Alaska’s Trade Value
(t'ontinued from Pas*
rSeal Oil . Gl.
.Reindeer Hides .Lb
Reindeer Offal . Lb
Reindeer Meal .Tn
Sheep Hides .Lb
Wool .Lb
Ivory .Lb.
Hairseal Skins .No
Whale Meal .Tn.
Whale Fertilizer .Tn.
Whale Tail .Lb.
Whale Bone .Lb,
Paintings .No.
Platinum .Oz.
TOTAL .
Five)
1,200
. 205,744
72,026
42
1,783
69.557
8,063
8*5
233
841
67,852
14.338
37
1,166
$ 600
35,205
7,434
4,711
385
16,520
5,083
1,398
6,302
30,982
863
6,214
9,246
49,554
$174,4^7
To arrive at the total value of Alaska products
shipped out of the Territory, the following products
shipped to foreign countries should be added to the
corresponding items headed “Merchandise and Gold
and Silver Shipped from Alaska to the United States.”
ALASKA MERCHANDISE SHIPPED TO FOREIGN
COUNTRIES
Articles
Canned Salmon .
.Salted Salmon .
-Salted Codfish ...
Salted Herring .
Fresh Salmon .
Other Fresh Fish .
Pickled Salmon ..
Other Pickled Fish .
•Other Fish and Fish Products
Canned Shellfish .
TOTAL FISH AND FISH
PRODUCTS .
Spruce Boards .
Douglas Fir Lumber .
Hemlock Boards .
Other Sawed Lumber ......
Shingles .
Undressed Fox Furs .
Undressed Muskrat Furs
Live Animals (mink, etc.)
Fresh Milk and Cream
Unit Quantity Value
..Lb.
Lb.
Lb.
Lb.
Lb.
Lb.
Bl.
Bl.
Lb.
Lb.
550
9.282
830
14,917
642,819
579,479
28
3
318
1.329
MFt. 83
M Ft. 55
M Ft. 153
B. Ft. 22.991
M Ft.
No!
.No.
15
4
1.214
Gl.
641
100
1.032
106
353
54,014
47.098
535
74
165
523
104,000
2,053
1,275
3,203
1,412
52
300
841
150
516
I I
!
!
I
TOTAL
$113,802
Alaska lias Temperate Climate
Alaska is not, as some people imagine, a
frozen, isolated, foreign field. The Territory has
!
as many varieties of climates, as can be found In the
Eastern and Middle States, controlled largely by the
principle mountain ranges, and by the warm Japan j
Current, which has the same effect on the climate
of Alaska as the Gulf Stream has on the climate
of Great Britain, Ireland and Norway.
It is not passible to judge the climate of a
country by looking at a map to see how far it is
north of the equator. When many people in the
Lnited States, who are more or less acquainted with
the inhospitable coast of Labrador, find on a map
that the bulk of Alaska lies north of Labrador, they
appear to conclude that the conditions of life must
be infinitely worse in Alaska, and that stories and
slap-stick motion pictures of its ice and snow must
be true; yet many interior towns and villages of
Alaska with their mines, electric lights, farms and
all the comforts of modern life, are situated more
than fifteen hundred miles north of New York, and j
three hundred miles north of the southern tip of
Greenland at Cape Farewell!
The permanent snow and ice fields of Alaska are j
situated on the mountain slopes, as they are in the
Swiss Alps, and cover a very small percentage of
the total area of the Territory. A large portion of
AJaska has a temperate climate.
Coastal Ports Always Open
i
Alaska is not isolated from continental United
States any more than the State of California or j
3Maine. In 1930, 3,654 vessels cleared from the
United States and foreign ports for Alaska and from
Alaska for the United States and foreign fields,
3,345, American steamship lines, with headquarters '
at Seattle, Washington, operate between the United
States and Alaska ports, alternating daily on reg
ular schedule, year in and year out.
The Pacific Steamship Company operates seven
vessels in southeastern and western Alaska. The
Northland Transportation Company serves the south
eastern trade with three vessels. The Alaska Steam
ship Company, largest operator, with sixteen freight
and passenger liners in the Alaska service, has its
northern terminus at Seward, Alaska, gateway to
the vast interior. No territory in the world is better j
j served by transportation than Alaska.
IIa}> id (1o m m u a icat io n
Alaska is not cut off from communication with
the rest of the world. Cables, telegraph wires, wire
less stations and radios render daily service through
out Alaska. The Seward Daily. Gateway and the
Seward Weekly Gateway spreads the news simultan
eously with the papers in the large cities of the
United States. All parts of the Territory have reg
ular mail service day after day throughout the year
and nearly all sections of Alaska are served, winter •
and summer, by large, costly airplanes. j
Not a Foreign Land
't
Contrary to the provisional opinion of some
shippers, Alaska is not a foreign field. Purchased
from Russia by the United States in 1867 for $7,200,
000. it is a highly organized American territory with
a Legislature consisting of a Senate and a House of
Representatives. The Governor is appointed by the
President. No federal duty, tariff or tax is as
sessed upon merchandise imported from or exported
to the United States.
I
Seward, Alaska
SEWARD is located on Resurrection Bay, a mag
nificent deep-water harbor on the south coast of
the Kenai peninsula, Third Judicial Division. Popu
lation 832, official. It is the coast terminal of the
Alaska Railroad, 470 miles in length. It is the
outlet for the gold quartz and placer mines of the
Kenai mining district. It is the headquarters for
the U. S. Signal Corps; the terminal for three
oceanic steamship lines and three airplane trans
portation companies; the gateway to the vast in
terior and far flung Aleutian and Pribilof Islands
£.nd Bering Sea; the starting point to Nuka Bay
gold mines; it is the headquarters of the Standard
Oil Company and main plant; the San Juan Fishing I
and Packing Company and its cold storage plant;
the Seward Fisheries, Inc., and packing plant; the j
Jesse Lee Children’s Home; outfitting point for big
game hunters and entrance to Alaska’s most famous
hunting and trapping grounds and the famous Ko- j
diak brown bear district; it is the starting point to
the world famous Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes;
Aniakchak Crater and the Valley of the Moon.
Seward is the center of fur, gold, salmon, whaling,
sheep and cattle, farms and fur farms.
The Conquest of Alaska Fur
i j
From the dawn of Alaska history to the present j ;
day a vast wealth in fur pelts continues to flow in
an endless stream, year after year from the wild
reaches of the Territory through frontier towns and j !
trading posts to Seward, United States furriers and
world markets.
I
I
i
!
i
I
i
I
In the year 1728 the specter of fur lured Vitus
Behring, a Danish captain-mariner in the service of
the Old Imperial Russian Government, to the dis
covery and naming of St. Lawrence Island and the j
t
realm of Alaska. His auspicious reports to the Rus- i
sian Czar at St. Petersburg of “the great land” lying 1 j
east of Siberia teeming with valuable fur bearing
animals fired the imagination of the Russian ruler !
and his court and in 1730 the Russians, Michail j
Gvozdef and Ivan Gedorof, set sail from Siberia and
reached the coast of Alaska near Cape Prince of
Wales forming the basis of Russia's claim to owner
ship of northwestern America. Glowing tales of
wealth in furs were reported to the Czar from this
expedition, authenticating the previous reports of
Vitus Behring and the mighty armed hand of Rus
sia stretched over the roof of the world to a cam
paign of conquest.
Nature Goes Down in Crushing Defeat
Came the Russians, Alexei Chirikof, Grigor Ivan
ovich Shelikof, Alexander Baranof, Otto von Kotze- I
hue, Etholen, Vassilaief, Kolomin, Zaikof, the Creoi j
Anderi Glazanof and other equally famous Russian
fur hunters and traders unrestrained in their fran- I
tic effort to loot Nature’s great northern archive.
Sea ports in Alaska were founded, bringing forth
towns and villages. Forts were built and ships of
war and commerce were constructed in the new
land. Fur trading posts were established throughout
the Territory as far south and west as California.
Thousands upon thousands of Alaska sea otter
j pelts were sent on to Petersburg, Moscow and world
I markets.- Untold shipments of Alaska seal, beaver,
j mink, land otter, weasel, lynx and wolverine is
sued forth from this vast northern domain to Russia
and the world and financial rewards amounted to
I
many millions of dollars annually.
Pain and Death, the Price of Fur
During that colorful period greed for Alaska furs
knew no bounds. In their covetous demand for pelts,
hunters and traders often treated the native Indians
j with extreme cruelty. Violence, threats and com
pulsion followed by one outrage after another re
sulted In numerous reprisals with much shedding of
Russian and Indian blood. Scurvy, disease, massa
cre and death pursued In the wake of those early
traders but the endless stream of fur flowed ever
onward to the enrichment of the Russian coffers.
Fur Only Object of Conqueror
Summing up the part which fur played in the
conquest, exploration and colonization of Alaska, the
historian Bancroft chronicled: “Call it science or
patriotism, or progress, there is this to be said
about the first Russian discoveries in America—little
would have been heard of them for some time to
come, if ever, had it not been for the beautiful furs
brought back from Bering Island and elsewhere.
Siberia was still sufficient to satisfy the Czar for
purposes of expatriation, and the Russians were not
i such zealots as to undertake conquest for the sake
! of conversion, and to make religion a cloak for their
atrocities; hence, but for these costly skins, each of
which proclaimed in loudest strains the glories of
Alaska, the Great Land might long have rested, un
t disturbed.”
Russia and Great Britain Clash
In the subsequent struggle to share in the pelf
followed the Englishmen, James Cook and George
Vancouver, and in 1778, established Great Britain's
claim to a portion of the rich domain.
Contesting Russia's supremacy In northwestern
America and her encroachments upon the rights of
her western possessions came the Spanish fighters.
Ensign Juan Perez, Lieutenants Juan Francisco de
Bodega y Quadra, Bruno Hecata, Ignacio Areteaga,
Salvador Fidalgo, Estevan Martiney, Gonzales Haro
and the Italian navigator Alezandro Malaspina in
the service of Spain.
The riches of Alaska fur drew into its vortex the
' French trader La Perouse, and into the whirlpool of
1 frenzied madness the intrepid American Captain Roys,
commander of the whaler Superior, who, in 1848,
ventured through Behring Strait into the unknown
and far-flung Arctic, the first commercial American
! vessel to pass that point preceding the Civil War.
Purchase of Alaska from Bussia
The fierce rivalry for commercial supremacy of
fur barter in Alaska intensified and nearly led to
open conflict between England and Russia. Finan
cially crippled by the Crimean War and fearing that
Great Britain would seize Alaska, the Russian ruler
opened negotiations for the sale of Russian Amer
ica to the United States and on March 30, 1867, the
; great fur domain of Alaska passed forever from
Russian sovereignty to American ownership and
control for the sum of $7,200,000 or twro cents an
acre.
World's Last Fur Domain
The year 1931 marks the two hundred and third
anniversary of Alaska’s fur industry. From generation
to generation it has grown steadily and more stable.
Alaska fur is recognized the world over for its
beauty—of an uncommon kind—and a quality that
makes of it a pelt very much in demand. Alaska
is the world’s primal source of beautiful fur and the
greatest wild life field remaining on the globe today.
The old time picturesque Alaska trapper, with
his colorful accouterments, his parka, mukluks, rifle,
snowshoes, dog-team, his traps, log cabin, canoe and
cache is still in the picture of the Golden North.
Fur Production Greater Than Ever
The trapping of mink, martin, beaver, land otter,
red and white fox, lynx, weasel, black bear, wolf,
coyote, wolverine and muskrat still goes on. These
native fur bearers frequenting all portions of Alas
ka afford you an endless source of revenue.
Fur farming has become another extremely pro
fitable source of revenue to the trade. The breeding
and rearing of silver and cross fox, mink, martin
and muskrat is rapidly growing with rich rewards
in the offing.
The output of Alaska fur from 1906 to 1930
amounts to $49,539,009.00!
During 1930 the fur production of Alaska totaled
465,328 pelts valued at $3,145,528.00!