Explorer, Prospector and Rancher
Memories of Past Vivid To Jack McCord
By Miriam J. Angell
How many men there are who
have hitched their wagons to an
elusive star, and putting aside
home and creature comforts, gone
in search of fortune and adven
ture, we shall never know. Those
who fail are relegated to the an
onnmous ‘they’ in the history
books; those who suceed often be
come legends.
Jack McCord is a legend, but
unlike many others who have pi
oneered Alaska, he is very much
alive and most of the stories of
his exploits are true. He has been
explorer, prospector, goldminer,
railroad worker, developer, ranch
er, and at telling times, Alaska’s
un-official representative to Wash
ington.
Jack McCord will be 78 years
old next February, but he stands
tall and his eyes are dear blue,
alert. If his eyes seem sometimes
to look through and beyond the
present, the past holds much to
remember.
i grew up on a farm m lowa.
It was nine miles to town and
highschool. I worked at small jobs
in town to pay my board and went
home on weekends. The year be
fore the St. Louis World’s Fair I
went to Drake University but I
left in my sophmore year because
a man told me he thought I should
go West. I got a job teaching school
in North Dakota for a year, and
worked one summer in a bank, but
I got restless when I saw a poster
advertising land to lease up in
Calgary, Canada. The land was of
fered at half a cent an acre and
I wanted to claim some. Nobody
much lived in that country. I saw
the first pine trees and real moun
tains I’d ever seen in my life, and
mountain goats, and beaver, lots
of game animals; it was beautiful
and I wanted to stay. Those were
the days of opportunity and ad
venture everywhere, but first I
needed money.
“Somebody along the way told
me about a place called Kicking
Horse. They wanted a teacher
there for loggers’ children. It was
supposed to be about twenty miles
down the trail but I must have
walked fifty before I came to a
house. An old man was standing
by the most beautiful little cabin.
There was a stream running
through the clearing and he let me
have a drink of water and said I
could spend the night. Well, I stay
ed on all bhat year and walked to
school every day — it wasn’t far.
“The settler was Robert Cronk
ite; he was old and tired and lone
ly except for his cat and dog. I
got lonely too, on the long winter
nights when the wind howled and
Bob sat half asleep in front of the
fire, stroking his cat, the tears
of old age in his eyes. I lay in a
corner on my cot and wrote poems
and thought about where I would
go next.”
At year’s end in 1906, young Mc
Cord went down to Seattle and
found the steamship, Yukatan,
bound for Alaska. He had neither
money nor callusses; for both rea
sons the captain refused him pass
age as either passenger or crew
though the ship was short of sea
man. One badge of the roving sail
or was a blanket roll; Jack Mc
Cord ran across to a rooming house
and begged some blankets aban
doned by sailors who could not pay
their bills, and was allowed aboard
the ship as a seaman. And so to
Katalla, Alaska, riding steerage
with a stowaway named Mulligan
Kelley, Kelley advised him to get
off at Katalla because it had a
saloon and dance hall.
Mr. McCord continued, “I got
a job as a checker in the railroad
camp there; the company running
it was all set to build a railroad
into the interior but some racke
teers from a Chicago syndicate
had put in the first tracks from
the shore to a mountain a little
way off. They posted gunmen and
warned us they would shoot if we
tried to go through. Well, I got
a contract with the company I
worked for to go in and do the
job. They banked money for me
to pay off the racketeer’s dyna
mite man so he’d leave us alone,
and they paid me $100 dollars a
day. The job was supposed to be
done in three days.
“July 3rd., 1907 was a gala day
for the rest of the town. The gam
blers and the dance hall girls lined
the hills to watch the fun. Our side
was routed, so we went back that
night to clean out the racketeers;
there was a fight all right. One man
on our side was hit over the head
with a club and some of the gang
sters who hadn’t been paid off
tried to get him arrested, along
with me. We managed to get back
to town and the next day started
in again to lay the tracks. This
time one of our men was shot and
killed; I got a bullet through my
coat. We appealed to the Marshall
and he sent a posse to arrest the
killer, but we had another worry
as well—the USS Saratoga was on
the way to Katalla with a load of
soldiers to stop the violence. We
had to finish the job, at least as
far as the mountain, before they
got there. We did, and then it was
all over.”
His christening In the rough
and tumble of frontier life fairly
complete, Jack McCord and a
partner spent the winters of 1907
and ’08 at Copper River, making
weather and glacier observations
for the railroad company. The year
following, he walked over the
trail from Valdez to Fairbanks, a
long walk of 460 miles. With his
partner, Dan McCarty, he walked
to Circle City and took a dog team
to the upper Koyukuk River, above
the Arctic Circle.
They explored and prospected
the Brooks Range and the area be
tween the Ghandalar and Koyukuk
Rivers in 1910 and ’ll, and the
partners mined in those parts for
two more years.
“On the Hammond River at a
place called Cold Foot (it was
nothing but a cabin) my partner
and I took out $107,000 and the
second largest nugget ever found
in Alaska. Our strike was at Liven
good. Dan and I sank the first
pay hole there. The gold taken
out of that country produced as
much as the United States paid
for Alaska. We worked our claim
for a while and then decided we
wanted to take a trip. So we sold
out for $50,000 each and went to
the 1915 World’s Fair in San Fran
cisco.
“I met a lovely young lady
there, Grace Doering. She was see
ing the fair with her mother. I
went back to adventuring in Alaska
and she went home to Cleveland,
Ohio, but we never forgot. Forty
two years later we were married.
“It was while I was night fore
man at a mine near Anchorage
that word came in January, 1920,
that Congress was legislating an
oil leasing bill. A fellow I knew
came by and said ‘Let’s stake
those oil deposits on the peninsula,
right across from Kodiak.’ So on
February fifth we came to Kodiak;
on February 20th. the bill passed
in Congress and we hired a boat to
take us over to the peninsula.
There were no surveys in that area
but we staked out our claim the
Jack McCord and horses at Sitkalidak.
McCords Island home at one time was a thriving cattle and sheep
ranch. The Island is one of the Kodiak Island group.
way most claims had to be made:
ten miles West of such a mountain
or three miles south of such a riv
er. After we made our claims we
still had to get leases and then try
to interest the oil companies in
sinking wells; they could afford the
huge investment necessary to do
this.”
Jack McCord got a power of at
torney for all the leasees and went
to the oil companies; they were
interested but told him the cur
rent Federal regulations were im
possible, that they could not af
ford the venture until new ones
were made.
Ten of the most prominant bus
inessmen of the West formed the
Westward Development Company
with A.S. Kerry as president and
Jack McCord as manager. The of
ficials of the company and Mr. Mc
cord went to Washington to pre
sent their case for new exploration
and new royalty regulations to the
Secretary of the Interior. The re
quest was successful and so ex-'
cited the businessmen of Seattle
with the promise of an Alaskan
boom in black gold that in a matter
of days one businessman was able
to oversubscribe investments for
a grand new hotel the Olympia.
The boom, unfortunately, never
came. Though the oil companies
came to Alaska, financed a major
survey, and their investments ran
high, the sudden oil boom in Cali
fornia drew them south where
closer, cheaper markets meant
higher profits.
In 1924 there came a chance to
explore the Aleutian Islands as
part of a great adventure: the
Army Air Force planned to make
the first flight around the world.
The limits of the flying machine
in that era were such that fre
quent stops were necessary and
along their route they needed to
touch down at Sitka, Seward, Chig
nik, Dutch Harbor, Atka and Attu.
The first lap was to be done in
pontoon planes and flares were
needed at every point. Mr. McCord
explained, “They had to change
engines every few hours. I was giv
ing scout information for these
landing plants. At Kanduk we had
to keep the ice broken all night
so the planes could land in the
morning. Of the four planes that
started from Seattle on April 6th.,
two finally made the complete ;
circuit on September 28th. Thirty
five years later, in 1959, there was
a reunion dinner to honor the sur- '
vivors, and posthumously, General '
Billy Mitchell who planned the
historic flight. I was invited and it
was one of the thrills of my life. <
“You know, when I met Billy
Mitchell in 1924 he sent me a let
ter in which he said he was proud <
to call himself an Alaskan, As a
young lieutenant he had put in
a telegraph line up around Gul
kana.”
There followed several years of
attempts to get the Aleutian Is
lands, which Mr. McCord felt
should be opened up to homestead
ing, out from under a rule that
kept the chain for bird refuge.
On the basis of knowledge gained
at the time of the ’round the world
flight, he went aboard the Unalga
on her annual summer cruise
through the Aleutians. On his re
turn, in characteristic fashion, Jack
McCord took the matter to an in
formal meeting of the Cabinet and
to President Coolidge himself. The
decision was swift: the Aleutian
chain was freed for homesteading.
But there was as yet no grazing
law to permit the McCord dream
of having Sitkalidak Island for fur
farming and ranching. Oddly
enough, in all the history of this
country there had never been a
grazing law of any sort though
one would surely have prevented
the bloody range wars of the early
West.
Jack McCord’s efforts to get a
grazing lease bill through Con
gress were finally realized; the
bill passed Congress on March 4th.,
1827.
“I had my own papers for Sitka
lidak Island waiting on the land
Bureau’s desk; it took a little
while to get through but now I
could settle there and raise foxes
and cattle and sheep as I’d hoped
and planned to do for so long.”
Writers at the time gave Mr. Mc
Cord full credit for pushing the
fur lease and grazing bills through
Congress. They were in his interest
but in the interest of all Alaskans,
and of the ranchers to the south
as well. In telling the story of this
legislation Mr. McCord says, “I
think the reason Washington lis
tened to me was that I have always
gone there on my own, and at my
own expense. I was never a lobby
ist in the sense that other interest
groups are because I was never
in anybody’s pay; that’s unusual
in Washington.
“Sometimes,” he said, “I think
the difficulties in my life have
been the most fun—without dif
ficulties I would never have gone
to Washington, D.C., or many of
:he places I’ve gone, nor would I
lave met so many of the people
t’ve known. It never ceases to
imaze me how a prospector and
•ancher from the north can have
cnown presidents and cabinet
nembers, judges and senators—
ill those famous people. It’s been
m interesting world and lots of
un.”
In the years following Jack Mc
Cord spent most of his time build
ng his herds on Sitkalidak; he es
ablished a trading post and a post
>ffice by the name of McCord on
lis island, and to this day mail
iddressed to him at McCord,
\laska, will reach him, though a
letter may not go by way of the
island. o
In the 1940’s with the coming
of the war, homesteaders were
ordered off the islands, Sitkalidak
and the Aleutians. Jack McCord
made some trips back and forth
from Kodiak to Sitkalidak, guided
through the mine fields, to slaugh
ter the cattle herd he had pain
stakingly built up. He spent some
of these years in the east; the
highlight of the year 1954 was his
initiation into the famed Explar
er’s Club at the invitation and
sponsorship ot Lowell Thomas,
Rex Beach and Karl Loman.
In 1947 the Sub-Committee of
Territorial and Insular Posses
sions held hearings in Washington
on the practicality of statehood
for Alaska. It was one of many
such hearings along the torturous
route to statehood and to it were
invited Alaskans who had played
important parts in the accomplish
ed fact of development of the
territory. Jack McCord appeared
and presented unique and sound
ideas for the further settling of
the northland, and its economic
development.
The years passed, business ven
tures, restocking his ranch, a mis
sion in Mexico for the govern
ment, and finally in 1957, forty
two years after their first meeting,
his marriage in London to Grace
Doering, the lovely lady, who in
her own right is a prominant law
yer.
The marriage had all the fea
tures of a romantic tale. Here was
a gentle women of note, then
President of the National Women
Lawyers of the United States,
their delegate to the American
Bar Association’s 80th. Annual
Conference, and the handsome ad
venturer—rancher from the North,
marrying amid the flury and pomp
of an international conference.
There was the Queen’s garden
party at Buckingham Palace, there^
were receptions and dinners, as
banquet addressed by the Honor
able Winston Churchill himself,
and the wedding at Caxton Hall
with an honor guard of handsome
Marines and the American Ambas
sador to give the bride away.
Later that same year Jack Mc
Cord was back in Alaska, this time
looking into the possibilities of
oil developments in the Arctic
should the government approve
opening up some 40,000 acres ad
jacent to the Navy oil reserve
lands. He pushed to get it done
and it was done, as well as the
scale to private investors of drill
ing equipment no longer needed
by the Navy.
This might be the end of the
story (as told here it is only part
of the story) but as long as Jack
McCord lives there will be some
thing doing, some star somewhere,
and a wagon that needs hitching.
Who is the pretty graduate?
From the files of the Kodiak
Mirror