This edition is published by Papamoa Press – www.pp-publishing.com To join our mailing list for new titles or for issues with our books – [email protected] Or on Facebook Text originally published in 1957 under the same title. © Papamoa Press 2017, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder. 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