В 1918 году охотник Генри Люкас заключил восьмилетнее партнерство с врачом для создания фермы лисиц на Аляске

Life in the Wilderness: The Henry Lucas Story — Part 2 Published 4:30 am Friday, September 4, 2026 AUTHOR’S NOTE: By the time Henry Lucas survived a ruptured appendix in the Tustumena benchlands in 1931, he had been in Alaska, primarily on the Kenai Peninsula, for nearly a quarter-century. He would spend nearly the rest of his life there. When Philadelphia stockbroker and rare-book collector Morris Longstreth Parrish hired a guide for an autumn 1912 hunt in the Kenai Mountains, part of the crew, led by Andy Simons, was a 28-year-old packer named Henry “Hank” Lucas. Parrish, nearing his mid-40s, may have been game for the rigors that lay ahead, but the demands of his everyday life in the stock market and book collecting had apparently not toughened him physically. In the hunting memoir he penned in 1913, Parrish spoke gratefully of how Lucas helped him survive his weeks in the wilderness. “I was tired out and could not have made the trip nearly so well, if at all, without Henry,” wrote Parrish. “He was always helping me with his arm or shoulder, steadying me over the hard places, and it was wonderful what a difference it made. It took away a lot of the anxiety I have had over the consequences of a false step, which a man with two good legs wouldn’t have.” In general, Parrish wrote glowingly of Henry Lucas, calling him “naturally observant and intelligent,” while adding background information and attempting characterization. He mentioned Lucas’s birthplace in Croatia (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and his path to Alaska in 1907, where he had immersed himself in prospecting, trapping and hunting. “He has a smooth face and jet-black hair,” Parrish said of Lucas. “Like all the others [speaking of the guides and other packers], he is very strong and covers a lot of ground, I think, faster than any of them. He is always pleasant, and nothing you ask him to do is any trouble. Talks but little and then only on something with which he is familiar. He is rather a rougher type than the others (excepting Fritz [Posth, another packer]), but he inspires one with his confidence.” It appears that Parrish and Lucas shared wide-ranging conversations, from the botanical to the spiritual. Parrish quoted Lucas on the topic of religion study: “It’s best to let the children be taught it, and then they can judge for themselves afterward.” Lucas, like other packers at that time, earned $5 a day for his difficult labors. This trip provided him with 60 days of steady income. Lucas had arrived in Seward at least as early as April 15, 1910, when he was counted as a resident during the enumeration of that year’s U.S. Census. His listed occupation was “miner,” the same as his two roommates, Andy Simons and John Smith, both immigrant Finns. About a year earlier, the Seward Weekly Gateway had reported that the trio, along with another prospector named Meehan, had been prospecting an undisclosed location on the Killey River. When exactly Lucas first came to Seward is unknown, but his connection to the Gateway City would eventually span more than 30 years. Two Lakes Prior to 1915, when he focused his activities by entering into a formal fox-farming partnership with William “Bill” Kaiser, Henry Lucas demonstrated the ability and the desire to roam far and wide in wild country to achieve his goals. On June 22, 1912, Kaiser traveled to the Seward Recording Office to file a claim on a quartz (hard-rock) location for Porcupine Creek (near the modern location of the Primrose Trail trailhead) on the upper end of Kenai Lake. According to paperwork associated with the claim, the mineral-bearing ledge (or vein) had been discovered and staked by Edward Frederick, Andy Simons and Henry Lucas. Kaiser was listed as their witness. Around this same time, someone — almost certainly Henry Lucas — filed on two 20-acre placer-mining claims near the mouth of Cottonwood Creek, which flows into Skilak Lake on its southern shore. The parcels were called the Lucas Placer Mining Claim and the Cottonwood Placer Mining Claim. Mining claims granted land use, under certain conditions, not ownership. Thus, as long as claim holders complied with mining rules, they could use the land and build structures on it relevant to their mining ventures. They would thereby own the structures but not the land. At the creek mouth, Lucas built a cabin, perhaps with the help of Kaiser, by 1913. The cabin was praised by big-game hunter E. Marshall Scull in his 1914 memoir. According to Scull, who hunted on the Kenai in 1913, the cabin was “a magnificent affair,” containing a ceiling “high enough for a man to stand upright … without hitting his head. A large bed … was built into one corner beside the door. On the opposite side of the door a stove had been set up and at the back of the cabin were a table, stools and storage place for the provisions on the numerous shelves. “The windows had real glass in them,” Scull continued, “one in the rear wall over the table and one in the smooth board door. The door was inscribed with the names of previous wayfarers who had accepted the silent hospitality of the place. Opposite the front of the cabin and about fifteen yards distant, a high cache … was designed to protect supplies from the porcupines and dogs.” By 1913, Henry Lucas also was operating on a third front: a trapping cabin on the upper reaches of King County Creek. Although the structure was essentially a trapline cabin serving primarily as shelter for Lucas as he worked his sets, Scull included it on the Skilak map in his memoir. It was also mentioned in a 1917 Max Jaeger article in Field & Stream Magazine and a 1923 diary entry from Cooper Landing resident George Nelson. Through at least 1914, Lucas continued to trap and to work on his shared mining claim on Porcupine Creek, but he was already moving in different directions. On Sept. 14, 1913, Kenai Peninsula game warden John A. Baughman delivered to Lucas hunting guide badge #3, thus making him one of the Kenai’s early licensed guides. Two days after receiving his badge, Lucas left with client Julius Fresser for a hunting trip in the mountains south of Skilak Lake. On March 23, 1915, Lucas and Kaiser formalized their fox-farming operation, headquartered at the mouth of Cottonwood Creek. Lucas was 31 years old, Kaiser about 27. On June 17, 1918, according to paperwork filed at the Seward Recording Office, Lucas and Kaiser — probably to solidify the finances of their operation — brought in a third partner, Seward physician Henry Oliver “H.O.” Schaleben. Dr. Schaleben agreed to furnish everything but the lumber for the construction of enclosures in which to keep the fur-bearing animals. He also agreed to supply Lucas and Kaiser with provisions beyond what they could grow in their large vegetable garden, catch from the Kenai River drainage or hunt in the Kenai Mountains. Additionally, Schaleben would pay a subsidy of $200 for each silver, gray or black fox placed on the fox farm by Lucas or Kaiser. For their part, Lucas and Kaiser agreed to build the enclosures, supply all logs and lumber necessary, be completely responsible for the care, raising and breeding of the foxes, and split the proceeds with the doctor — 50 percent to Schaleben and 25 percent each to Lucas and Kaiser. (Records also indicate that Dr. Schaleben, in 1918, sold half of his own share to his older brother, Wilhelm, a resident of Minnesota.) Unless the contract was terminated earlier, the deal among the men was legally designed to last for eight years — meaning until June 1923. The partnership did survive the full eight years, but four months later it was officially dissolved. TO BE CONTINUED….