Page:Motoring Magazine and Motor Life November 1913.djvu/20

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��MOTORING MAGAZINE AND MOTOR LIFE

��November, 1913.

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��"In the distance, a panorama of snow- capped, cragged mountains, forming an uneven horizon; in the foreground, a gray, colorless vista of small trees and swampy niggerhead flats, stretching to the foot- hills of the Alaska range — that is the picture that presents itself to him who wanders to the outskirts of Fairbanks, Alaska's biggest and most metropolitan mining camp," says E. E. Hurja, in a Seattle paper. "On Cushman street, scarcely three-quarters of a mile from the heart of the city, stands a sign post, holding aloft a finger-board. The finger is pointed south, along a well-defined wagon trail, and the board bears the in- scription, 'Valdez, 364 miles.'

"This, then, is the northernmost termi- nal of the Valdez-Fairbanks wagon road, pushed through from the coast, across two mountain ranges and miles of stream- cut valleys, under the direction of United States army engineers. The road is the route of the longest stage line in the world, some say, and it winds through a rugged, primitive and undeveloped coun- try, gold-glamored and full of interest.

"The road is due to become the great Alaskan overland auto route from tide- water on the southern coast to Fairbanks in the interior, on the navigable side streams of the Yukon waterway system. Already has the distance between Fair- banks and Chitina, a stretch of trail 311 miles in length, been traversed by auto- mobiles. The first auto to make the trip, a F"ord touring car, took forty-five hours' running time to cover the stretch to the northern terminus of the Copper River and Northwestern Railway.

In the early days of the North, when the Klondike was being gutted of its riches, the dog team was the pioneer's means of travel; soon after Fairbanks was discovered, some hundreds of miles up the Tanana Valley from the Yukon, automobiles began to appear on the newly graded streets of the citified mining camp on the shores of Chena Slough. Now the automobile is as much a part of the life of that twentieth century frontier com- munity as is the dog team. The noisy benzine buggy has displaced, in a meas- ure, the Malamute and the horse, so use-

��ful in the early pioneer life of the dis- trict.

"The use of the motor car in Fairbanks may be described as being many-sided. Among other things, it is used for busi- ness, for pleasure, for emergency and for publicity. In business, it carries mer- chants from Fairbanks to the creek set- tlements on the occasional trips; it car- ries miners into town with their gold; it carries letters and packages to and from the creeks, and it is useful in freighting supplies from one district to another. In pleasure, the uses are manifold. Despite occasional severe sub-zero cold in the winter time, the cars can be used over the snow-covered trails as well as over the dry dirt roads of midsummer. For hunt- ing, fishing and picnicking, the car is now an invaluable adjunct. For 'joy rides' it is as useful as in many an outside com- munity.

"The auto in Fairbanks is always in readiness for emergency calls from the creeks. In drawing attention to the met- ropolitan side of life on the last frontier, the automobile serves a more novel pur- pose. Considerable publicity has been given Alaskan communities through the presence of an auto in pictures coming from a land which popular fancy has pic- tured to be covered the year round with snow and ice, and which is believed to be devoid of flowers or other vegetation.

"There is considerable roadway avail- able for automobiles in the immediate vicinity of Fairbanks, estimated of about 150 miles' length, aside from the over- land trail. The roads are most of them graded; the little creeks are bridged, and the soft, mucky spots are corduroyed in substantial fashion.

"The trails can be used by autos at all seasons, with the exception of a short period in summer, when there is an ex- cess of rainfall. Between Fairbanks and the various creek towns. Fox City, Gil- more, Chatanika, Cleary City, Fairbanks Cree, Dome City, Olnes, Ester City and other communities, the roads to the creek settlements take the autos through inter- esting stretches of country, and within sight of many regions of strife and squab- ble connected with the early mining life.

��The roads traverse the hilly country, with its groves of tall, stately, silvery- barked birches, past occasional road- houses where weary mushers and tongue- tired teamsters put up for rest. The cars thread their way between high flume- ways, under trestles that support long strings of sluice boxes, past large, for- bidding looking piles of tailings; then again, the cars move past ever-growing heaps of golden dirt, within hearing dis- tance of the boiler houses that dot the claims on the busy creeks, where the very atmosphere is saturated with the gold-getting fever.

"On some creeks the traveler on the auto sees the transition from the placer to the quartz mining camp. The open- cut placer mining gives way, near the heads of the creeks, to quartz prospects, some with their noisy stamp mills busily crushing the gold-laden rock for its valu- able yellow contents.

"When a miner is injured on the creeks — when a slab of dirt comes down on a worker in the drifts, when an explosion of much scalds the pointman, the auto is called into service. An emergency call to town usually brings out the doctor, or, if the injury is one that demands imme- diate surgical attendance, the miner is rushed to the hospital as fast as the roads will allow the chauffeur to operate his car. When a storm or slide takes down the telephone wires, the auto is pressed into use to carry messages to the creeks. The passenger and express busi- ness between Fairbank and the creeks is profitable to the automobile men as well as to the miners, who are able to bring in their pokes of dust and nug- gets, transact their business at the banks and in the stores, and return to their work on the creeks before a few hours have gone by.

"Trucks, of which two have been im- ported and put into use in the Fairbanks district, are serviceable in carrying sup- plies and freight from city to camp. In 1912 a truck came for Jacob Samuelson, a merchant at Richardson, some seventy- five miles from Fairbanks. He has made good use of the machine in hauling sup- plies to be used by the miners of the ten-

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