(Continued from Page Two)
or Business Administration. Likewise, you may find that the man who
drives your car during the summer is an Instructor in Chemistry or
Civil Engineering at the same institution for the balance of the year.
Everybody works. There are no drones. And nobody ever asks con
cerning your birth, religion, politics or previous condition of servi
tude—that’s the most unpardonable sin of all. If you are on the
square, they’ll take you to their hearts; if not, they’ll drop you flat.
I failed to meet a man out of a job or .one seeking charity.
There are six separate and distinct mountain ranges in Alaska,
varying in length between 200 and 1000 miles. Eight of these peaks
are higher than Mount Whitney with its 14,502 feet, while more than
a score attain an altitude somewhere between that figure and 10,000
feet above sea-level. Chief among them all is mighty Mount Mc
Kinley with its towering majesty of 20,310 feet—Alaska’s greatest
attraction and rightly so. And—what is of even greater interest to
the traveler, it is the only one of our great National park attractions
which has not been reduced to the least common denominator of
drabness by the omnipresent motorist camper. Five days’ journey
from the Atlantic to the Pacific seaboard plus seven days’ steamer
trip from Seattle to Seward, plus two days’ railway journey on the Al
aska railroad will inevitably place a limit upon the number of visitors
to that marvelous shrine for years to come. Nevertheless, it must be
stated that they are increasing every year, and it will not be long
before the Alaska Road Commission will have its 85 miles of motor
road completed from the McKinley Park station practically to the
base of the mountain. And, when that time comes, no one need
waste any tears over never having gazed upon the Matterhorn or
watched the sunrise over the topmost tip of Everest from Tiger Hill,
a few miles out of the little town of Darjeoling. When Mount Mc
Kinley^s 18,000 feet above the table land upon which it rests is com
—• pared with the 14,000 foot rise from the plateau upon which Mount
Everest rests, it constitutes the most stupendous mass on the earth’s
surface. And it lies right at your doors. Yea, verily, brethren, “See
America First.”
Alaska s greatest and least-known romance, wmcn is more or less
•of a pratical nature, clusters about one of our great Captains of In
dustry—a man so modest and of so retiring a nature that I question
if his name, even, be known to many of my hearers. It was in 1898
that a young man by the name of Stephen Birch graduated from the
Columbia University School of Mines at the youthful age of 28 and
and started for Alaska on a voyage of discovery, with no other assets
than his Mining Engineer’s degree and a personality. With horses
and a couple of Indian guides, he journeyed from the little town of
Valdez on the southern coast through the wilderness to another little
town by the name of Eagle on the Yukon river, and thence back to
the coast by way of Dawson and the White Pass, having negotiated
a trip which at that time had been made by but few white men. It
was the year of the great Klondike gold rush but Birch was not
particularly interested in that hectic pursuit of the placer product.
He had a vision of greater accomplishments. And believing that Al
aska held the key to his dreams, he returned the following year and
continued his investigations. While on his way out in the latter part
of 1900, he learned of the rich copper strike in the Copper River Val
ley, the fundamental character of which was sufficiently apparent
to justify him in buying up the claims of seven men at an average
figure of $25,000 cash. As was so frequently the case in those law
less days, however, it turned out that the prospectors in whose names
these claims had been filed had been grubstaked by a certain devel
opment company who quickly seized the opportunity for -a lawsuit in
the belief that Birch’s title could be proven invalid. As many of you
doubtless know, suits of this character are a common occurrence both
in the mining and the oil fields and are generally waged by a pow
erful clicque with unlimited3 means, with the real intent of tiring out
The claim-holder and at least forcing him to a compromise. But they
didn’t know Birch.
me uctac was. aigueu m me courts 101 rour years, during wnicri
period not a stroke of work was done in the development of the mine.
Meanwhile various mining engineers arrived on the spot from differ
ent parts of the country, all of whom returned to their principals
with adverse reports. They declared that the ore, though very rich,
was principally of surface formation and would not be found at
depths that would- justify, the immense outlay necessary to develop
ment. Birch continued to “saw wood.” After four years of dreary
waiting and dogged fighting, the decision of the court was finally
handed down in Birch’s favor. With his decision in his pocket, so
to speak, Birch posted off to New York and induced his backers to
put up the modest sum of $400,000 for development of the mine, not
withstanding the adverse reports of the various mining engineers al
ready mentioned—and then began the real development work which
consumed another four years and which resulted in a complete justi
eation of the young man’s estimate of the value of the property, and
an ignominious routing of all the mining experts who had so con
sistently stuck to their opposition. Meanwhile the Copper River and
Northwestern Railway had been started, the tremendous obstacles td
which have been so graphically set forth by Rex Beach in his thrill- '
ing novel “The Iron Trai™. P ’~oked for awhile as if the enterprise
might have to be abandoned owi:\g to the frightful difficulties of suc
cessfully sinking bridge caissons in a glacier-fed river, with all the
hazards of the breaking up of the ice in the Spring. Stephen Birch
knew that the richest copper mines in the world would be practically
valueless without the necessary means of transportation from the
mines to the seaboard, and so he made another trip to New York in
1906,.at which time he convinced the Guggenheims that the Copper
River Railway should be completed at all costs. Incidentally, he was
instrumental in organizing the Kennecott Copper Corporation, in
v hich the Guggenheim and Morgan interests became the principal
stockholders, and of w'hich Stephen Birch, at the age of 36, was made
the president, which office he continues to hold to this day.
Romance, indeed! The Copper River Railway was completed, the
formation of the Alaska Steamship Co. followed it and the last stages
of the development of what has proved to be the richest known cop
per mines in the world were carried to a successful conclusion. To
day the Kennecott Copper mines are shipping from Alaska between
six and seven millions pounds of copper ore every month having a
commercial value of $8,000,000 annually, the mining of which alone
gives employment to over 1,000 men. Romance? Adventure? Ask
Stephen Birch. Someone has described a genius as a man who can
see just far enough ahead not to get cold feet. But for the indomit
able courage and the vision which inspired this youngster who, at
the age of 36, ten years after his graduation from college, became
president of the greatest copper corporation in the world, there would
have been no Kennecott Copper Corporation, no Copper River Rail
'way, no Alaska Steamship Company, no town of Cordova, no wild
eyed enthusiast like me sounding the praises of a man I have never
seen and probably never will. Yea, verily—gentlemen:
A little romance in the heart,
A little horse-sense in the head,
A little iron in the purpose:
These three things will keep a man going in the world for as long
as it is decent for him to stay. It must have been some such man
as Stephen Birch whom Kipling had in mind when he gave to the
world that matchless bit of verse, “The Explorer”:
“Week by week I pried and sampled—
Week by week my findings grew.
Saul, he went to look for donkeys
And, by God, he found a kingdom !
But—by God, who sent His Whisper
I had struck the worth of two.
Romance? Adventure? I’ll bet a $10-bill that in all the Croesus-like
success that has followed his footsteps, Stephen Birch never got the
thrill that crinkled his backbone on the day he convinced himself of
the tremendous deposits of the Kennecott Mine and found the titles
to the seven claims which controlled it within his grasp. It’s a dusty
sort of romance that follows on the heels of mere money-making.
Though the romance of Alaskan gold strikes, stampedes, etc., is
; »one forever, along with the dance hall and the saloon, it must not
; ke thought that her mineral resources are exhausted. Far, very far
from it. It’s well known tin deposits are without equal throughout
the North American continent. Placer gold is still present in great
quantities and is being mined by mammoth dredges, the small unit
profit of which is overcome by tremendous volume. Some of these
dredges, which cost $1,000,000 to construct, will handle as high as
10,000 cubic yards of gold-bearing dirt daily. Great development com
panies with limitless capital will work over all the old diggings de
serted by the old-time miner, in fact, operations have been going on
for over a year. As you doubtless know, practically all the ground
I in Alaska is frozen from about three feet below the surface down to
; bed-rock, anywhere from 10 to 20 feet. The melting- of this frozen
earth is accomplished by running cold water through pipes driven
into the ice, the steady flow of which does greater work than was
formerly done by the more expensive method of steam—after which
the dredger is put to work. It’s the new era of efficiency which has
driven gold-mining romance into the background.
It may also surprise you to know that there are over 12,000 square
mi^es of coal-bearing lands in Alaska which, together with a variety
of other products of old Mother Earth, are awaiting the arrival of
capital. With the salmon fishing industry it is slightly different. Here
we have an investment approximating $60,000,000, involving the em
oloyment of 25,000 to 30,000 persons annually. Add the seal fisheries
nnd the fox farms and another million of dollars takes its place
on the credit side of the ledger every year. ' '
After all is said and done, however, Alaska’s greatest asset is
beauty. Her amazing mountain peaks, her tremendous canyons and
gorges, her limitless glaciers which are the most magnificent in the
worltj from the standpoint of accessibility and size, one of which—
the Malaspina—covers an area of 15,000 square miles—the largest one
in the world, in fact—including the Columbia, the Taku, the Muir
and the Miles and Childs, all of which are visited annually by thou
sands of travellers. That distance which lends enchantment also
draws the veil across so many marvels of which we have little or no
knowlledlge. Few of us, I imagine, appreciate that the mighty Yukon
river which has its rise in the Yukon Territory, is navigable for big
river steamers 2200 miles from its mouth in the Bering Sea and dis
charges almost as much water as the Mississippi. In fact, one of the
most ideal trips through this wondrous land is to enter it from Skag
way, at the- head of navigation in the Inside Passage, journey over- j
’land to White Pass and Dawson, thence down the Yukon to Fair- i
banks and south over the famed Alaska railroad, which carries the
traveler into McKinley Park, and finally to the beautifully situated
town of Seward on Resurrection bay, making a detour at Valdez for j
a motor journey through Keystone Canyon, one of the most magni- \
ficent on the North American continent—thence into the Copper
River Valley, past the Miles and the Childs glaciers and to the little
town of Cordova where you may rejoin your steamer. Sounds like a
guide book and I accept the soft impeachment, for I did it with great
joy last year and am going to do it again this summer.
From the standpoint of the sportsman, I have reserved the best j
of the wine for the last of the feast. In respect to the wild game, !
Alaska is the “last frontier.” The monster Kodiak or Alaska brown I
bear which attains a weight of 1500 pounds and a length of 12 feet, i
is the largest carnivorous animal on the face of the earth. Despite j
his tremendous weight and size, he is an active and as quick as a !
cat and when wounded a terrible antagonist. He will carry as much j
lead as an elephant and has been known to run 250 yards with a
couple of bullets through his heart, before dropping dead. In that
last few moments he has taken more than one unfortunate hunter
a'long with him to his last account. No wise hunter, no matter how
expert a rifle shot he may be, ever tackles one of these gentlemen !
of the Alaska wilderness alone. There have been instances of the I
great “Brownie” making unprovoked attacks on man but they are j
(Continued on Page Four)
m DUKE MIGUEL
OF RUSSIA PASSES:
ILL HEALTH FOD TEAR
LONDON, April 26, (/P)—Grand
Duke Michael of Russia, a cousin
to the late Czar, died this morning
The Duke had suffered from an
attack of influenza last winter
which left him weak. The family
gave up hope that he would live
some days ago.
For years the Duke was an im
portant figure in London society
altho his fortune was badly de
pleted by the revolution. But he
was still able to maintain a Lon
don residence and entertain lav
ishly.
» - -. • » ■
J. W. Gucker, well known Alaska
commercial traveler, was among
today’s arrivals from the south.
At Schallerer’s Alaska Shop
hear the Brunswick and Columbia
records Avalon Town, Glad Rag
Doll and Wedding of the Painted
Doll.
Seattle ice cream and fresh
candies at Sylvia’s.
HESSON PIPES WON’T LEAK,
WON’T DRIP, WON’T SMELL,
7ANNOT GET STRONG. YOU CAN
MOKE IT EVERYDAY—YET IT
STAYS CLEAN ALWAYS S4.00 AND
7.50. Schallerer’s Alaska Snop.
• Hear •
these new
Victor
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