Today's Looking Back can be found here.

Today, Loomis Armored is one of the world's largest armored car companies. But what you might not know is that company got its start here in the far north. The following article from the May 14, 2000 edition of the Heartland magazine explains:

Legacy of armored car began in the gold rush

Editor's note: "Things Alaskan" focuses on Alaska and polar life as shown through library and museum collections.

By RONALD K. INOUYE

Development of the West Coast armored car business is linked to Alaska's Gold Rush days and the experiences of Lee B. "Ike" Loomis in Dawson, Fairbanks, Solomon, Cleary, Takotna, McGrath, Valdez and the Copper River delta. He developed the armored car industry on the West Coast and founded the Loomis Security Co. The company's service in Alaska continues today as the Loomis, Fargo Security Service.

Born June 24, 1870, Loomis was part of a pioneering family from Elm Hall, Mich. Moving to South Dakota, Lee switched from helping in his father's general store to taking care of livestock. Married in 1890 to Jennie M. Jones, he and his wife moved to Seattle, where they operated a feed business until 1897. Seeking adventure in the Alaska Gold Rush, he came north to Dyea on the S.S. Mexico in 1897.

Loomis headed over the Chilkoot Trail to Lake Bennett. He and partner Billy Hensell earned money helping others pack over the Chilkoot. He and brother-in-law Charley Jones took horses to Skagway where they freighted. The next spring, after the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad was completed, he, Jones and another brother-in-law drove 20 calves and 22 pigs and carried groceries and supplies to Dawson to open a business.

Later, Lee started other businesses in the gold strike towns of Nome and Fairbanks. In 1905 with Jones, he started the successful Cleary Creek Commercial Co. known as the "4-Cs." For several years they packed supplies in and out of the Cleary Creek mines.

It was during those early years while other delivery businesses charged 1 to 1.5 cents per pound for delivery that the "4-Cs" offered the first free delivery service to the mines. While returning from the mines with gold, Loomis is said to have conceived the idea of a more secure vehicle to transport valuables as a business.

In 1942, Oregonian reporter Bonnie Wiley recounted, "It was in Alaska, blustery, frozen land of quick fortunes, that the idea occurred to Lee Loomis, a sourdough who carried thousands of dollars in gold dust and bullion from station to station by dog sled, pursued over the crusted snows by the constant threat of robbery, which luckily never ever took him."

In 1938, Oregon Journal columnist John J. Reddin placed the year of Loomis' idea at 1904, "... while hauling gold and supplies by dog team in the Kuskokwim area during the early-day Alaska Gold Rush."

Loomis took charge of the Julia B, a Yukon River boat, in 1908, and his wife and family joined him in Fairbanks. For the next 12 years he continued working at various ventures, some successful and others not. During this time his wife died. In 1922 he took charge of the Northern Commerical Co. trading posts in Takotna and McGrath. Serving as the Kuskokwim region postmaster, he hired a clerk, Grace A. Anderson, who became his second wife. These were his concluding Alaska ventures as three years later he returned permanently to the Pacific Northwest.

On April 13, 1925, Loomis founded the Loomis Armored Car Service in Portland, Ore. Although armored cars were developed on the East coast in 1917, they were not widely used in the Northwest. With $8,000 of his Alaska money, Loomis bought a wide chassis and commissioned a Portland carriage company to build an armored body on it; this was the first commercial armored car built west of Chicago.

As automobiles became more common during the "Roaring '20s," they served as getaway vehicles for robbers, making obsolete the traditional method of unprotected foot messengers delivering commercial deposits to the banks. Loomis' first customer was the Federal Reserve Bank in Portland followed by other banks. Business was slow for several years until 1927 when an epidemic of violent crime struck Portland, and businesses recognized the value of an armored car service.

Loomis expanded to Vancouver, British Columbia, then moved the corporate headquarters to Seattle in 1932. Incorporated in 1936, the Loomis Armored Car Service expanded to California.

Loomis remained connected to Alaska and the Yukon as did many of his era through the "Alaska-Yukon Society" composed of Outside former residents who met regularly. A four-day, 1939 Oakland, Calif., reunion attracted close to 3,000 sourdoughs who elected Loomis as president.

Returning from a national armored car convention in Florida, Loomis died April 1, 1949, in Charleston, N.C.

The Loomis legacy was appropriately honored when the first pick-up of gold from the Fort Knox Gold Mine along Cleary Creek was made in 1996 by Loomis, Fargo, & Co., a testimony to Loomis' early years. And the continuing Loomis legacy in Fairbanks is represented by the two-story L.B. Loomis cabin in Gold Rush Town at Alaskaland.

Today's Looking Back can be found here.

From the May 9, 1985 News-Miner:

Coke pops open new formula

ATLANTA (AP)—Coca-Cola Co. officials returned Wednesday to the area where the first Coke was sold exactly 99 years ago for a home-town introduction of the new formula they hope will keep the soft drink atop the industry.

Thousands of Atlantans emptied out of downtown office buildings for the celebration, which included free samples of the "new taste of Coke," performances by the Hamid-Morton Shrine Circus, a fireworks display and red and white balloons.

Protesters also were present, saying they preferred the original formula.

"No product has ever been as much a part of the fiber of a city than Coke has been with Atlanta," Bill Hoffman, president of the Atlanta Coca-Cola Bottling Co., told the crowd.

The celebration was held in Atlanta's Central City Park, which had been renamed just two days earlier in honor of Robert W. Woodruff, the late Coca-Cola chairman credited with the aggressive marketing that made the soft drink an international product.

Just one block away from the park, the first Coke was sold May 8, 1886, at what then was Jacob's Pharmacy. The formula, which remained the same until the new formula was introduced April 24 in New York, was developed by Atlanta pharmacist John Pemberton.

While Coke officials invoked the company's history in kicking off its new formula, loyalists to the old Coke formula turned to the same history for slogans to protest the change.

"Dr. Pemberton, where are you when we need you?" read a sign carried by Posty Duncan of Atlanta. On the flip side of her sign was the message, "Our children will never know refreshment," a reference to the earliest Coke advertisements that billed the drink as "delicious and refreshing."

"I just don't like it at all," Duncan said. "To me, it tastes like a Diet Pepsi. It has a metallic aftertaste."

Duncan was one of more than a dozen sign-toting loyalists to the original formula who turned out.

One woman, who refused to give her name but identified herself as the president of the Society for the Preservation of the Real Thing, carried a sign which said: "Forgive them, Mr. Woodruff. They know not what they do."

The "new taste of Coke," however, was advertised on banners strung from office towers and pulled behind airplanes, on flags flapping from every utility pole in sight, on 75,000 souvenir bottons passed out to the crowd, on a blimp and on a car and robot.

For today's Looking Back, click here.

Even in 1935, this time of year was one for the grads. From the May 9, 1935 News-Miner:

SIXTEEN WILL GET DEGREES THIS SPRING

MORE WOMEN THAN MEN IN GRADUATING CLASS WHICH WILL RECEIVE DEGREES ON MAY 20.

(Farthest North Collegian)

Taking their places on the commencement stage May 20 will be sixteen seniors, representing the thirteenth graduating class of the Alaska Agricultural College and School of Mines. They are distinguished inasmuch as they will be the last graduates to receive their degrees while the institution bears that name. The graduates next year will have University of Alaska on their diplomas.

Outside of the years 1924 and 1925 when one woman represented each of those two graduating classes, this is the first time that there have been more women than men candidates for graduation. The Class of 1935 has 10 women and 6 men. It is also the second largest class, having four less than last year's class of 20.

Of the 16 members, only 4 are from the states, the other 12 being registered from various Alaska localities.

Representing six of the nine departments in the College, cap and gown aspirants this year are divided into the following group of majors:

Business Administration ... 6

Arts and Letters ... 4

School of Mines ... 3

Civil Engineering ... 1

Home Economics ... 1

General Science ... 1

For today's Looking Back, click here.

50 years ago, the world was abuzz with the revelation that an American spy plane — the U-2 — had been shot down over the Soviet Union. The pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was put on trial by the Soviet Union and later exchanged for a Soviet spy. The shootdown wasn't unique, however, as this story from the May 6, 1960 News-Miner illustrates:

12 American Planes Have Been Shot Down

WASHINGTON, May 6, (AP)—The U.S. plane reported shot down by Russia Sunday is the 12th American aircraft lost in encounters with Russian or satellite forces during the last 10 years of the cold war.

Additionally there have been a number of brushes in the Korean and Formosa Strait areas that apparently involved no direct Russian responsibility.

The first of the major cold war incidents occurred in April 1950, when an unarmed Navy patrol plane was shot down over the Baltic Sea.

Another Navy patrol plane disappeared over international waters off Siberia after Soviet planes fired on it in November 1951.

In 1952, the Air Force lost two reconnaissance planes over the Sea of Japan, apparently nearer the Japanese island of Hokkaido than to the Siberian coast.

Attacks in 1953

In March and July of 1953, the Air Force lost another reconnaissance bomber over the Sea of Japan and still another plane of the same type was attacked by Russian fighters about 25 miles from the coast of Kamchatka in the norhtern Pacific.

In 1954, a Navy fighter was damaged by Soviet marked planes, the Navy lost another patrol bomber some 40 miles from the Siberian coast, and the Air Force reported the shooting down of a B-29 over the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido.

Two Navy patrol aircraft were lost in the Pacific area in 1955. A Neptune patrol bomber crash landed near St. Lawrence Island on the American side of the U.S.-Russian boundary in the Bering Sea in June. A Navy Mercator patrol craft was shot down in the East China Sea about 160 miles north of Formosa.

Transports Shot Down

Two Air Force planes, both in the transport category, were shot down in Soviet Armenia not far from the Turkish border in 1958. All nine crew members of the first plane bailed out and landed safely in Turkey. Of the 17 men aboard the second plane, only six were accounted for by the return of their bodies by the Russians. The Soviets have disclaimed knowledge about the fate of the others.

In 1958, two Air Force reconnaissance bombers were fired on in November, one over the Baltic and over the Sea of Japan. Both planes survived the attacks.

The last known incident prior to the one reported yesterday by Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev was the attack by Soviet type jet fighters on a Navy patrol plane over the Sea of Japan. The American craft, though damaged, returned to its base in Japan.

Today's Looking Back can be found here.

In the days of pioneer Alaska, a town knew it had made it if it had a post office. Post offices were (and still are in towns and villages) a place where folks could meet and discuss the latest news, sell or trade furs and goods, and let folks Outside know you were still alive. Post offices were an economic boost as well; government money paid a salary that wouldn't otherwise be in the community, injecting money into the local economy. The need to ship mail meant government contracts for hauling, too, meaning others would benefit as well.

But when the boom times ended and folks moved on, there wasn't as much need for a post office any more. In the towns around Fairbanks, the post offices closed down as the population declined and improved transportation meant fewer people could cover more ground. From the April 26, 1910 News-Miner:

OLNES OFFICE IS ABANDONED

No Longer Sufficient Business on Lower Dome to Justify P.O.

LAST MAIL OUT TOMORROW

Mrs. Wm. Dick, nee Mrs. Dora N. Anderson, was Only Postmaster.

On the recommendation of the postoffice inspector, who visited the camp last summer, the office at Olnes has been abandoned, business not being sufficient to justify its continuance. The last mail that will go to the Olnes office will be dispatched on the train tomorrow morning.

When the office at Olnes was provided for three years ago, Mrs. Dora M. Anderson, now Mrs. William Dick, was appointed postmistress. She is now on the Outside and as the abandonment of the office was contemplated no successor has been oppointed since her departure.

For today's Looking Back, click here.

From the March 5, 1960 News-Miner:

THE POLAR BEAR — Here are a batch of interesting statistics given by Bob Rausch, game management biologist for the state, at a recent meeting of the Alaska Conservation Society:

The animals are circumpolar; are hunted as seal predators off Norway, for food by the Canadian Eskimos, are probably protected by the Russians, and are used for food and game in Alaska.

Kills in Alaska have averaged over the past five years a total of 160 per annum; highest was 226 in 1959. But 400 to 500 are killed yearly in Canada, and 150 to 300 in Norway.

The "average" polar bear is killed 52 miles off the Alaskan coast, although Eskimos rarely venture more than 15 miles off shore in quest of the white bear. The high average comes from far-at-sea, air hunting by trophy seekers.

Natives mostly hunt in November, December and January; the trophy hunters go after their animals in March and April.

No accurate total population figures, for either Alaska or the entire polar area, are available.

Studies indicate the Alaskan take is not excessive and the bears are in no danger of being wiped out.

And, finally, if you are a non-resident, it will cost you $150 to hunt between Oct. 15 and May 1; if you are a resident, you can shoot a bear — except a sow with cubs — at any time of the year if your purpose is food.

* * *

CHALLENGE ISSUED — University of Alaska students have issued a challenge to collegians around the world with their entry of a hard-shelled quadruped in the first international, intercollegiate turtle race.

The intercollegiate turtle race is being sponsored by University of Detroit students during their spring carnival to raise funds for various student-organization projects. Six trophies are offered in the IITR.

In accepting the entry invitation, Ken Kareen, president of Associated Students, University of Alaska, requested that the Detroit collegians secure a turtle for the ASUA collegians as none are indiginous to the farthest north state. Kareen also asked that the ASUA turtle be named "Nanook."

The ASUA challenge added "Trusting you and your good judgment in selecting fast racing turtles, we assume that Nanook will bolt from the starting gate and flash across the finish line. However, we wish to express our fears that a turtle with such a ferocious name, if not warned ahead of time as to the object of the game, might turn it into an elimination contest. If this should take place, we are certain that Nanook will eliminate all other contenders.

* * *

LOW BUFFALO LOSSES — Buffalo losses from the Fort Greely-Delta herd during the past winter were at an abnormal low of only one calf which became ill last fall and had to be destroyed.

Normally several buffalo have to be destroyed due to illness or undernourishment. The bison have fared extremely well and there should be more yearlings this spring than in many years.

Fort Greely has hosted several hundred buffalo in past years. They often camp on door steps and peer into windows. MP's have had to route the bison away from doorsteps and sidewalks so children could get to school.

The buffalo have wintered in the area of the old Richardson Highway between Delta Junction and Big Delta. Occasionally small groups of buffalo were seen on the post.

No white buffalo has been found in the herd as yet. Biologists feel that one may be born this year. At least two organizations are interested in finding a white calf.

Today's Looking Back can be found here.

From the May 5, 1985 News-Miner:

Pilot-trapper tracks the challenges of the wolf hunt

By DAVID FOSTER

Associated Press Writer

McGRATH—The lone wolf must have chased the moose up and down the frozen river for days, never daring to close in for fear of being trampled.

Lucky Egrass, studying the animals' tracks from the cockpit of his skiplane, could only guess at that part of the story. But the end was marked clearly by a bloodstain on the snow.

The exhausted moose had fallen in open water and drowned, Egrass says. Half its body stuck up through the ice, and the wolf was gnawing off shreds of flesh.

At the sound of the airplane, the wolf bolted. Egrass says he tracked the wolf for miles, finally landing beside it on a frozen swamp. He leaped out of the plane, grabbed a rifle and killed the fleeing animal with a single shot.

Lucky Egrass hunts wolves, and he does it very well. This past winter, he shot 18.

What he does is legal. In every other state, where wolves are rare or nonexistent, the remaining few are protected by law and cherished as symbols of wilderness that used to be. But in Alaska, there is yet enough wilderness to hide 6,000 to 10,000 of the predators.

Government officials here allow, even encourage, the killing of wolves. Sometimes they participate in the activity themselves, shooting the animals from airplanes and helicopters. Since 1975, Alaska has spent nearly $1 million on "aerial wolf control" and has killed about 1,300 animals.

This pleases many Alaskans who see wolves as vermin, killers of moose and caribou that might otherwise live to be hunted by humans. But the killing enranges other people, most of whom live Outside in more heavily populated places. They say Alaska's wolves must be protected to keep them from meeting the same fate as wolves elsewhere.

The controversy, one of Alaska's hottest, has made Egrass wary.

"You anti-wolf hunting?" he asks bluntly when approached for an interview. His round face is impassive, his stare as penetrating as that of the predator he hunts. He would prefer not to become prey himself.

"I don't really like to talk about wolf hunting in town. You don't know who's sitting around, who's listening, who's checking on what."

Things have changed since the 1950s, when a dead wolf was worth a $50 bounty. Wolves were poisoned, shot, trapped, snared, and even strafed by planes with guns mountedo n the wing struts. Egrass remembers watching local men return from wolf-hunting flights. One winter they killed nearly 350 wolves.

Egrass was a child then. Now, at 27, he sometimes rues not being born two decades earlier. "Back in the old days, in the '60s, the wolf hunter was the hero," he says. "Now the wolf hunter is a bad guy."

Poisoning was banned first, because of danger to other animals. Then, in 1968, the bounties were stopped. In the 1970s, aerial hunting by private pilots was banned.

That leaves conventional hunting, trapping, and the method Egrass uses: "land-and-shoot trapping." Hunters in Alaska may not shoot animals on the same day they fly over an area. But licensed trappers may track animals from the air and start shooting as soon as they land and stop the airplane.

Opponents of this method say it is slaughter, violating all tenets of sportsmanship. But Egrass says it is a difficult, dangerous way to kill wolves. "They don't stand out in the open and wait for you. I've seen dozens and dozens of wolf hunters come through here. Very seldom do you see them get anything."

Land-and-shoot trapping demands two abilities especially useful on the modern frontier: straight shooting and skillful flying. Lucky Egrass is adept at both.

He grew up in this Kuskokwim River town, population 500 and the largest settlement for 150 miles around. There are no roads out of town — just miles and miles of spruce forest, winding rivers, muskegs and mountains.

At 13, Egrass hunted alone for moose. At 15, he bought a used airplane with money made from trapping and odd jobs. At 16, he flew his first solo flight. At 17, he shot his first wolf.

Today he works as a public safety officer, one of McGrath's two policemen.

In his spare time, he flies his Piper PA-11, a single-engine mosquito of a plane good for quick landings and takeoffs. His hunting range covers 18,000 square miles, an area larger than Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island combined.

He shares this rugged territory with 11 wolf packs, each containing 7 to 17 members. Egrass knows where the packs are and where they are likely to go. He even has names for some—the Folger Gang, the Untouchables, the Dillinger Gang.

Winter is wolf-hunting season, when snow and ice turn swamps into landing strips, and tracks in snow betray the wolves' passing.

Egrass follows the tracks until they connect to wolves, then trails the animals from about 1,000 feet up. He waits for them to enter an opening in the forest, then quickly points his plane downward, trying to land before the wolves regain the safety of the woods.

"There are so many things to watch for. You don't want to fly into anything. You've got to watch how fast the animals are moving. You've got to have your landing spot picked out. And you've got to land your airplane right on that spot when they break."

In good conditions, the plane skids to a stop within 250 feet. From the back seat he grabs a .25-caliber bolt-action rifle with a telescopic sight. There is also a smaller .22-caliber rifle to finish off wolves that aren't killed instantly. He rarely uses the smaller gun.

Within seconds, Lucky Egrass can kill as many as three wolves as they streak for cover at speeds approaching 30 mph.

This year's take of 18 wolves was a good one. The snow was deep and the wolves were slow. Even so, the economics hardly justified the effort, he says.

A pelt fetches $250 to $500, but Egrass figures he spends four hours airborne for each wolf killed, and a day's fuel can cost $120. The costs rise further when he adds the $17,000 invested over three years to rebuild his vintage 1947 airplane.

But there are other reasons to hunt one of the craftiest of all predators. "It's a challenge. It's an art. Flying and hunting combined is one of the better huntings I can ever think of."

And killing wolves is a community service, he says. About 75 percent of McGrath's families depend on shooting at least one moose each year for food. In other villages, the percentage approaches 100 percent.

Most McGrath residents support what Egrass does. In December, a local advisory group asked the state Board of Gmae to let state aerial hunters kill still more of the area's moose-eating wolves.

But in the cities of Anchorage and Juneau, where more than half Alaska's population resides, sentiment runs against the wolf hunts. Under pressure from wildlife protection groups, the state this winter suspended aerial wolf hunts in two areas of Interior Alaska. And now a lawsuit is challenging Egrass' brand of land-and-shoot trapping, claiming it is an illegal form of predator control.

The arguments rage on, as they have for years. But Lucky Egrass no longer pays attention to the people who oppose what he does. He has killed more wolves than most of them will ever see.

"They need to come out here for a winter, see the packs and how they operate," he says. "A lot of them would see a need for wolf control."

City dwellers don't appreciate the immensity of Alaska's wilderness, Egrass is convinced. "In this country up here, you can fly four or five hours without seeing another house or a street.

"There's no way we're going to go out there and exterminate the wolves. It would be impossible. The reason they don't have wolves in the rest of the country is because they've built massive cities and roads all over the place, not because of hunting. That one year they killed 350, they never did hurt the country. We've still got wolves now, and we'll have wolves forever."

Today's Looking Back can be found here.

Sometimes it's just a slow news day. From the April 20, 1910 News-Miner:

SKIRT SUITED HIM PERFECTLY

Malamute Chose a Beautiful Silk Skirt at Simson Brothers.

MATCHES HIS COMPLEXION

Was Reposing on One of the Latest Importations From Outside.

Members of the firm of Simson Bros. have this week been the recipients of several queries as to the reason of their unusual care for the comfort of their dog; and this merely because the poor animal was cold the other day. On Sunday morning the large malamute which they left in the store over night evidently decided that one of the large south windows fronting on Second Avenue, where are displayed the ladies' furnishings, would be about the proper place to sun himself. Accordingly he climbed into the window, and selecting a fine silk skirt that matched his complexion he pulled it down, and making himself a neat nest went peacefully to sleep, forming such a decoration as rarely graces the window of a dry goods store.

Today's Looking Back can be found here.

When you think about the hazards involved in traveling to and across Alaska in the early days of the 20th century, you typically think of overland travel — dog sleds, stages, and things like that. You don't typically think about the ships bringing passengers to Alaska, even though traveling on them was at times even more hazardous than trips through the trackless tundra. This editorial from the April 26, 1910 edition of the News-Miner illustrates some of the hazards of ocean travel during those first days:

VALDEZ-SEATTLE TRAVEL.

People of Tanana who go down to the sea in ships on their journeys to and from the Outside have an idea of the importance of the work done in Washington by Governor Clark in obtaining aids to navigation for Alaska in the shape of lighthouses and lights, but few of them have kept a list of the Alaska boats which have been wrecked, or remember how many of them have gone to the bottom. The following from the Juneau Record is in order:

While it would not be fair to say all of the ships destroyed in Alaska through having been wrecked could have avoided destruction had the waterways been lighted as they should have been, still it is a fact that many would not have encountered the fate they did while ploughing through the unlighted passages, if the Government had provided proper aids to navigation. Not long ago an old-timer recalled the following vessels, all destroyed within the past 12 years:

The Clara Nevada, during the Klondike boom, between Skagway and Juneau.

The Discovery, while en route south from Valdez.

The Oregon, on Hinchinbrooke Island.

The Lauranda, south of Ketchikan.

The Centennial.

The Saratoga, near Ellamar.

The Cutch, in Lynn Canal.

The Mariechen, in Chatham Strait.

The Islander, below Juneau.

The Mexico, in Dixon's Entrance.

The Columbia, cannery bark, near Unalaska.

Star of Bengal, a cannery boat.

The Ohio, south of Ketchikan.

The Wolcott, seven miles from Kodiak.

Charles D. Lane, while southward bound from Nome.

The Willipa, near Ketchikan.

The Tillamook, near Kodiak.

The Farallon, in Illiamna bay.

The Yucatan, in Icy Straits.

The list as it appears above is not a complete one, men who follow shipping could undoubtedly add others to it, but, even as it stands it shows the grave necessity there exists for protection to the vessels employed in the Alaska trade.

The wonder is that it is not twice as large.

In spring 1910, one of the big stories was the poor fur harvest that winter. Though the cause was unknown, most folks pointed to one big factor: the use of poison by some trappers. This article from the April 28, 1910 News-Miner explains:

RECKLESS POISONING OF FUR-BEARING ANIMALS

Promiscuous Distribution of Poison Has Devastated the Entire Country—Trappers Come in Empty-Handed—Not a Track in Great Districts That Formerly Swarmed With Fur-Bearing Denizens.

It is more than depressing to see the trappers come in empty handed this spring. It is sufficient to cause an outburst of righteous indignation from any fair-minded person, when it is realized that the state of affairs is due to a promiscuous slaughtering of the fur bearing animals through poison by persons too lazy or unskilled to trap them, whose vandalism has desolated the entire country.

When poison is put out for a fox or other animal it usually happens that only about one out of five that eat the bait die where the poisoner finds them. The others wander off and die, and being eaten by other denizens of the woods in turn spread death to another circle. This is plainly evident when the scarcity of ravens is noted; these black scavengers having been almost entirely clean out of the country.

Trappers that two years ago came in with 100 lynx skins, this season have perhaps one or two. One man in fact who had spent the winter on the Kantishna did not have a skin to his credit. Estimates on the returns from the traps are to the effect that there is not one-tenth of 1 percent of the lynx available this spring that were taken two years ago.

So far but two silver fox skins have come into town; these from the McKinley district, and where in previous years hundred of foxes wrote their records on the snow, not a track was to be seen this last winter, the work of the poisoner having been of sweeping effectiveness.

The head of the Nenana and the Little Delta were heretofore the best fox trapping districts, but both are now blanks.