SEPT 25 - 28 PART 4: THE LIFE OF LARS MATT OLSON

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL

100 YEARS LATER

by Doug Capra © 2018-19

Part 4: Lars Matt Olson

Sept. 25-28, 2019

ABOVE – Cape Nome, Alaska, 1900. Wikipedia photo.

BELOW – Nome, Alaska, circa 1905-8. Wikipedia photo.

OLSON OF THE DEEP EXPERIENCE

NOME, ALASKA -- 1899

PART 4

And so Olson’s story continues. A story of his life would really be – as an old pioneer in Seward told me – a history of Alaska. Because Olson has never succeeded he has been everywhere and tried everything. I have not done him justice in my abridgment of his Nome story. His recollections are so intimate. He remembers the words spoken in every situation and never, no matter how much and adventure centers around himself, does he depart from what he tells of himself from his character as I know him.

Rockwell Kent in Wilderness, Monday, December 9, 1918.

Yesterday was Olson’s day for celebrating and many times we drank to the New Year together. But I would work, to his disgust. Still he understands pretty well the strange madness that possesses me, and is not at all unsympathetic. I explain to him one day the difference between working to suit yourself and working to suit other people. He’d defy the world at any time he chose no matter how poor his fortunes.

         Rockwell Kent in Wilderness, Chapter IX. New Year

BELOW -- Olson on Fox Island with one of his goats. Photo from a Kent fa

After that first trip to the Fortymile area with Tom Boswell back in 1887, followed by his San Francisco stay, Olson returned to Idaho at some point. A saloon keeper friend invited him in for a drink. Sit down, Olson, he said, and tell us about Alaska from the beginning to end. After Olson told his story, the saloon keeper said, Olson, that would be the greatest book in the world – even if it was only lies. Kent probably laughed in agreement. He wrote: I believe he can give one material for a thrilling book of adventure…and I believe no record of pioneering or adventure could surpass it. He’s a deep philosopher and by his critical observations gives his discourse a fine dignity.

Olson probably traveled back and forth between Alaska and San Francisco through the late 1880’s and 1890’s, with stays in Idaho and Wyoming. He may have been back at Fortymile about 1896 when news of the Bonanza Creek strike in the Klondike reached him. Perhaps he headed there; we don’t know. In Sept. 1898 the “Three Lucky Swedes” (one a Norwegian) struck gold along Anvil Creek on the Seward Peninsula and founded the Nome Mining District.

Kent has Olson tell this story on Dec. 9, 1918 in all editions of Wilderness. By the time Olson arrived at Cape Nome, the population had grown to 10,000. A year later it had doubled as the town built up its infrastructure. Soon these gold seekers had other options. In 1902 an Italian prospector, Felice Pedroni (Felix Pedro), discovered gold in the Tanana Valley resulting in the founding of Fairbanks in 1903. Some from Nome and the Klondike trekked to Alaska’s interior. Professional prospectors were always suspicious of sudden strikes, but it was worth getting to those locations early and staking some ground. At best, they could make a fortune either from the gold or by selling their investment to some late stampeder or to a mining company. By this time, Fortymile and Circle had emptied out. Some arrived in Nome from the Klondike, from Hope and Sunrise along Cook Inlet, or from the Outside. I went down {to Nome} and arrived there in the Fall, a little more than a year after the strike. By that time there was quite a number there, Olson told Kent.

ABOVE – Olson in the 1900 Nome U.S. Census. He is listed as the third name from the top. Ancestry.com

BELOW – Map of the Nome area showing Anvil Creek. Wikipedia photo.

There are many good books about the Nome Gold Rush. The event has been well researched. You’ll hear stories about the original discovery, Olson tells Kent, and then goes on to narrate his version: There was a tailor shanghaied in San Francisco who ended up on a whaler that he deserted on the north coast of Alaska. He made his way to an Alaska Native village on the Seward Peninsula near where Nome is today. All the men were gone so a woman named English Mary took him in. She had heard about all the prospecting along the Yukon and wondered whether he was a miner. Yes, the man lied, though he had never mined in his life. You come with me, she told him. The creek she took him to had shining nuggets lying thick upon the bottom. Knowing nothing about gold or mining, the tailor left the village for St. Michael. He told his story to a missionary and a young man who was with a party of prospectors. The tailor, the missionary and the young prospector found a boat and headed to Nome.

Like many storytellers, Olson paused and reminded Kent that though this version might differ from what history has recorded, he knew the truth – for he had seen the boat they took to Nome. They located the gold-laden creek but weren’t sure of its value, so they returned to St. Michael to get a member of the party who was an expert to bring back to Nome. Once they learned of the strike’s value, they staked their claims and got to work. Word of gold strikes spread quickly. When the Olson arrived, he bought a lot of soggy tundra at the infant town’s northwest block. A tent and some wood came with his purchase. Coming home one day from prospecting, he found both the tent and the wood had been stolen. For $30 he bought a new tent and lumber for a frame at 50 cents a foot. By this time prospectors were flooding into Nome and at some mines, and especially on the beach, Olson claimed, gold was coming out at $5000 an hour. It was so heavy in the sand, he told Kent, you couldn’t handle a pan-full.

ABOVE – Routes to Nome. The Nome Gold Rush was easier to access than the Klondike, especially if you had some money. You could take a steamship from San Francisco or Seattle to St. Michael or directly to Nome. For Americans – unlike getting into the Klondike in Canada – you didn’t have to declare your supplies at a foreign border. If you were in the Klondike, at Fortymile or Circle, you could take the Yukon River route.

BELOW – An ad from May 31, 1899 San Francisco Examiner.

Olson’s view of early Nome as a ruthless, lawless frontier town matches the historical record. A judge came and tried to untangle all the claim jumping, Olson told Kent, but word spread that the best way to make money was to jump a claim because then your lawyers would make more money for you than you could get out in gold. There was no use in a man without money trying to hold a claim. Someone broke into Olson’s new tent and stole everything, leaving him with nothing but a jack-knife. He borrowed ten dollars and labored for a dollar an hour. Survival in Nome’s early frontier wasn’t easy, Olson told Kent: And the crowd that was there! Gamblers, sharps, actors, -- men and women of every kind – and they did act so foolish! – all out of their heads over the gold. The brothels were running wide open and robberies occurred in the town by daylight. Every man slept with his gun beside him and if he shot it was to kill. The robbers chloroformed men as they slept in their tents. There were thousands of people then and you could look out on the beach and see them swarming like flies. Everything was overturned for gold – the entire beach for ten miles both ways from Nome had been shoveled off into the sea. They dug under the Indian village till the houses fell in, and even under the graveyard.

ABOVE – Conditions in Nome in 1900 while Olson is there, from the July 15, 1900 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle.

BELOW – Judge Arthur H. Noyes was one of three judges sent to Alaska in 1900 to straighten out contested mining claims. You can digest the Hollywood version of this story in the 1960 film North to Alaska with John Wayne and sing the Johnny Horton theme song if you wish – or, read this link for a brief history and the article below from the Oct. 19, 1901 San Francisco Chronicle

Olson tells Kent and Rockie a few more stories. In earlier editions of Wilderness, Kent writes on March 11, 1919: Speaking to Olson to-night about the possibility of a shipwrecked man being able to support life on this coast for any length of time he told of a native boy of Unga, “crazy Simyon,” who lived four years at Nigger Head, a wild part of Unga Island, with no shelter but a hole in a sand bank, no fire, no weapons or clothes, or tools; a first-hand story, long, wild, terrible, beginning with a boy’s theft of sacrificial wine, and ending in madness and murder. That’s all we get but you’ll find the whole story at the March 11 entry in the 1996 Wesleyan University Press reprint of the special 1970 edition of Wilderness. On March 12 Kent adds another Olson story left out of the early editions: Olson hurried in out of the blustering wind and cold. “Here’s a story,” he said, ”about two young fellows – that will show you the kind of sailors we have here in Alaska. I’ll leave these two stories for you to read for now. I’m still trying to track down newspaper and other printed sources to authenticate these tales. At this point we don’t know whether Olson is reporting these first-hand or whether he’s retelling what he heard. Based upon my research into his Yukon and Nome stories, I’m convinced there’s some truth in them.

Kent moves Olson’s Seward cabin story from Dec. 17 in the early editions of Wilderness to Dec. 18 in the 1970 reprint. I’ve related that story in an earlier entry along with that specific scene from my play about Kent, And Now the World Again. In essence, the federal government removes squatter cabins along the railroad-owned beach. Olson’s cabin has disappeared when he arrives back in Seward after a summer’s work in Valdez. This is the story of his battle with the federal government to get a replacement cabin. I’ve found several background articles about this in the Alaska Evening Post and Seward Gateway from Aug. 29 to Sept. 30, 1916. In 1915 the federal government had selected Seward as the terminus for the new railroad and purchased the Alaska Northern Railway, successor to the bankrupt Alaska Central Railway. Now the sale was tied up in court due to questions of private land ownership. The government claimed all that land along the beach that squatters had been allowed to occupy. New track would be laid just west of the beach, and a new railroad depot was planned. Olson’s story rings true.

ABOVE and BELOW – Articles in the Alaska Evening Post/Seward Gateway that refer to Olson’s cabin story.

At the beginning of Chapter XI, Twilight, Kent tells a story about Olson and his goats at a Seward exposition. In the reprint edition he elaborates on that story with some interesting dialogue. I’ve written an entire scene about this incident in my play. This event leads Kent into a philosophical and political discussion on March 3, 1919, common law versus exceptional law: In this ideal community of Fox Island we’re so little concerned with law – the only law that bears on us at all we delight in breaking – that one wonders how far no government can be carried. On Feb. 17 he had written to artist Gus Mager declaring, I've become a confirmed anarchist. There's something wrong with me. I don't think I owe anybody anything who has never done anything for me. Olson’s distain for obtuse authority and arbitrary law is clear from his cabin story and his confrontation at the Seward exhibition. Kent sincerely admired this frontier anarchist. Olson also relates his days as a bounty hunter in Idaho, but he’s not really working with the law so much as he merely a different kind of prospector hoping to strike it rich.

ABOVE – This ad from early September 1916 issues of the Seward Gateway, is most likely for the Seward Civic Fair where the Olson story that Kent hears takes place. Olson had his goats on display, but he didn’t want them caged up, which caused a confrontation between him and the lady in charge of that exhibit.

BELOW – Some photos of the Sept. 1916 Seward Civic Fair organized by the local Woman’s Club. The photo at upper left, although for children's art, may look like the kind of enclosure the fair wanted to house Olson's goats. He insisted the roam free. Resurrection Bay Historical Society and Seward Library collection.

The earliest reference I find to Olson in Seward is reference to his posting his location notice at Fox Island on June 15, 1916. He filed the paperwork a year later, although he later learned that it couldn’t be homesteaded – which he refused to accept. As I’ve written earlier, 1915 was an important year in Seward history, for the town was selected as the terminus of the new government railroad. The economy boomed, land prices exploded, newcomers arrived by the boatload. By 1915 the Hope, Sunrise, Klondike, Nome and Fairbanks gold rushes claims had either petered out or had been taken over by the big mining companies. Old timers like Olson, now in their 70’s or older, were ready to retire. The territory gave them a modest pension, but they still had to support themselves and find a place to live. Seward offered a spot along what was then the road system which offered a steamship trip Outside and soon a train trip north. In 1915 one could still squat on the beach, and all kinds of part-time work for old timers like Olson were be available. Olson soon found a job as a caretaker for a fox farm and goat ranch on an island in Resurrection Bay – courtesy of businessman Thomas W. Hawkins who financed the venture.

ABOVE – Lars Matt Olson’s Fox Island homestead notice. City of Seward records office.

On December 22, 1915, the Seward Gateway reported: "T.W. Hawkins has purchased four foxes from William Kaiser {who owned a fox farm with Lucas on lower Kenai Lake} and has sent them to Fox Island for farming purposes. Four other foxes are already on the island. There are also some Angora goats {there}…which will soon be quite a ranch. The island is the one at the entrance of the bay and is the one Lowell formerly had." It's possible the Russians experimented with fox farming on the island when they had their shipyard in Seward during the 1790's. Alfred Lowell, son of Frank and Mary Lowell who settled along Resurrection Bay in 1884, had his fox farm on the island in the 1890's. In his memoirs, Rockie recalled visiting an old fox feeding station at Sunny Cove with his father. That feeding station had probably been part of Alfred Lowell’s operation. “On one beautiful day we made an excursion around the shores of the island, in the dory, visiting the peninsula on the other side of the mountains and the other cove where we explored a log hut which was rapidly deteriorating. The roof had largely caved in. The log walls were soft with rot and overgrown with moss. It was a sad sight…Mr. Olson said it had been used for feeding foxes and perhaps built for them.” Fox farming was a growing industry in 1915 when Hawkins invested in the Fox Island venture. 

Whether Olson posted his homestead notice on his own, or whether he was urged to do so by T.W. Hawkins -- we don't know. But he filed officially in June 1916. A month earlier, on May 31, the Seward Gateway reported: "L.M. Olson arrived from the Fox Island at the entrance of the bay on the day before yesterday with wool from some of the Angora goats. The wool is worth $4 a pound and the amount from one goat this year is eight pounds, making the goat's dress almost as expensive as the gown of a Lady. Mr. Olson brought over 48 pounds of wool altogether and is now at Brown & Hawkins Store. Mr. Hawkins is interested in the ranch, which is a regular menagerie containing not only as it does Angora goats, but various breeds of foxes, rabbits and other beasts." Not only were the goats a good source of salable wool, but ranchers also mixed the milk, rich in vitamins, with fox food. It was considered better than the traditional cod liver oil. The Seward Gateway frequently reported on their progress as in this July 20, 1915 article: "By looking in the door of the Bank of Seward at present, one can see at a glance no less than twenty thousand dollars worth of furs hung up around the office. One shipment of blue foxes included in the bunch was worth ten thousand dollars. The greater part of the furs came from Attu island."

On March 9, 1917, Seward Gateway published the article below about the Fox Island and Olson, whom they call Henry Olson -- and they repeat rumors that Henry/Lars is romantically involved with a potential marriage in the future.

GOAT AND FOX RANCH DOWN BAY GROWING

One of  Seward’s most rapidly growing industries is the goat and fox ranch of T.W. Hawkins on Reynard Island down the bay, which is under the care of Henry Olson.

Starting two years ago with one pair of goats, the flock now numbers 12, the latest arrival having first seen light of day yesterday. (March 14) These goats of Angora breed are great wool producers, and this year’s clip will, from the grown animals, be sufficient {sic.} to show the value of this venture.

There are now six pairs of foxes at the farm and an increase of several pups expected this spring.

Another addition was made to the farm yesterday when H.V. Hoben presented Hawkins with three pigeons which were installed in comfortable quarters, and next year tourists on incoming boats will probably view with amusement a flock of pigeons circling around the entrance to Resurrection Bay.

There is a rumor about that Henry has come to a more complete realization that “man was not meant to live alone and that in the not too far off days there will be a Mrs. Olson to look after the house while Henry tends the flock, feeds the pigeons and keeps an eye on the foxes.

The farm is located on one of the most beautiful little nooks in Resurrection Bay and is well worth a visit.

BELOW -- Kent's cove at the northwest corner of Fox Island. Photo courtesy of Kenai Fjords Tours. The fox farm was located at the upper or northern end of the beach.

NEXT ENTRY

PART 5

THE LIFE OF LARS MATT OLSON

THE OLD SWEDE GOES TO VERMONT