Showing posts with label Alaska. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alaska. Show all posts

Saturday, February 24, 2024

Going Feral: Subsistance Hunter/Fisherman of the Week: Dick Proenneke

Going Feral: Subsistance Hunter/Fisherman of the Week: Dick Pr...

Subsistance Hunter/Fisherman of the Week: Dick Proenneke

Dick Proenneke may be the ultimate modern subsistence hunter and fisherman in so far as the Western World is concerned.

Proenneke was born in Iowa in 1916.  His father was sort of a jack of all trades laborer, which is and was common to rural areas.  His father was also a veteran of World War One.  Dick followed in his father's footsteps prior to World War Two, leaving high school before graduation, something extremely common in that era (less than 50% of males graduated from high school prior to World War Two  He joined the Navy in World War Two and took up hiking around San Francisco while recovering from rheumatic fever contracted in the service.  Having the disease was life altering for him, as he became focused on his health.  He received a medical discharge from the Navy in 1945.

After the war he became a diesel mechanic, but his love of nature caused him to move to Oregon to work on a sheep ranch, and then to Shuyark Island, Alaska, in 1950.  From 1950 to 1968 he worked for a variety of employers, including the Navy and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.  He moved to the wilderness in 1968, at age 52, the year that in many ways gave us the Post Post World War Two World we are now seeing collapse.  He lived there, as a single man, until 1999, when old age forced him out of the woods and to his brother's home in California.  He died in there in 2003, at age 86.  His cabin now belongs to the Park Service.

Proenneke loved photography and left an extensive filmed record of his life in Alaska.

There's a lot that can be gleaned from his life, some of which would probably be unwarranted, as every person's life is their own.  Having noted that, however, it should be noted that Proenneke is not the only person to live in this manner in Alaska's back wood, including up to the present.  So he's not fully unique, but rather his high intelligence and filmed record has made him known.

It's also notable, fwiw, that he was a single man.  Basically, if looked at carefully, his retreat to the woods came in his retirement, as he had very low expenses up until 1968, and had worked for the government for many years.  He never married, so he never had a family or responsibilities of that type.  Many of the men who live in wild Alaska have married into native families, so their circumstances are different.

Probably every young man who loves the outdoors has contemplated doing something like what Proenneke actually did, while omitted the decades of skilled labor as a single man that came before it.  And in reality, Proenneke, had lived over half his life as a working man with strong outdoor interests, rather than in the wilderness.  People really aren't meant to live the way he lived, in extreme isolation, save for a few.

Related Threads:

Dick Proenneke in Alone in the Wilderness


Thursday, November 16, 2023

Friday, November 16, 1973. Transforming Alaska.

Today In Wyoming's History: November 16: 1973     President Richard M. Nixon signed the Alaska Pipeline measure into law.
The building of the Alaska pipeline was huge news at the time. There were those then who expressed concerns about the environmental costs, but by and large, in the midst of the oil crisis, it was looked at by Americans with a lot of hope and often compared to big prior endeavors, such as the Transcontinental Railroad.

The oil would forever change the economy of Alaska, as it also had already, and was continuing to do, in Wyoming.


Skylab 4 was launched.




Saturday, July 22, 2023

Sunday, July 22, 1923. Harding leaves Alaska, Big Train strikes out 3,000.

 President Harding departed Sitka, Alaska, bound to a Canadian port on his Voyage of Understanding.

President and Mrs. Harding with small group of men and women, Sitka, Alaska, July 22, 1923

Herbert Hoover was part of the Harding party.  In Sitka, he stated: 

We came to Alaska in the hope that by a better understanding of the problems of Alaska we might give better service from the Government to the people of Alaska; that by personal contact we would come to know you and we would come to know your vision of Alaska, your future and your ideals,” Herbert Hoover, Sitka Alaska, July 22, 1923. 

The tanker SS Swiftstar exploded and sank after being hit by lightening.  Only one of its 32 man crew survived.


Walter "Big Train" Johnson of the Washington Senators became the first Major League pitcher to record 3,000 career strikeouts.  He'd ultimately record 3,508, a record that held until 1978.

Johnson was a great picture, and he may have had the fastest fast ball in baseball history.  He died of a brain tumor in 1946 at age 59.

Bob Dole, long time Kansas Senator, war hero, and Presidential contender, was born in Russell, Kansas.

Future senator Daniel Inouye (left) with Dole, next to Inouye, playing cards at the Percy Jones Army Hospital in the mid-1940s.

Dole was badly wounded while serving in the 10th Mountain Division during World War Two.

Saturday, July 15, 2023

Sunday, July 15, 2023. Harding drives a golden spike.

Harding drove in a golden spike on the Alaska Railroad at Nenana, a town near Fairbanks.


Harding was really putting in the miles, and saw a great deal of Alaska during his trip, at a point in time at which it was fairly difficult to do so.

The most dangerous major airline in the world, Aeroflot, saw its birth when its predecessor, Dobrolet, began operations with a flight from Moscow to Nizhny.

Egypt banned its citizens from making the Hajj in reaction to the King of Hejaz barring an Egyptian medical mission which was part of it.  The latter was done as an assertion of sovereignty by the Kingdom, which was not long to remain.

Friday, July 14, 2023

Saturday, July 14, 1923. Harding in Anchorage.

President Harding visited Anchorage, where he and Mrs. Harding painted their names on a section house.

Direct link to something else, apparently, going on in Anchorage on the same day.

The Ku Klux Klan holds its first "Konvention" in Washington state.


Once again, it's really hard to imagine this occurring today.

The French celebrated Bastille Day, even though there's next to nothing to actually celebrate about it, or the French Revolution in general.

Oh well, it's a party, there was music, and the girls were there.

Monday, July 10, 2023

Tuesday, July 10, 1923. End of Paraguayan Civil War, Flooding in Natrona County.

The Paraguayan Civil War ended former President Manuel Gondra and his supporters, the Gondraists, entering the capital.  It was the second Paraguayan civil war in a decade, with the leaders of opposite sides in the 1922-23 conflict having been on the same side in the 1911 conflict.  A Third Paraguayan Civil War would be fought in 1947.

The Paraguayan military had been split by the conflict, with various units on either side.

The Curia Julia, the seat of the Roman Senate, was purchased by the Italian government.

Marguerite Ailibert, originally a prostitute and later a French courtesan, who had a wartime affair with Prince Edward, Prince of Wales and later king, shot and killed her husband Ali Kamel Fahmy Bey.  They were vacationing in London. They'd been married six months.  It was her second marriage.

Defended by Edward Marshall Hall she was found innocent of murder.  She died in Paris in 1971 at age 80.

There are probably a pile of lessons in Ailibert's story, one of which is that the fame of lawyers, and Hall was famous, doesn't survive their own era as a rule.  Ailibert was an attrative woman, and skilled in her craft obviously, which serves as a warning in and of itself.

President Harding visited Juneau.  Based on a photo of his visit, it was rainy.

It had been rainy the day before in Natrona County, Wyoming, causing disastrous flooding.



Saturday, July 8, 2023

Sunday, July 8, 1923. President Harding arrived in Alaska.

The USS Henderson arrived at Metakatla, Alaska, and President Harding disembarked, becoming the first President to visit the then territory.

The small panhandle settlement has tripled in size since that time, to about 1500 residents, most of whom are natives.

Wednesday, July 5, 2023

Monday, June 12, 2023

Tuesday, June 12, 1923. Trouble in China.

The remaining eight hostages taken by train bandits in what became known as the Linceng Outrage were freed.  The payment of ransom by Shanghai mobster Du Yuesheng to Sun Meiyao of the Shandong Outlaws resulted in the final freedom of what originally had been 300 such hostages.

Du Yuesheng, who controlled the Shanghai opium trade, would become a significant supporter of Chiang Kai Shek, and has been honored with a memorial in Taiwan, where he died.

Sun Meiyao would be executed by the Chinese Army in December.

On the same day, Chinese general Feng Yuxiang issued an ultimatum to Chinese President Li Yuanhong to resign.  He himself would go on to briefly lead the country, and then support the Nationalist as well, before becoming, in later years, a critic of it.  While a Christian, he was comfortable with the Communist regime and was honored by it when he died in 1953.

Juneau Alaska, June 12, 1923.

Thursday, February 23, 2023

Friday, February 24, 1923. Freistaat Flaschenhals kaput, The National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska created, Yucatán races to the divorce bottom, Gen. Allen departs.

The National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPRA) was established by President Harding, via an executive order.  It was at the time called the Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 4.


The Declaration of the Rights of the Child was published in Geneva.  It stated:

1  The child must be given the means requisite for its normal development, both materially and spiritually.

2.  The child that is hungry must be fed, the child that is sick must be nursed, the child that is backward must be helped, the delinquent child must be reclaimed, and the orphan and the waif must be sheltered and succoured.

3.  The child must be the first to receive relief in times of distress.

4.  The child must be put in a position to earn a livelihood, and must be protected against every form of exploitation.

5. The child must be brought up in the consciousness that its talents must be devoted to the service of its fellow men.

It's worth noting that Putin's Russian government is kidnapping Ukrainian children, brainwashing them, and sending them out to Russian families to be "adopted" and raised as Russians.

The French eliminated the Freistaat Flaschenhals, the "Free State of the Bottleneck, which had been that bizarre self-governing strip of land between the US and French occupation zones in post World War One Germany.

No weird thing lasts forever.

On the same day, U.S. Major General Henry Allen, left the German fortress of Ehrenbreitstein in Koblenz, de facto ending the U.S. occupation in Germany.

Allen, who opposed French actions in the Ruhr, went on to lead a successful campaign to raise funds for German children and pregnant women.  In spite of his then advanced age, 77, he was considered as the running mate for Al Smith's 1928 running mate, and received votes for that office.  A West Point graduate from 1882, he was in the cavalry branch and lived an adventuresome life in the Army, being posted in Alaska, and then later serving in the Spanish American War and the Punitive Expedition, prior to serving in World War One, in which he commanded the 90th Infantry Division.

Yucatán sent a press release to American news agencies that cheap divorces were now available in that Mexican state.

Saturday, October 29, 2022

Sunday, October 29, 1942. The Alaska Highway Opens.

British clergymen and political figures met to denounce German persecution of the Jews.

Today In Wyoming's History: October 291942  The Alaska Canada Highway (ALCAN) opened as a military highway.

What does this have to do with Wyoming?  Well, arguably not much.  But the story is relevant, as depicted here, for a couple of reasons.  For one thing, it was the first really all year around, all weather, rural highway in the United States. The trucks depicted here are travelling in conditions that would be familiar to most Wyoming drivers, but which most people avoided travelling in for the most part, for long distances anyhow, prior to World War Two.

Pat of the reason that, after the war, they would travel in conditions like this has to do with a technology depicted here which wasn't common at all prior tot he war. . . the all wheel drive.  In this case, the vehicles are 6x6 2 1/2 ton military trucks, but it was the 4x4 military truck that would really cause a revolution in post war rural travel, when it put on civilian colors.



Wednesday, August 17, 2022

The 2022 Election Part XI. Primary Election Day.

April 16, 2020.  12:00 a.m.

It's finally here.


When this post goes live, the polls will be opening seven hours later.  Twelve hours from that, they'll close, and the results will start to come in.  Depending on how things go in various races, we may not know who won some races until tomorrow, or the day after, or, if they're really close. . .

No primary race in Wyoming's history has been followed anywhere near as close as this one. And while some elections could claim to be equally or more important, particularly the one that followed the 1892 Johnson County War which resulted in the Republicans briefly losing power in the state, none have been as existential since at least that time.  Indeed, in some ways this race and that race are loosely, but only loosely, comparable, as that race was over whether big monied interest would dominate the state's life in every sense.  That isn't as true, but it's partially true, of this race as well, although that's been very little noted.

Hanging over everything is whether a radical populist right wing of the GOP, which has been up and coming in the state's politics, and which has had monied backing, shall complete the process of taking over the party or not.  In some races, such as the Governor's, it clearly will not succeed.  In others, however, down at the legislature and county level, it stands a much better chance, and that may stand to make more of a long term difference in real terms.

This contest, however, certainly has filtered up to other races.  The contest for Congress is certainly one, with the issue being whether the radical populist right will prevail over the traditional party, with Harriet Hageman ironically acting as the stalking horse for the radical right in spite of a lack of history of an association with it.  The Secretary of State's office features the same contest, with radical right populist Chuck Gray, who lacks any qualification for the job, squaring off against attorney-legislator Tara Nethercott.  Even the race for the Superintendent of Public Instruction features it.

It should be an interesting day.

April 16, cont.

With 45 minutes left to go, the national news has been reporting on the stakes in the Wyoming, and Alaska, primaries.  Wyoming is reporting record turn outs.

April 16, cont.

So, as of 9:46 p.m., it appears fairly certain that:

Harriet Hageman won the GOP nomination for Congress, taking about 63% of the vote to 32% of Cheney's, actually a little lower than polls had predicted.  So, Wyomingites voted for loyalty to Trump and bought off on his lies rather than principal.

While she's a long shot, as she's a Democrat, Lynette Grey Bull was nominated in the Democratic contest.

Chuck Gray, another big lie candidate, beat out Tara Nethercott for Secretary of State 48% to 42%, with the balance going to Armstrong.

Mark Gordon was nominated for a second term for the GOP with a big lead over his contenders.

Theresa Livingston, who might as well not even be running, was nominated for the Democrats.

Curt Meier was nominated in the GOP contest for a second term as Treasurer.

April 17, 2022

An extraordinary, and frankly an extraordinarily frightening, election.

Let's start with the statewide elections.

  • Congressman

GOP Nominee:  Harriet Hageman.

Democratic Nominee:  Lynette Gray Bull.

Hageman won in spite of large numbers of Democrats, to the extent that Wyoming has large numbers of Democrats, and independents registering to vote in the GOP primary.  The only real issue was loyalty to Donald Trump.

This is, quite frankly, a frightening anti-democratic result in the GOP, evidence of the extent to which democratic principles are being abandoned in the rank and file of the party, or of the degree to which Trump's fables about the election being stolen have been bought by the GOP rank and file.  Wyoming will now exchange a conservative GOP Congressman with outsized power for a freshman stalking horse with no power at all.

This assuming, of course, Hageman wins in the Fall, which she almost surely will.  Still, this does put Gray Bull in a unique position as the first Democrat to actually have a chance at winning, albeit a small one.

  • Governor
Governor Gordon took the GOP nomination and therefore the office.  

One might hope that gadfly Rex Rammell, who did not even poll 10,000 votes and therefore polled about a fifth of that of his Bien, who trailed Gordon massively, would finally knock it off, but that's unlikley.

Theresa Livingstone took the Democratic nomination.
  • State Auditor
GOP Nominee:  Kristie Racines was running unopposed for reelection.

Democratic Nominee:  None.
  • State Treasurer
GOP Nominee:  Curt Meier running for reelection came out the victor, although his opponent took about half the number of votes he did, an interesting result ni that Meier was running to be reelected and had been endorsed by Trump.

Democratic Nominee:  None.
  • Secretary of State
GOP Nominee:  Chuck Grey

Democratic Nominee:  None.

Grey, with little in the way of qualifications, goes on to become Secretary of State after taking a minority of the vote.  Nethercott and Armstrong combined took slightly more, with Armstrong taking ly about 8%.  

Here too, the issue turned out to be the 2020 election and the elevation of Grey to this office is more than a little worrisome.
  • Superintendent of Public Instruction

GOP Nominee:  Megan Degefelder.  In a very tight race against appointed incumbent Brian Schroeder, Degenfelder pulled out in front to take the most votes, but not over 50%.  The strength of the appointed Schroeder shows the strength of far right candidates this year.

Democratic Nominee:  Sergio A. Maldonaldo, Sr.  

From here will turn to some interesting legislative races.

  • Senate District 25.
Long time conservative Republican from Fremont County Cale Case won the GOP nomination, and will run uncontested, but he only barely survived a challenger.  Case, whose conservative credentials are unimpeachable, had come under fire from the far right earlier this year.
  • Senate District 29
Long time Natrona County Senator Drew Perkins was defeated by far right challenger Bob Ide.  Perkins had barely survived a challenge from Ide the last time he ran, in this atmosphere, he did not, although the margin may have been closer than the last election.
  • House District 2
GOP incumbent J.D. Williams, serving out his first term, lost by about fifteen votes to challenger Alan Slagle in a vote in which county residence seemed to be the deciding factor.
  • House District 9
Moderate Republican Landon Brown survived a challenge from the right easily in the GOP contest.
  • House District 35.
Incumbent Republican Joe MacGuire was defeated by challenger from the right, Tony Locke.
  • House District 43
Incumbent Dan Zwonitzer, who has been heavily attacked from the right for some time, easily won renomination to his GOP House seat.
  • House District 57
This district saw the rise of Chuck Grey and now has nominated Jeanette Ward, his endorsed successor who is every bit as far to the right as he is, and who moved here only recently from Chicago.
  • House District 58
Long serving Patrick Sweeney went down in defeat to challenger Bill Allemand in this district, whose boundaries were heavily redrawn this year.  Allemand challenged from the right. Sweeney had always been a moderate in the GOP.
  • Natrona County Commission
In the GOP race for the four-year seat, voters mad over local assessments tossed out the incumbent, Paul Bertoglio, but preserved that of incumbent Jim Milne, who trailed third in a race which will only advance three candidates to the general.  In that race, they'll be joined by Dr. Tom Radosevich, who was running as the only Democrat. Milne barely did better than recent Democratic cross over Terry Wingerter.  Recent appointee Peter Nicolaysen gained renomination.

In the two-year contest, Steve Freel defeated long time commissioner Rob Hendry.

As a result of this, the Natrona County Commission is going to be seeing mostly new commissioners.
  • Natrona County Assessor.
This position has been hotly contested seemingly forever, and this time former assessor Tammy Saulsbury took the nomination over current assessor Matt Keating.  

Elsewhere

Alaska's Lisa Murkowski, a target of Trump ire like Liz Cheney, survived a challenge from the right.

Commentary

In this election, Wyoming blindly embraced the far right in what might be regarded as a Trump fueled sense of rage over a stolen election that wasn't stolen.  Beyond that, however, this reflects a steady drift to the far right fringe to the degree the state has largely crossed over into the extreme right.

We can look for the next legislature to back measures that Wyomingites will ultimately find horrific, including measures to grab the state lands.  The state's rank and file population will grow upset with what they've voted in, but only in rare years will they remove incumbents, this being one of them, so this development likely defines the next ten to fifteen years.

While overall predications are difficult to make, generally the nation is likely not to head in this direction, meaning that politically, and likely economically, the state will be marginalizing itself but unable to appreciate that, and in turn will retrench even further.  Comparative eras for Wyoming would be difficult to find, but politically in the US the best analogy would likely be the post Reconstruction American South of the late 19th Century and early 20th, an era which saw the same at work in the American South and which operated very much against the interset of the common people.

Thursday, July 7, 2022

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist Part XXXV. Griner and Russian Law, Senseless Destruction, No. 10 Cat to get new Roommate, Russia threats on Alaska, Where's the followup?

Don't be stupid out there


Russia is not the United States.

Brittney Griner is accused of bringing CBD oil into Russia, supposedly in vape pens.

Did she do it?  I don't know.

But what I do know is that Russia isn't the US, where a celebrated athlete would likely get a slap on the hands for a drug violation, and where this isn't one.

Americans seem to believe for some reason that if they fall afoul of the law in a foreign nation, the US should rescue them.  The US has no obligation to do that.

And like it or not, other nations have much stricter laws on a host of things than the US does.  The US in contrast has lots and lots of laws, which isn't necessarily a good thing either.  In part, that leaves Americans with a sort of combined quite contempt and ignorance for the law. We don't know what all the laws are, so we don't tend to worry about them overly much.  And people can do some pretty bad stuff and not get punished all that much.

In contrast, there can be real penalties for things in foreign countries.  In one Southeast Asian country, for example, people get beat with canes for spitting gum on the street.  When I went to South Korea with the National Guard in the 1980s I recall us all being warned that you could be jailed for possessing a Playboy magazine, which didn't bother me as I wasn't going to be running around the Korean Peninsula with one, but that's a much different approach to pornography that the US has.

You get the point.

On Griner, my present understanding is that she plays basketball in Russia as women basketball players make less than male ones in the U.S.  So she goes there on the off season, where apparently they are then running their leagues.  I get that, and that's not just, but that's not a reason to be careless, if she was.  Her minority status, her numerous tattoos, her homosexual status, and her American citizenship all made her a target in a nation where all of those are either very unusual or not at all tolerated.  On top of that, there's a war going on.

There's not much the US can do to spring her.  The Russians will let her go when holding her no longer serves a purpose.

Senseless Destruction.

Somebody blew up the Georgia Guidestones.

For those who are not familiar with them, there's a really good episode of Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World about them, identifying the builder and why he did it.  For a really brief synopsis, based on memory, a physician who lived in another state built them out of concern that things were going down the tubes and giving his own personal guidance and thoughts on how to avoid going down the tubes in the future.

Frankly, they were very 1970ish.

Why would somebody blow them up?

Apparently, some people believed they were evil, which is silly.  

Regarding guidestones, with all the crap going on in the US right now, the builders thoughts probably wouldn't be altered if he were around right now.

Boris Johnson falls.

Americans tend to be so self focused on their own politics, which are distressingly weird right now, that they miss the politics of other nations.  On top of it, the American press is phenomenally bad on reporting political events in other nations.  Added to that, the press of the subject nations tends to be no better, so you are only left with the suggestion that he did something horrible, with nobody ever telling you what it was.  An article in the Guardian, for example, calls him the worst leader the Tories every had, but won't say why.

Canadian changes of power, by the way, are completely that way.  It's like the entire topic of the election is a big secret.

Anyhow, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has resigned.  He will briefly remain Prime Minister until his replacement is chosen.

Usually this happens following an election with the party in control loses.  This, however, was due to an internal revolt in the Conservative Party.

Apparently a lot of this has to do with "Partygate", a scandal in which parties were held at No. 10 Downing Street (as if they were going to be able to keep that secret) which violated COVID restrictions in the UK.

I guess it says something in favor of the British that this would bring a Prime Minister down, whereas in the United States a sitting President would attempt to illegally retain power and nothing happen to him.

Russia threatens Alaska.

One of the Russian strategies to deal with its pathetic performance in Ukraine is to threaten everyone else.  Now it is threatening the United States, stating it might fight us to take Alaska back.

Seriously?

Usually, bullies have to win to be credible.

And now. . . ?

I'm not going to bother to name names, but there is a politician in Congress who came on Twitter nearly daily to blame Biden for rising gasoline prices.

Now gas prices have fallen for eight days straight.  So is he going on and giving credit?

Yeah. . . right.

Wednesday, June 8, 2022

Casualties of War. The Attu Islanders and their island.

Attu woman and child, 1941.  She'd never see another summer on her home island again. By Malcolm Greany - https://www.flickr.com/photos/12567713@N00/2667001144/sizes/o/in/photostream/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17118121


On June 7, 1942, the Imperial Japanese Army landed on Attu Island, ferried there, of course, by the Imperial Japanese Navy.

Attu is part of the Aluetians.  It's 344 square miles in size.  For comparison's sake, that's a little bigger than Molokai in the Hawaiian Islands, and a little smaller than Kauai.  

It's relatively large, in real terms, 35 miles by 20.

It has an Aleutian climate, with average temperatures below 60F in the summer and in the mid 20s in the depth of winter.  It's coldest temperature ever was -17F, in 1902, and the hottest temperature ever, 77F in 1925.


The island has been inhabited since antiquity, and it's estimated that prior to contact with Europeans, the island had a native population between 2,000 and 5,000 souls.  Archeologists believe that settlement came from the east, not the west, even though it's the closest of the Aleutians to Asia and very distant, today, from the nearest Alaskan settlement of any kind.

It's one of the "Near Islands", as its near Asia.

Attu, along with the other Near Islands, seems to have first had settlements about 3,000 years ago, surprisingly late if it's considered that the arriving populations had spread throughout North America far before that.

The first contact with  Europeans came from Russian fur hunters in 1745, when they actually went to Attu after being confronted by a large body of armed natives on the first island they attempted to land at.  The first Russian contact on Attu violent, withe Russians taking an old woman and a boy hostage, oddly keeping the boy as an interpreter, although it has to be presumed he spoke no Russian.

A few weeks after that, the Russians raided an Attu village and killed fifteen men, with the purpose of the raid to take Attu women as sex slaves.  The location has ever since born the name Massacre Bay.

In 1750, the Russians introduced Arctic Fox to the island.

The Russian presence caused the decline of the local fauna rapidly, a devastating event for the natives, and the Russians also introduced disease, playing out a story that is often associated with the European conquest of North America. By 1762 the population was estimated at about 100 natives, which would mean that the population decline had been unbelievably massive in just a twenty or so year span.

The decline in fortunes for the Russians on the island meant that it thereafter largely skipped the Russian colonization of the Aleutians, to the extent it could be called that, and it remained free of Russian economic control.  The Russians reappeared in the early 19th Century, and the Attu population remained very small.

Christianity was introduced at least as early as 1758, but a chapel was not built until 1825, with a Russian Orthodox Priest being assigned to it, along with other island churches in 1828.  He made his first visit to the island in 1831.  By 1860 the native population had rebounded to 227 plus an additional 21 individuals who were "Creole", i.e., of mixed heritage.  When Alaska was sold to the US in 1867, services to the island dropped off massively, and by 1880 the population had declined by half.  Nonetheless, visitors to the island in the early 20th Century, who were few, were impressed by how happy the residents were and how clean the two villages were.  In the 1920s the sod structures were replaced by the natives with wooden ones, with imported wood, which included building a wooden Russian Orthodox Church in the 1920s and a school, without a teacher, in the 1932.  The teacher first appeared in 1940.

In the 19th and 20th Centuries, and indeed before, the men worked as trappers part of the year and moved to the hinterlands to do that.  Again, in the 20th Century, visitors were uniformly impressed by how happy the people living on the island were. And why not? Free of the chaos of the outside world, living a natural life, and with a Christian world view, they were as close to living in a paradise on earth as any people could be.

And then the Japanese came on June 7, 1942.

The Japanese removed all of the Attuans and kept them on Hokkaido.  By the war's end, half of them had died.  The US retook the island itself in May 1943.

The survivors wished to return to their homes when the war ended, but the US government did not allow them, garrisoning the island instead for a long range navigation site.  Truly, the government really did not have an existential right to deprive the Attuans of their home, but it did so.

The U.S. Coast Guard left in 2010.

In 2018 the descendants of the dispossessed Attuans were allowed to visit Attu.

Thursday, February 17, 2022

Blog Mirror: Historic Roads - Alaska Department of Transportation

The other day we discussed the commencement of the AlCan Highway.  But what about highways in Alaska?

This fascinating booklet by the Alaska DOT addresses the history of just that:

Historic Roads - Alaska Department of Transportation

Sunday, February 13, 2022

Friday, February 13, 1942. Deciding to build the AlCan.

As we noted in our companion blog for this day, Today In Wyoming's History: February 13: 1942, it was a day of some momentous and long-lasting events.   

African American engineers working on the Alcan.  Note the very high boots.


1942  US and Canada agree to construct the Alcan Highway.  This is, of course, not directly a Wyoming event, but it is significant in that it represents the ongoing expansion of road transportation.  A highway of this type would not have even been conceivable just 20 year prior.  It also is a feature of the arrival of really practical 4x4 vehicles, all Army vehicles at that time, which were capable of off-road and road use for the first time. Such vehicles would become available to the public at the conclusion of World War Two, and would provide widespread, easy winter access to much of Wyoming for the very first time.

1942  All Japanese nationals employed by the Union Pacific Railroad were dismissed.

The AlCan is still with us, of course.  It was once one of my goals to drive it, and while that desire has waned over the years, I'd still like to.

The impetus for building the road was the fear that the Japanese would attack Alaska, which was accessible only by sea and air from the lower 48 states and which had no long roads connecting it in any fashion to the lower Canadian provinces.  If attacked, it was featured, it was not possible to supply the state.

Linking up the road as it was built in both directions.

Construction commenced on March 9, 1942 and was completed on October 28, 1942, an amazingly short amount of time, but then it was hardly a highway in the modern sense.  Being completed in the fall, as it was, use of the highway didn't start until 1943.

Alaska was incredibly remote at the time.  With a population of only 73,000, half its residents at the time were natives, many who had very little contact with European culture.  Prior European penetration into Alaska had come from Russians interested in furs, Canadians interested in furs, and then Americans interested in furs and gold.  Logging had commenced, and during the Great Depression an intentional effort had been made to resettle some displaced farmers to those regions of Alaska temperate enough to engage in crop agriculture.  Fishing was also an industry.  Oil was not, having not yet been discovered there.  It was not a conventional tourist destination.

In context, fears that the Japanese would land in Alaska were accordingly not as farfetched as they would seem to today, and likewise fears that they would land in Australia were not either.  Indeed, the Japanese did land within air striking distance of parts of Australia, and they did land in the Aleutians, albeit only as a diversion.

Fear of the Japanese had obviously also extended to the point where employers felt free to fire Japanese nationals in the country.

On the same day, the Germans completed the Channel Dash successfully, although both of their battleships had been damaged by mines.

The Battle of Palembang began on Sumatra and the Battle of Pasire Panjang began in the struggle for Singapore.

Friday, November 19, 2021

Saturday, November 19, 1921 Anticipating Thanksgiving

 


Given the giant post on agrarianism and homestead that goes up the same morning, this post is likely to be buried and little read.  Nonetheless. . .

Norman Rockwell was anticipating Thanksgiving, a holiday that often presents images relating to childhood, in his November 19 Country Gentleman illustration.

Collier's, oddly, didn't bother to contemplate the upcoming holiday at all.


On this day in 1921 the House of Representatives approved the Sheppard-Towner Act, which is generally, but inaccurately, regarded as the first instance of the United States government taking a role in what we might term welfare.  The act provided a guild to the instruction of hygiene of maternity and infancy care trough instruction through public health nurses, regulation and licensure of midwives, and it resulted in the creation of 3,000 child and maternal health care centers. The law was in effect for eight years.

Pilot Bert Acosta set a new world speed record of 197.8 mph, beating his earlier record set on November 3, and flying the same Curtiss CR-2 airplane.

These members of the Alaska Native Sisterhood met on this day in 1921.


The organization dates to 1912 and there's a companion one for men. They work for civil rights for native Alaskans.



Monday, May 17, 2021

May 18, 1921. Horses, Cars and Trains.

Genrl. Pershing & foxcatcher hunt team horseshow, 1921, 5/17/21

May 17


1921  Laramie's  Elmer Lovejoy patented a Trackage for Ceiling Type of Doors with Door-Openers (Patent No. 1,378,123). Attribution:  On This Day.


Susitna Bridge on the Alaska Railroad with mountains in background, Alaska, May 17, 1921


Thursday, April 15, 2021

April 15, 1921. Transportation and Loans

 

Horse transportation in Alaska, April 15, 1921.

On this day in 1921 the French Cabinet of Ministers voted to occupy the Ruhr in Germany if Germany did not make its 1B Mark reparations' payment by May 10.

President Harding met President Charles D. B. of Liberia, following that nations repayment of a $5,000,000 load from the United States.