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Most of the early Alaskan pioneers moved up from the Lower 48 for seeking opportunity and adventure. The majority left when times got tough, but the best and the toughest stayed on, and helped make the frontier what it is today. Minnesota-born James Carroll was one of those guys.
Carroll journeyed to Alaska in 1910, in search of opportunities made possible by the gold rush. He was just a boy, seventeen years old, and his resume consisted of cooking at lumber camps back in Minnesota. It wasn’t long before Carroll was cooking for woodcutting operations and gold miners along the Yukon River, but his real goal was to make a fortune trapping. In short order, Carroll found himself in Fort Yukon, the fur capitol of the world in its day.
Fort Yukon was a frontier town centered around trapping. For a couple short months in the summer, trappers came to town to sell their fur and resupply with an outfit for the following season. Then it was back to the wilderness to run their traplines. Some were in the bush ten or eleven months of the year.
Carroll found a partner, got outfitted with dogs and supplies, lined a loaded boat 50 miles up the Salmon (Sheenjek) River, built a cabin, and trapped out of it all winter. Fur prices weren’t the best at the time, but with hard work and constant improvement, he was able to catch enough fur to pay for the outfit and do it again the next season. He continued to trap on the Salmon for years, even after marrying and having children, which Jim and his native wife Fannie took along with them on the trapline.
With passing years and several more children (they raised 12 in all), Carroll decided to try his hand at business in Fort Yukon. He started with a small lumbering operation, which was short lived. Eventually, though, Carroll established a successful trading post in Fort Yukon, which he ran for many years.
In “Above the Arctic Circle”, the book published from Carroll’s diaries, we get a front row seat to his first decade in Alaska. He spent four more there (his entire adult life) but they aren’t on record. He must have been too busy to keep a diary.
“Above the Arctic Circle” was originally published in 1957. The first edition is very difficult to find, but fortunately a second edition was published in 2005, and it’s readily available online.