SEWARD IN 1915

SEWARD IN 1915

by Doug Capra © 2018

“I now hang high above the town and harbor, writing these notes.”

 “Everywhere about they are now blasting out the stumps to put in the foundations for houses,” he wrote. “As I walked through the valley I heard ten blasts of dynamite. The explosions followed one another like the fire of artillery, and roots, rocks and dirt filled the air.”

            Frank G. Carpenter had a writer’s eye for detail – which he recorded during a 1915 visit to Seward. Born in Mansfield, Ohio in 1855, he traveled the world as a journalist and photographer and wrote a series of geography books. He worked for the Cleveland Leader, the American Press Association, and the New York World. By 1888 Carpenter was known enough to finance a trip around the world by selling a weekly syndicated column to several periodicals about life abroad. He later traveled tens of thousands of miles through Central, North and South America, Asia, and Africa. He was a member of the Royal Geographic Society, the National Press Club, and many scientific societies. He married Joanna Condit in 1883, settled in Washington, D.C., and had two children. His real estate investments made him a millionaire. In 1912 after graduating from Smith College, his daughter Frances (1890-1972) accompanied him on his journeys as a secretary and photographer, later co-authoring some of his books. Carpenter eventually collected his travel writings into a series of geography texts that became standards in American schools for forty years. He died in Nanking, China in 1924 at age 69 on his third trip around the world.

Seward had been named its terminus when Frank G. Carpenter arrived here to write about the new Government Railroad. The town had experienced an economic boost with tremendous growth and expected the prosperity to increase a thousand times over. Printed in many newspapers across the country, the copy of Frank Carpenter’s article about Seward was published in 1916. It was titled THE NEW YORK OF THE PACIFIC: Pictures With Pen and Camera of the Terminus of Uncle Sam’s New Railroad.” As the railroad was under construction, Seward promoters continued to have unrealistic visions of the town’s future. When American artist Rockwell Kent and his son lived on Fox Island during 1918-1919, the Chamber of Commerce advertised Seward as “The New York of the Pacific.” From New York himself, Kent found the claim amusing, which didn’t sit well with many in town.

“It is the terminus of Uncle Sam’s new railroad,” Carpenter wrote two years before the Kent’s arrived, “and it will be the great ocean port of the future. Its citizens are already comparing it with Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, which has almost 400,000 inhabitants.” Seward’s location was similar to Stockholm, the town’s promoters claimed, and “it will be the gateway to resources equal to those of the four Scandinavian countries.” Norway, Finland, Sweden and Denmark are in the same latitude as Seward, town boosters pointed out, and they have much the same climate with a population of over twelve million. The world around town, Carpenter reported, was that “Alaska will some day have twenty million, and that Seward will be its chief port.”

“To years ago not one man in a hundred could have told where Seward is located,” he later wrote, “and I venture that nine-tenths of those who are reading this letter will have to go to a map to find out. It is on the great Gulf of Alaska, and about at the middle of the southern coast of the Territory. It is at the lower end of the Kenai peninsula, about as far from Ketchikan, where the Seattle steamers first call as the distance between New York and Cleveland…”

Published widely throughout 1916, Carpenter’s syndicated article about Seward was collected by his daughter after his death along with other Alaska writings and published as Alaska, Our Northern Wonderland (1925). As a world traveler, polished writer, and keen observer -- Carpenter’s insights about Alaska are extremely valuable. In 1916, Seward was six days by steamer from the Puget Sound ports. Carpenter notes to readers that the distance was about the same as New York to Sioux City or Omaha, and that passage cost $45. “The harbor of Seward is Resurrection Bay,” he wrote, “a magnificent inlet, whose waters are surrounded by mountains and so guarded by island that here in the midst of this region of terrible storms, the ships lie as quiet and safe as they do inside the docks of Hamburg and Liverpool.”

Right off the steamer, probably after settling at his hotel, Carpenter “tramped through the business and residence sections to the foot of the wall of the great mountain that rises straight up on one side of Resurrection Bay” – probably Mount Marathon. Deciding to climb its slopes for a better view, he pulled himself up from one tree root to another. “I now hang high above the town and harbor, writing these notes.”

One of the Great Harbors of the World

            People in Seward were neither unaware of Frank Carpenter’s visit to their town nor ignorant of his fame.  On August 16, 1915, the Seward Gateway had announced his arrival in a the front page story: “Frank G. Carpenter, probably the most widely read newspaperman in the United States, is now in Seward and is securing facts about the government railroad portion of the territory to present to his readers who number three million…He is accompanied by his daughter, Miss Frances Carpenter.”

            Since Frances acted as her father’s secretary, taking notes and photographs, she no doubt accompanied up Mount Marathon. The first hundred feet were covered with trees, “some of which are twice the girth of my waist,” Carpenter noted. “They cling to the rocks and grow straight up, forming palisades, as it were.” The thick brush reminded him of the lower slopes of the Himalayas. “From where I hang I can see giant ferns, young alder trees and salmonberry bushes, the whole growing out of a deep bed of moss into which my feet sink as though into feathers.”

            Through the spruce branches, Carpenter observed the “white glacial waters of Lowell Creek, roaring as they rush foaming over the rocks down into Resurrection Bay. They cut through the upper part of the town and pass under Uncle Sam’s railroad embankment which runs round the harbor.” He spotted the Resurrection River and the mountains across the bay – “Its peaks are of black volcanic rock, and in its hollows nestle glaciers of pale green ice that the sun has turned into emerald.” As he gazed southward, he noticed “mountainous islands that guard the bay and make it almost landlocked. At first sight the land seems continuous, but there is a narrow passage between Fox Island and the Kenai Peninsula so that the shipping of the world can sail in and out.”

Sitting on the slopes of Mount Marathon on a beautiful mid-August day in 1915, Carpenter reflected on this place within the context of his many travels – comparing it to other harbors around the world. While Frances took photographs her father gathered his thoughts and later wrote perhaps the most admiring description of Resurrection Bay that I have ever found. The value of this description can’t be overstated since it came from the pen of a man who had seen the wonders of the world. He wrote:

“I have seen most of the great harbors of the world. I have gone through the Dardanelles to Constantinople and have explored the beauties of the Golden Horn. I have wound my way in and out through the landlocked channel on which Sydney lies, and have taken photographs of the Bay of Rio de Janeiro from the Sugarloaf and the Corcovado. The harbor of Seward is as beautiful as any of these others and its surroundings of green, mixed with the glaciers and snow, are like those of no other harbor on the face of the earth. The whole is a mighty amphitheater of green lowland and blue waters and of glacier-clade hills, roofed by the clear sky, and the white and black of the clouds.”

At the time, Seward didn’t know how Carpenter would describe the town – positively or negatively -- but everyone realized the importance of his words. “Mr. Carpenter has a syndicate of thirty-five papers,” the Gateway reported. “He is the owner of the syndicate on whose list are many of the greatest newspapers of America. Commencing on the fist Sunday of 1916 he will begin the publication of a series of articles on Alaska and this series will be continued for a whole year, so that at the rate of three million readers a week it means one hundred and fifty million pairs of eyes reading about Alaska a year from once source alone. He came from Nome in the Victoria after having visited the southeastern part of the territory and after having gone down the Yukon. He will go to Anchorage overland and return to Seward.”

The summer of 1915 was an exciting one for Seward. J.L McPherson, secretary of the Alaska Bureau of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, also arrived on the Victoria with Frank and Frances Carpenter. McPherson was in Alaska to convince the towns to combine with Seattle for the celebration of the 50^th anniversary of Alaska’s purchase from Russia coming up in 1917. The idea was to begin the celebration in Seattle early and use the publicity to entice visitors to journey to Alaska for more activities. Daniel J. Singer a big-game hunter and the grandson of the founder of the Singer Sewing Machine Company, was also in town. He hunted in Alaska every summer and had bagged everything but a brown bear and Dall Sheep. Tom Towle would guide him around Lower Kenai Lake for three weeks, and from there he would go to Knik where Nate
White would power boat him to Snug Harbor for brown bear. After this trip, Singer planned to write a book about his big-game hunting in Alaska.

Many other writers, hunters and notables arrived in Seward that summer of 1915, but everyone’s eyes were on Frank Carpenter that August. What he wrote could make a tremendous difference in business and settlement prospects for the territory

 “a frail little wisp of a sandy-haired man”

Frank Carpenter sought for mundane details as he traveled, the kind of everyday minutiae that fascinate most people because we rarely notice them. “It seems strange to think of going barefooted in Alaska,” he noticed as he wandered through 1915 Seward on a warm mid-August afternoon. “But the children here do that all summer long. They also go in bathing in the waters of Resurrection Bay, and swimming parties to Lake Kenai, some distance back in the country…”

            Shortly after the town was settled in 1903, Seward experienced its first economic boom as workers and equipment arrived for building the Alaska Central Railway. That enterprise went bankrupt and reorganized as the Alaska Northern Railway. Discovery of gold in the Iditarod country in 1908 helped Seward through tough economic times. But it was the announcement in March 1915 that the town would be the terminus for the new Government Railroad that gave Seward a second economic boost. “I am living in a hotel which faces the harbor,” Carpenter wrote, “with a half dozen small glaciers in sight over the way.” He could no doubt see the small cirque glacier in the Mount Alice bowl as well as the Godwin Glacier complex. “I have two connecting rooms, and the charge is $2.50 per  day. On the same floor is a porcelain bathtub, which I can use for 50 cents a bath, and have hot water therewith if the order is given beforehand. My rooms are lighted by electricity and heated by stoves.”

            In its frontier years, Seward often surprised visitors with the accommodations it offered. It astonished some people that they could find such things in Alaska. Unlike some gold rush towns haphazardly constructed around a strike, Seward was designed as a modern transportation and economic center. From the start it had telephones, electrical power, water and drainage, a newspaper, and other up to date technologies. It was built for permanence. Local businesses were well aware of new technological innovations and tried to incorporate them into Seward’s infrastructure as they became available. “The hotel has no eating accommodations,” Carpenter observed, “but I get excellent meals at the restaurants on the main street two blocks away. The prices for meat there are about the same as those of the States, but soup, vegetables and dessert are served with each meat order without extra charge. In fact, one can dine fairly well for 75 cents.” Reasonable restaurant prices also surprised visitors

            As Carpenter wandered through town, people may have been surprised at his small stature. He was thin, “tall and spare” but full of energy – “a frail little wisp of a sandy-haired man, below average height and weighing less than 110 pounds.” As a youth, his friends nicknamed him “Bony Chapter.” In later years no one remembered why the “Chapter” – perhaps it was Carpenter mispronounced. But everyone understood the “Bony.” From his youth he wanted to be a writer. In high school and college he headed the newspapers and yearbooks. But then tragedy struck – he became ill and was told he wouldn’t live long. He had saved $2000 as a cub reporter and decided to travel Europe until either his money ran out or he died. The trip energized him. He sent travel letters to newspapers to help pay his way. His health improved and he decided that this was how he wanted to spend his life. That was more than 35 years earlier. Now he was traveling and documenting Alaska.

            Wandering through the 1915 Seward of about 1500 inhabitants, Carpenter noted that the town’s public buildings included the jail, the post office, and the cable and telegraph station – and the large Government Railroad building, which used to be on the site of today’s City Hall. “The Railway Commission building is devoted to the engineers and clerks, who are managing the construction of the railway that is from here to Fairbanks,” Carpenter wrote. “It is the old headquarters of the Alaska Northern Railway, which the Government bought when it decided upon the present route through the territory. It is a frame structure of two stories with a central building one story higher. It is fairly commodious and serves well for the purpose.” Carpenter thought the office of the United States Marshall to be the most artistic building in the whole town. In its earlier days it had been known as Sleem’s Hall. “It is a two-story long cabin,” Carpenter noted, “with porches at the side, and dormer windows looking out over the roof. There are no bars nor locks visible from the street, and it has none of the airs of a prison.” He described the post office as a frame building on the main street and the cable station as a one-story cottage surrounded by stumps, not far from the water. The restored cable house sits today at he lower end of Fifth Avenue.

 “It all seems old stuff to them. But it may be news to other people.”

The Seward business district that Frank Carpenter experienced in 1915 consisted of “two or three streets close to the wharves.” He observed that Main Street, often called Broadway in those days, “was macadamized and concrete pavements have been laid on each side of it.” Fortunately, the essential character of some downtown buildings have been maintained since Carpenter’s visit, especially from Yukon Bar north past Brown and Hawkins up to about the Sea Bean. He described the structures as one or two stories. “They are of boards; they stand close to the street, with a sky line as ragged as the mouth of a child who is getting her second installment of molars. Some of the storefronts are of galvanized iron. Midway in one block is a frame shed consisting only of an iron roof upheld by poles. It has chairs under it and it is labeled the ‘Royal Boot Black Parlor.’”

Carpenter noted that the town had several banks, drug stores, hardware and dry good stores, provision and clothing stores. “It has its saloons and billiard halls,” he wrote. “All the stores have plate glass windows, and the goods within are large and varied. Seward has several churches, including Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian and others.”  He also took note of the local Y.M.C.A.

            After his European jaunt, Carpenter worked in Washington D.C. He wanted to write what captivated him – human interest stories – not just the political stuff. But all the ideas he pitched to his editors were turned down. “That’s old stuff,” they told him. “Written over and over again years ago.” That didn’t deter Carpenter. “These fellows have been here so long that they’re tired,” he observed. “It all seems old stuff to them. But it may be news to other people.” He decided to write what interested him. He was an average person, he reasoned – and if it interested him it would probably interest the average reader. He submitted a story about how Uncle Sam got his name – old news to veteran reporters. But readers found it fascinating and the story got syndicated all across the country. Perhaps this young kid has something, his editors thought. Everything new was to some people, Carpenter thought. “It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the Bible could be newly illustrated and successfully used as a serial feature for newspapers.”

            In Seward, some may thought he asked basic, even stupid questions – but Carpenter realized how unknown this last frontier was to most readers. Due to the economic boom in town, business property values had trebled and quadrupled, and the same was true for noncommercial land. “I know of one man,” Carpenter write, “who sold for $8000 lots which cost him $750. There were fifty lots in the tract. He thought he made a good bargain, but the purchaser resold the lots at $600 a lot, or about $30,000.”

With the coming of the new Government Railroad, Carpenter noted that the town’s expansion seemed to be “at the head of Resurrection Bay, where tents have been erected, frame buildings are going up and families are locating.” Other new homesteads appeared along ten miles up what he called the Resurrection River Valley, where “farms the size of garden patches are being cultivated here and there.”

            Some of those homesteads, he explained, were applied for ten years earlier (1904-5), but with the creation of the Chugach National Forest in 1907, the homesteaders were “prevented from using the timber nearby…and as a result the greater part of the lumber of Seward has to be brought in from Seattle, notwithstanding there are forests right at its doors.” Lumber cost about $28 per thousand and the cost of cordwood was high. “It is the same with coal. The people here have been paying $18 per ton for that fuel, and that notwithstanding they are within a short railroad haul of some of the best coalfields in the world.” Those resource situations angered many Alaskans. The main goal of the Alaska Central Railway back in 1903 had been to reach the northern cold fields. In 1906, with the creation of government reserves, President Theodore Roosevelt withdrew the coalfields from commercial use. Now, with construction of the new Government Railroad, the goal was to immediately push the tracks north from Anchorage to get to the coal. Seward lobbied heavily to have the old Alaska Northern Railway tracks completed northward so that coal could be shipped to Resurrection Bay. But that wasn’t to happen until later – a great disappointment to Seward.

Carpenter’s observations weren’t all about business and railroad construction. He noticed everything. “I wouldn’t walk across the street to view the Garden of Eden,” he once said, “if I weren’t going to write about it. There’s no pleasure to me in traveling or doing anything else unless I have a motive. If a fellow’s obligated to write about what he sees he’s naturally bound to observe twice as much.”

And that’s what made Frank Carpenter a successful writer.

 “It is as though Switzerland came down to the ocean and you could ride under its glaciers and snows through valleys and hillsides of the greenest green.”

 “The people of Seward are fond of sports,” Carpenter observed. “The country about is one of the best in the Territory for its hunting and fishing.” Dog racing and sledding was popular in the winter, locals told him, and Seward had tennis courts and a baseball diamond. “The latter is laid out on the beach,” he wrote, “and during the summer the teams of Seward and Anchorage contest there for the honors of Sough Central Alaska.” Carpenter observed Seward’s various social circles. These included – from a class perspective -- the professional and business leaders and their families at the top followed by laborers and blue-collar workers which included the transients, and the ladies and madams of Seward’s “Red-Light District” which the city council had recently segregated into a line of houses along Alley B -- once located along a line of trees near the entrance to the Institute of Marine Science Rae Building.

The attention Frank Carpenter gave Seward with his article represented just what the town sought. A new town along Ship Creek called Anchorage was booming. At the time, and no one imagined it would someday overshadow Seward. As the headlines to Carpenter’s story about Seward proclaimed, Seward saw itself in 1915 as the future New York of the Pacific now that the Interior would be opened with the new Government Railroad.

After exploring Seward, Carpenter was off to explore the Kenai Peninsula. The federal government had purchased the Alaska Northern Railway and the tracks ran to Mile 71, rough as they were. “A ride over the railroad from Seward north to Kenai Lake is one of the wonder trips of the world,” Carpenter noted.  “You go up the valley which ends in Resurrection Bay amid most magnificent mountains. The mountains begin right at the sea. It is as though Switzerland came down to the ocean and you could ride under its glaciers and snows through valleys and hillsides of the greenest green.” The rushing streams and winding lakes thrilled him. “There are open parks made by nature and in them ferns and wild flowers and grass as high as our waist. The trees on the hillsides are largely spruce and the ozonic air of Alaska carries the sweet smell of the pines into your lungs.”

Carpenter stopped at Bear Lake to look around. “It is only six miles from Seward and is the midst of a natural park surrounded by snowcapped mountains on the sides of which hang glaciers of sapphire amid forests of emerald. The place is now in the wild. In the future it will have an automobile road into Seward, and one can then go back and forth in a quarter of an hour. The region is now known Woodrow Park, named after the president.” In 1916, the year Carpenter’s Alaska articles ran nationwide, Woodrow Park would become a heavily marketed real estate commodity. People could auto out there or take the train roundtrip for 55 cents. If they didn’t want to take their own food, Mrs. J.J. Johnson was ready to serve them lunch. The railroad charged $1.85 roundtrip for those who wanted to excursion out to Kenai Lake, where Mrs. Dabney would serve them lunch at the Roosevelt Roadhouse.

By 1923 when the Alaska Railroad was completed the mothers of four families at Woodrow had enough children to apply for a school. Territorial Gov. Scott Bone and Education Commissioner Lester D. Henderson approved the request. The LaRochelle lumber mill at Mile 3 donated lumber for the floor and roof, the Alaska Engineer Commission offered support material, and many Seward citizens gave books, pictures and other items. The school planned to open on Sept. 10, 1924 with ten students and teacher Mrs. W.C. Donaldson of Anchorage.

“Going northward you pass little homesteads which have been cut out of the woods,” Carpenter observed. “They are few and far between, and the patches of cultivation are kitchen gardens in size. At Mile 12 I saw an abandoned log cabin and was told that it had been occupied last summer by some city chaps who had come there to hunt. They had expected to stay a week or ten days but they remained more than two months. Nevertheless, their actual cost outlay for food during that time was less than $10. They spent $5 for flour, potatoes and coffee, and the rest of their food was the fish, game and berries they found in the woods.”

The scenery at Kenai Lake also reminded him of Switzerland. “The mountains are snowcapped,” he wrote, “and high up on the sides of the green, below the snow line, you can see the trails made by the mountain sheep. The lake is as clear as crystal, and it mirrors its surroundings.”

At Mile 29 he stopped at Oscar Christiansen’s roadhouse. “Oscar is a Swede who has a half-dozen horses which he rents out for all that the traffic will bear. He charged me $16 a day for two horses and a guide. Before leaving I dined at the roadhouse. The meat was moose meat or Alaska beef cooked over the coals by a six-foot pioneer. His kitchen stove was a range made at Hamilton, {Ohio}, and in the living room adjoining were chairs and tables and a rosewood Victrola with several dozen records on top. Around the wall were spring beds. The stove of the living room was a section of hydraulic pipe as big around as a flour barrel, with legs of gas pipe. It was long enough to take a whole stick of cord wood.”

The next morning, he and his guide headed to Sunrise on horseback.

 “I despair of making you see the wonderful beauties of the {Kenai}Peninsula,”

After spending the night at Oscar Christianson’s roadhouse at Mile 29, Frank Carpenter and his daughter, Frances, left by horseback for Sunrise. “The horses were fairly good, but the saddles were excruciating,” he complained. “I am accustomed to riding. I cover about 1,500 miles every winter…I have an English saddle and can be on a horse for hours without tiring. It was different in this ride across Kenai. Our horses were broad-backed Percherons, and the saddles were a high-pommeled variety, so made that they threw one far to the front. It was like sitting on a sawbuck with ill-fitting stirrups. It brought an entire new set of muscles into play and gave me the sensations and pains of the man who takes a long ride for the first time…when we came to a mining camp, after fifteen hours in the saddle, I was so stiff that I had to be lifted from the horse. The next day I walked part of the way and had to be lifted off and on to the horse whenever I road.”

Carpenter and his daughter started off with plans to meet the guide at an agreed upon spot, but the guide didn’t show up and they got lost. When they all finally met up, the guide took them along “the sides of cliffs, over a trail where the forest fires had made it exceedingly dangerous, and where we had to jump over logs in the darkness with no telling what might be on the other side.” When they reached Sunrise, Carpenter slept well before transcribing the notes he took during the trip. Despite the rough journey, he was awed by the scenery. “I despair of making you see the wonderful beauties of the peninsula,” he wrote.

He marveled at the little valleys, the grandest mountains, the waterfalls, and the clear crystal rushing streams where “the great red salmon were battling against the current, making their way over the rocks and floating brushwood.” They were “the color of beefsteaks,” and resembled “streaks of raw meat flying along through the water.” He met a man fishing who had caught twenty-seven trout in less than an hour, “pulling them out as fast as he could throw in a line.” In the smaller streams, Carpenter realized he could easily catch salmon and grayling with his hands.

The variety of scenic colors astounded him, and he wished he had photographed them. He recorded the bright red high and low bush cranberries, the deep purple blueberries, the pale lemon salmon berries and the carpets of wildflowers. “They made me think of the paintings of the latest German art schools,” he observed, “where the pigment is laid on in great patches with such striking effects of light and shade.” Forest fires had cleared spaces in the fertile valleys and he imagined them populated with farms. He passed through forests of spruce, cottonwood and birch, and meadows where the grasses reached to his shoulders. “This grass was as green as that of the Nile Valley,” he noted, “and where the forest fires had destroyed the trees they wandered through beds of fireweed, making vast sheets of green dusted with pink.” Some fireweed stalks measured six to eight feet tall, and later in Sunrise he found some nine feet in height.

Carpenter described eating grouse and ptarmigan, spotting brown bear, porcupine, sheep and goats. “The Kenai Peninsula has some of the best moose pastures of Alaska,” he wrote. “It has hundreds of moose and the moose are increasing in numbers notwithstanding the hunters who come here to shoot big game and carry home the antlers as trophies. Once at Sunrise, he feasted on fresh game. “Most of the food used here comes from wild,” he learned. “It can be had for the taking and this makes the cost of living comparatively cheap.” One miner he met said he and his partner survived two weeks on $1.80 worth of flour and bacon. Fish and game they supplied them with the rest. While in Sunrise he waited for a boat to take him out into Turnagain Arm, Cook inlet and up Knik Arm to Anchorage. “Sunrise has perhaps twenty log cabins,” he wrote. “In one is a general store, kept by an old German and another is Arno Liebischer’s roadhouse, where I am living.” Sunrise had passed its heyday by 1915. Most of its cabins were empty. “They were built when Sunrise was the center of a mining excitement.” While Carpenter rested there, old prospectors were washing the sands of Six Mile River and other creeks about for gold. “To-day a dredge made in Seattle is turning up the bed of the river, but the profits are little,” he observed. “Farther up the river is Duncan Stewart’s mining camp, where they are dredging at a profit and where are quartz mines said to be good.”

Seward was no doubt pleased when Frank Carpenter’s articles appeared throughout the country in 1916. The town couldn’t have asked for better promotion, for itself, the Alaska Railroad, and the entire Kenai Peninsula.  When the U.S. entered the Great War in April 1917, railroad construction slowed down, but it picked up after the armistice of November 11, 1918 and continue until the railroad’s official completion in July 1923 with President Warren G. Harding’s visit to the territory. That same year, with the help of his daughter Frances, Carpenter collected all his Alaska articles and published them in a book called Alaska: Our Northern Wonderland.

The book received excellent reviews. The Boston Transcript wrote: “It is a pity that every American, especially every school child, cannot read Frank Carpenter’s Alaska: Our Northern Wonderland,” for even a hurried perusal of this remarkable, interesting and valuable narrative…discloses the stupendous ignorance of our people of one of the riches empires beneath the flag. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the average educated America has a more intelligent conception of India than of Alaska.”

The year after his Alaska book was published, while on his third round-the-world trip, Frank Carpenter died in Nanking, China. Frances continued to publish and promote her father’s work.  She eventually donated 16,000 photographs and 7,000 negatives to the Library of Congress – including 5000 Alaska images. Frances died in 1972.

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