Continued from 'page one.
To get the full force and effect of such methods, we;
need only go back 250 years or so to the early colonial
days in America and read from English magazines of (
the Seventeenth century the numerous contributions by,
officer’s of the British Army and others returning to En-j
gland from the Colonies about the inhabitable wastes of j
New England and the regions now embraced in New York
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Illinois, and
Minnesota. Seeing no placer gold or other precious met-)
als, but overlooking the vast areas of agricultural lands
and of virgin forests, with not a word about the incom
parable deposits of coal many of these returned officers
and tourists concluded that the new continent from Mass
achusetts to the Mississippi river was greatly overrated.
The rigors of its winter climate, they generally agreed,
would render it unsuitable as the habitation of any con
siderable population.
New England and other eastern magazines and news
papers in their turn later teemed with contributions about
the desert wastes and the lack of resources of all the west- j
era territories, which now are populous and prosperous!
states.
Even the great Daniel Webster never comprehended;
the wealth of natural resources contained in the long dis
puted Oregon country, nor grasped its future importance
to the United States, now comprising the states of Oregon
Washington, and Idaho. And Senator Benton of Missouri
as late as 1824 in the United States Senate proposed and
advocated that the western boundary of the United States
should be established definitely and forever at the sum
mit of the Rocky mountains.
But fortunately for the continental proportions;
and the world-wide power and influence of the United
States of today, statesmen of far-seeing vision were at the!
wheel in the pilot house at all critical periods of our Nat
ional growth and expansion.
William H. Seward, our Secretary of State in 1867,
who negotiated the purchase of Alaska from the govern-:
ment of Russia; Senator Sumner of Massachusetts, who
led the contest in the Senate for the ratification of the
Alaska treaty of purchase, and Representative Banks of
Massachusettes, former governor of Massachusetts, for
mer Speaker of the National House of Representative,!
who vigorously advocated the hard fought appropriation
of $7,200,000 to pay the purchase price for Alaska, were
statesmen of the first rank, with minds that perceived
and understood the importance and the possibilities of
Alaska to the future needs of the United States. These
three more than all others together deserve the credit for
taking Alaska into our National domains at an oppor
tune and fortunate hour, albeit under showers of columny
at that time.
In the light of these historic truths, mindful of the
criticism that each successive new part of our unfolding
country has been compelled to overcome and disarm, let
us examine the route of and the resources in the fields
tributary to the Alaska Railroad, which General Richard
son omitted to mention, and we shall have a picture of
another color, with a wide variety of tints and settings, j
First, take Seward and Resurrection bay, the south- i
em terminus, which General Richardson does not approve
averring that Portage bay “should be looked into” as a
preferable terminus.
Resurrection bay is the only harbor on the whole
stretch of Alaska’s southern coast line which joins direct
ly with the open sea through the Gibraltar like Harding
Gateway without the danger of approach through tor
tuous inland channels, and at the same time connects
with the interior by the lowest of mountain passes and
the lowest altitudes of any possible route.
It has the unique distinction of being the only harbor!
on the entire coast of Alaska, south, west, or north, that
is 100 percent free from any mishap of any kind to any
vessel entering or departing in the 25 years since it be- j
came a regular port of call. It is the only harbor on the en-!
tire southern coast of Alaska having room for a terminal
city of any size, with a densely timbered valley five miles
wide at its head.
Its average depth of water is about 600 feet, which
lessens gradually to the shores. The surrounding timbered
mountains give it an aspect of secure shelter and of pic
turesque fascination unlike any other in America.
After President Harding had returned from Fair
banks on the Alaska Railroad and was ready to leave for
the States, he gave instructions for his transport to re
main over one extra day at Seward, in order, as he ex
pressed it, that he and his official party might breath
the bracing air and exhilarate in the splendors of its
scenery and climate. At the same time he issued a state
ment for publication, which he repeated after his return
to the States, saying:
“Resurrection bay is the most beautiful gem I have
seen in Alaska or in any other part of the world in all my
travels.”
The harbor of Resurrection bay was selected and de
signated by a Naval Commission in 1914 as a future Naval
base for the southern coast of Alaska, and to that end the
Secretary of the Navy set aside and had created by Presi
dential proclamation a site of 3300 acres as a Naval Re
serve two miles south of Seward.
Every Government commission that has examined
Resurrection bay, as also General Franklin Bell when
Chief of Staff of the United States Army, has given it un
qualified praise as one of the world’s few ideal harbors,
always open and sheltered every hour of every day in the
year, and always ice free. General Bell visited it on a
trip of inspection, and promptly established a 5000 acre,
reserve for future military purposes at its entrance.
Portage bay, on the contrary, has been ‘‘looked into’’
by private railroad companies and by Government com
missions at different times during the last 25 years, every
one of which turned it down decisively and unanimously
as physically unfit and imposible for railroad terminals or
for Naval uses of any kind. It is blocked by floating ice
pratically or wholly for five months of every year, is shut
off from the interior by a high range of mountains, is
studded with numerous pinnacles of sunken rocks, as
shown by all hydrographic charts, and is storm swept andj
fog bound, so that vessels plying to and from it in the
winter months would pay the highest marine risks, 26 per ;
cent., contrasted with the lowest, 2 per cent., for Resur
rection bay.
It is a noteworthy fact that every enemy of the Alas
ka Railroad project has shown his colors from the beginn
ing by favoring Portage bay as its ocean terminus, with
the perfectly obvious purpose of fastening upon it the ri
dicule and discredit of an impossible harbor and center of
operation.
General Kichardson refers to the heavy grades1
from Seward through the Kenai peninsula . The highestj
elevation through the Kenai peninsula is exactly 1065 feet,
and the maximum grade is 2.2 per cent, compensated, and
that only for a total distance of nine miles in three sepa
rate stretches. That is the standard maximum grade of
every transcontinental railroad, and all of them cross ele
vations exceeding 5000 feet, some as much as 10,000 feet.
Of th remaining 54 miles through the Switzerland of the
Kenai peninsula, everv mile is water grade on the wide
floors of timbered valleys. I
But even the small amount of maximum 2.2 grades
through the Kenai peninsula can be reduced to 1.5 at light
cost, and the distance shortened 18 miles, by the building
of a cut-off through Moose Pass, leaving the present main
line at Mile 29, north of Seward, and uniting with it again
on Turnagain Arm opposite Sunrise. The rapid filling up
of Turnagain Arm now renders it crossable by a railroad
fill and bridge at Sunrise. That cut-off will eliminate
every mile of 2.2 grade, all trouble from snow in the “loop
district” between Miles 48 and 52, every foot of snow
sheds, besides traversing a new and extensive mineral
zone in the Moose Pass country to furnish profitable ton
nage. j
i As to resources along the route of the Alaska Rail
road, they have been examined and reported by different
agencies of the government for the last 25 years, and have
been demonstrated by many hundred of farmers, garden
ers, and miners, in all the mountains and valleys between
Seward and Fairbanks.
The Susitna valley, which the Alaska Railroad trav-;
erses, is 150 miles long by 25 to 75 miles wide, with low al
titudes of 100 to 500 feet above the sea. The valleys of the
Kenai peninsula, including the plateau of 30 miles by 100
miles on its western side along Cook Inlet, aggregate half
the area of the Susitna valley, all tributary to the Alaska
Railroad.
The agricultural department through its agents on
government experiment farms in Alaska estimates the
total areas of all these valleys together, in the Susitna and
the Kenai regions at 5,000,000 acres, of which nine-tenths
is covered with birch, spruce and poplar trees of fine
quality, and three-quarter of which is agricultural and
grazing lands equal in productive capacity to the agri
cultural lands of our northern states.
Many thousands of tourists from all parts of the
United States have been there and have seen the luxur
ance of the growth of red top and blue stem grasses,
shoulder high, and forests as dense and thick as the for
ests of the tropics, covering many hundreds of thousands
of acres, at intervals, all the way from Seward to Fair
banks. They have seen hundreds of gardens and many j
fields of growing and ripened grain, as luxuriant and pro
lific as any in Iowa or Illinois.
The Seward Daily Gateway of Seward, Alaska, pub
lished an editorial in its issue of August 20, 1927, outlin- j
ing and emphasizing these conditions. It presents agricul
tural possibilities n central Alaska from demonstrated
facts over a long perod of years so concisely and accur
ately that it is worthy of reproduction here as a timely
summing up of first hand evidence from Alaska. Thatj
editorial says:
Farming and gardening in the .Susitna valley and in the numerous val
Continued on Page Four.)
4
FORCED HILT. KALES
NOGALES, Ariz., May 2. Tie
“off again, on again” South An/erJcaau
flight of Jimmy* Angel, Fresno airman,
was taken an enforced rest with pros
pects that would be one or several
days before the projected 25,000 mile
trip is resumed.
Angel was reported in a dispatch to
the Herald here, to be suffering from
malaria and in a railroad hospital afc «
Guaymas.
The Anchorage Air Transport, ac- f
cording to present plans, intend to
station a plane in Seward through
out the summer season, it is reported.
NOTICE
Bids will be received at the City
Clerk’s office for auditing the city ^
books, the clerk,s, Lreas’i i;r and ec
«•*; board, up untill 5 A. rn. May 5.
J. P. Hannon, Municipal Oleii
PHONOGRAPHS FOR REN?.
SCHALLERER’8 ALASKA SHOP.
GENUINE GILLETTE 8AFTY RAZ
ORS. $1.00. SCHALLERER'S ALAS
KA SHOP.
Motorship
Discoverer
For Hire or Charter
Leaves Seward for Nuka Bay
Portlock, lliamna, Seldovia, and
Ninilchik, Kusiloff, Kenai and
Anchorage, on the 5th and 20th
of each month.
Leaving Seward for Nuka Bay,
0th and 20th; Portlock 6th and
21st; lliamna 6th and 21st;
Seldovia 7th and 22nd; Ninll.
ehik 8th and 23rd; Kusiloff 8th
and 23rd; Kenai 8th and 23rd;
Anchorage 9th and 24th.
Leaving Anchorage for Kenai
12th and 27th; Kusiloff 12th
and 27th; Ninilchik 12th and
27th; Seldovia 13th and 28th;
lliamna 13th and 28th; Port,
lock 13th and 28th; Nuka Bay
14th and 28th; Seward 14th
and 29th.
Comfortable accommoda
tions for Twenty
For further Information addrest
CAPT. HEINIE BERGER,
Seward. Alaska
NEW ID SECOND-HID
CMS FOR SALE
at
OGLE’S GARAGE
Oils and Gasoline, General
Repairs
Storage
Pete Ogle, Prop. Phone Madison 06
THE ALASK1 IAILRDAO
Trains Leave
7:30 a.m. Monday and Thursday;
Trains Arrive—
7:00 p.m. Wednesday and Satur
day.