The Buzby Family -- An Alaska Pioneer Family

Faces of Alaska: Elton Buzby

I don't know as, unless on special occasions, that we've ever ate so good, laughed, sang and played music, with quite the emotion that we did when we was young.

In the early days, in the winter time, traveling was mostly on the rivers. Built up ice, y'know, so that it would hold heavy equipment for wood hauling and various other things. It put a lot of people to work. Steamboats had to have wood to operate up and down the river. Then were many, 'many people engaged in cutting wood and piling it on the edge of the bank, hoping the flood wouldn't carry it away before the steamers could get it. People were different then, too. It was a period when people were concerned about each other, neighbor helping neighbor. Now some are concerned, but it's not the same.

My Dad, he came up to Nome before the storm of 1900. He fell into the Fairbanks area in 1905 and it's been our home ever since. My Dad was interested in mining, of course, that was his main reason for coming north. He came into the Circle country in 1903 from Skagway out from Dawson, and worked for the Berry & Hamlin people. He hunted for them because the only way they had to survive was eating wild meat.

Then he came into Fairbanks. He put a pack on his back and started from Cushman Street, where the bridge is, and headed for the hills, putting in a trail for a double-ender. A double-ender was a sled thirty inches wide and it had a turn-up at each end. It was flat and you could hook a rope between two or three and handle about two hundred fifty to three hundred pounds on each. One horse could take as many as two, three, or maybe four double-enders and stay right up on top of the snow. He made that Bonnefield trail over to the Alaska Range for the Berry & Hamlin people. They mined in the Gold King area until the flood of 1912 or 1913. Then all that area down there was flooded. Water filled in all the creeks and everything else, and washed Red Rodger's quartz mill on the Wood River right off the hill. There was nothing salvageable left. Then that country grew back and the first time I was out there, you'd never know there had been anybody around.

In the early days, we had one of the first fur farms. We had mink, and tried raising marten, and we had lots of foxes. My Dad bought live furs for stocking the Alaska Silver Fox and Fur Farm in Lake Placid, New York. We learned how to buy, and spent quite a lot of time going all over Alaska buying fur.

We learned about raising a garden, too. We had one of the first homesteads that was ever taken up in Fairbanks, out where Fort Wainwright is now. We cultivated wild berries and had a big cellar where we kept produce all year round. It was always full and we always sold some produce, too. We'd hitch up a team of horses, load the wagon with vegetables and head out to the mining claims, out toward Chatanika. We'd always sell out before we'd get to Chatanika. We'd meet just hundreds of people. There were thousands of people out there mining then. I was about six years old when I made the first trip and that would be about seventy years ago. It was a long, muddy damn trip, y'know, with those horses.

We always had lots of horses and other stock, so we had to learn about taking care of stock and feeding it. It was quite a chore. In the early days they used to drive stock in from Valdez, live, into Fairbanks where they had a big slaughterhouse. That was the only way to get fresh meat. They would have regular drives; a cattle boat would come up to Valdez, and then they'd drive 'em in. When they'd get here they'd have a lot of horses that the boys used for riding, some of them good and some of them not so good, and they'd hold an auction. We'd always take what money we had as kids and go down, and if a horse came up for bid we'd bid five dollars and eventually we'd get one.

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