When I was 19 two female high school friends asked me to join them to go to Alaska. We already had done some camping together as a road trip so this was the next level! I gave two weeks notice to my pizza making job near the University and I was off!! An interview with Fred Agree - the person who hired us after he picked us up hitchhiking!
Fred Agree of Homer, wearing a sticker identifying himself as a “Haul
Road Pioneer” who worked 50 years ago building the route now known as
the Dalton Highway, stands by framed newspaper pages at the Petroleum
Club of Anchorage on April 29. An exhibit marking the 50th anniversary
of the Haul Road’s consturction was set up at the club by the Alaska Oil
and Gas Historical Society. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
Another former road worker at the reception was Fred Agree of Homer, who
had come to Alaska three years earlier to mush sled dogs. Agree took a
job on the road but later went on to other Alaska adventures from his
homestead in Trapper Creek. He competed
in the famous Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. ”I got beat by Susan
Butcher and Libby Riddles and DeeDee Jonrowe – all the top women,” he
said, naming two past champions and a repeat runner-up. He climbed
Denali multiple times, he said. And he taught school in Wasilla, where
one of his students was Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and
Republican vice presidential candidate.
We worked in a salmon processing factory but I was too annoying as a spoiled school boy - so the boss, (his son was friends at school with my friend) sent us to Kodiak Island for a weekend - via helicopter!!
Then we heard from a coworker of a sled-dog care-taking job in the woods just south of Denali. I'll keep the specific location private - Fred said it was 160 acres and we got the water out of the pond. A wooden box over the pond ... yes we HAULED that water for the 26 sled dogs!! hahaha. On sleds in the winter from the pond. Kerosene for light - yes!! It's all just as Fred explains.
This was the Sled Dog trainer that we worked for.
He told me tons of his adventure stories and he built the cabins as homestead property - called "Petersville Kennels"
Oh that town photo is not Petersville.
OK that is the view of Denali that we had - the steepest mountain in the world! We got to see that everyday for four months! It was awesome. I can't even find the place on googlemaps - I think it was 9 miles west on the trail going west out of Petersville Alaska (which itself is nothing).
Fred got me a BMX bicycle that I would crank into town a couple times - and also to the nearest phone booth that was two miles away.
Otherwise no contact with the outside world - we relied on Fred to deliver our mail. hahaha.
"We've got a saying in Alaska: The odds of finding a man are good, but the goods are odd."
Fred Agree laughs at his own joke, and the chuckle carries a sardonic
self-awareness. He's short with a low center of gravity and shoots
sidewise glances at you as he talks. He's got a swagger that's less
Trapper Creek than South Philly. Which, as it happens, is where he was
born and raised. He's Jewish and years ago, the winds carried him to
Israel and an Army stint. And then to Rhodesia.
Now he lives 115 miles north of Anchorage. A 300-square-mile
neighborhood of "bush" dwellers within the shadow of 20,320-foot Mount
McKinley. Agree raises mush dogs.
"I'm a conservative Republican but I'm also gay-tolerant and the first
Jew most of them ever met. They don't know what to make of me," Agree
says. "Alaska is an extreme land and extreme people come here."
That's the myth that drives and comforts Alaskans, anyway. More than a
few Mat-Su Valley men wear grizzly claw necklaces, but the vast majority
of Alaskans live along the civilized edge of this frozen subcontinent.
Mention that, and Agree doesn't waste even a word arguing the point.
"Most Alaskan Republicans are 'traditionals' because they think they're
rugged individualists," Agree says. "It's a posture. Put them out in the
bush without their McDonald's and you have a problem."
Agree's wife races in the Iditarod, a sled dog race that curls across
the wildest stretches of Alaska. Agree doesn't race, though. He's
content to be that daily double of the Alaska bush: an outsider among
outsiders.
"Let's face it, it's very goyische up here."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/2000-01/27/030r-012700-idx.html
OK there's the cabin we stayed in - it's bigger and nicer than I remember from 35 years ago!
Here's a big bear track nearby the cabin - in the woods on the trail. We were told whenever you go into the woods always yell out "Hey Bear!" and we did! I found out an old high school of mine went ahead on his hiking trip out west and next thing he was off the ground in the jaws of a mother grizzly protecting her cubs!! always yell ahead or else! He barely survived (no pun) and the pain was so bad he wished the bear had killed him!
Here's some of the dogs and their kennels - is Blackey in the photo? I don't think so.
Here I am with my hippy hair outside the cabin.
Here I am on our porch and my friend took the photo - from the loft. She was two years older than me and she got us out of there in December! hahaha.
I applied to University of Wisconsin-Madison while I was at the cabin - my parents were impressed since they had no idea where I was. I moved to Madison that winter after getting home in December - started right up the Winter to Spring 1991 Semester.
When I lived in Alaska there were as many dog sleds as snow machines.
Now I think it's mainly snow machines - sad to say.
We were on mile 9 of that "road"
There was six feet of snow when we left in December after four months there. thanks Fred!!
In the late 1970’s and the 1980’s Trapper Creek was known as “The Mushing Capital of the World.”
Wow I didn't know that!
This area south of Denali was a superb training area for both the Iditarod and the Yukon Quest. Many hardy mushers called Trapper Creek their home, some only for a short time, but a few still remain.
The following mushers, at the least, from Trapper Creek participated in either or both the Iditarod and the Yukon Quest, many competing multiple times (first and last years of completion in parentheses).
IDITAROD (1975 – 2012)
Norman Vaughan (1975-1992) Oldest musher to run
Lavon Barve (1975-1997)
Jim Kershner (1975) 1991 Race Marshal
Rick Mackey (1975-1990) 1983 Race Champion, 1999 Humanitarian
Harry Sutherland (1976 – 1990), 1976 Rookie of the Year
Joe May (1976 – 1982), 1980 Race Champion, 1981 Humanitarian
Dewey Halverson (1977-1996) 1996 Sportsmanship
Eric Poole (1980)
Clarence Shockley (1980)
Donna Gentry Massay (1980-1981) 1980 Rookie of the Year
Ted English (1981-2003) 1984 Sportsmanship
Burt Bomhoff (1981-1992)
Vern Halter (1983-2005)
Shannon Poole (1983)
Chris O’Gar (1983)
Fred Agree (1984-1985)
Francine Bennis (1984)
Bill Mackey (1984)
Bobby Lee (1985-1991) 1983 Race Marshal
Ron Robbins (1985-1986)
Pat Danley (1986-1995)
Bill Hall (1986-1999)
Carolyn Muegge Vaughan (1987-1992)
John Gourley (1987-1995)
Jennifer Gourley (1988)
Kathy Halverson (1989) 1989 Sportsmanship
Art Church Jr. (1995-2012)
Susan Whiton (1995-1996)
Vicki Talbot (2000)
YUKON QUEST (1984-1998)
Harry Sutherland (1984-1989)
Jackson Stevens (1984)
Joe May (1985-1986)
Art Church, Jr. (1986)
Larry Johnson (1987)
Vern Halter (1988-91) 1990 Champion
John Gourley (1992-93)
Lavon Barve (1994)
Rick Mackey (1996-1998) 1997 Champion (also 1983 Iditarod Champion)
Susan Whiton (1987)
Brenda Mackey (1998)
There were also many mushers who only ran the local races, like the Moose Creek 200, Moose Creek 300, and the Cache Creek Classic, or sported a recreational or working team.
Thanks for the fantastic memories.
Trapper Creek Oral History Project, Trapper Creek Community Services, February, 2018.
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