drove north from Anchorage to McKinley Park (Denali now!) with my wife and baby, tent camping halfway into the park.  Park rangers stood watch for undesirable wild life… mostly big brown bears.  After one night, we drove to Wonder Lake and out.  On the way back toward Anchorage, we did a 24 mile dirt road side trip into a lodge on Peter’s Creek Road.  South of Denali, it was in God’s country.  The road, deeply rutted and rocky, was barely passable with our Dodge station wagon.  The road dead-ended at the lodge, a large two story log structure which wasn’t open at the time.  A burbling trout stream sat at the dirt circle parking lot beside the building, with a few 50 gallon drum containers meant to hold refuse from fishermen who often frequented the spot.  I tried my hand with a small lure, but it was late and fishing was not on the agenda that trip.  No fish bit in the short time I cast into the rocky waters.

We were alone this time and enjoying the peace and quiet, only occasionally punctuated by Baby David’s presence.  As the sun lowered behind the mountains, my wife looked around and said “I don’t want to sleep in a tent.  There might be bears around and there are no Rangers!”  While I wasn’t as fearful, I heeded her distress.  We set up our tent, moved all the gear into it, put the baby in a laundry basket on the front seat of our Dodge station wagon, laid out a mattress in the back, and bedded down in our sleeping bags for the night.

Sure enough, there was bear.  He was a medium-sized black bear, interested in the contents of the barrels outside.  He muddled and snuffled around a bit, took a sniff at our car (“Canned people”?) and left the area, probably still hungry.
I was thankful I heeded my wife’s warning.  But… she refused to tent camp again.

So I entered the above discussion with one thing in mind:  a cabin.  Several of my fellow teachers also liked that idea.
But where?

The State of Alaska, only 12 years old at the time, decided to assist its residents.  All we needed to do was to look in certain State-designated areas, travel to a chosen spot, put down stakes in four corners, and we could then file to own up to 20 acres of free land.  Called Open to Entry, this program appealed to us as one answer to “Where?”
Our first mapping exploration located a beautiful lake halfway to Denali.  It was an easy hike off the Alaska Railroad, which would stop for travelers living in such places.  Several of us were ready to make a pilgrimage to the spot, but as we inquired, we discovered that the upper, dry side of the lake, was partially staked already.  Further discussion with State officials revealed that the parties claiming that property were NOT friendly. They had staked enough area to “own” the whole lake and had reportedly fired warning rifle shots toward would-be participants in the Open to Entry program.

We scotched that plan.

One of our group later staked a claim nearer to Willow (famous for housing Sarah Palin’s family).
However, in early spring, he discovered it was largely swampland, not suitable for building.  He abandoned his claim.

Meanwhile, I found a source through the Federal Government, an entity that owned most of Alaska.  The U.S. Forest Service maintained the Chugach National Forest area on the Kenai Peninsula, an area with its northernmost section adjacent to a small community called Hope, Alaska.  This area was reachable by dirt road and included a group of about 30 one-acre lots that could be leased for $99 a year on a one-hundred-year lease. The lease could be obtained by signing a contract that involved Federal approval of plans for building a cabin on the lot.  The Government provided covenants and rules for the owners that meant to keep the area as pristine as possible.  I liked that since it meant we would not be butt up against yahoos with rusty garbage cans filled with alcohol containers and junk cars beside shacks. There were some controls.

I met with one of my lounge friends who happened to be the shop teacher in our high school.  Wayne was a talented carpenter and had been a California contractor in his past.  We discussed what I needed, and Wayne not only designed a plan for a small modified A-frame cabin, but he also assigned his students to build a scale-model of it so I would understand the structure and what would be needed to build it.  I took Wayne’s plan and completed a ream of Federal paperwork.  The model was perfect!
The plan was submitted and approved.  I now “owned” the property in the forest just outside of Hope Alaska!
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But it needed to become a reality.