Alaskan History
Man with a bicycle on the dock at Yakutat, Alaska, circa 1920. [Fhoki Kayamori Photographs, Alaska State Library Historical Collections. ASL-P55-293]
Bicycles in Frontier Alaska “White man he set down walk like hell!” (overheard by Ed Jesson, near Circle City, 1900) In 1896 Edward Jesson came to Alaska to prospect for gold, and made his first locations at Hope and Sunrise on Turnagain Arm, on the northern shore of the Kenai Peninsula. When news of the big strike at Dawson City arrived, he pulled up his stakes and headed for Seattle, outfitted himself properly for the adventure ahead, and went to the new diggings via Skagway, White Pass, and down the Yukon River. Things didn’t pan out in the gold fields, and by 1899 he was running a store, post office, and wood-cutting camp known as Star, where the 70-Mile River empties into the Yukon, about 120 miles downriver from Dawson. Then the stampede to Nome began. All that winter Ed Jesson watched the parade of men and dogs struggling down the river on their way to Nome, and by March he had decided there had to be an easier way to travel. He opted to go by bicycle, and bought one from the A.C. store in Dawson for $150 in gold. Jesson kept a detailed diary of his month-long ride, which ended when he arrived in Nome on March 29, 1900, and it would prove to be one of the most fascinating personal accounts from the Gold Rush era (available to read online, see Resources page 48). Jesson wrote of his
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