Alaska, Ho!

ON A FREEZING NIGHT IN MAY 1935, SEVERAL HUNDRED people arrived at the American Legion in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, for a farewell ceremony. Community members gathered to celebrate a dozen families from the region who were departing for Alaska. One by one, couples with a few children were called forward, including the Soyks of Minocqua, the Wordens of Three Lakes, and the Sextons of Pelican Lake. The master of ceremonies finally introduced the family of William and Lulubelle Bouwen. An unemployed butcher, Mr. Bouwen led the way with a toddler on his hip, followed by his spouse and eight other children. After a few moments, two other Bouwen children rushed into the hall. The elder, fifteen-year-old Eunice, had attempted to run away with her boyfriend earlier that evening. The commotion and sheer size of William and Lulubelle’s family brought laughter and applause. After the gathering, the emigrants boarded a train destined for the port of Seattle. Arville Schaleben—a young journalist who recognized a good story—climbed aboard the train, determined to keep a close eye on the Bouwen family.¹

The Bouwens’ mighty brood formed the largest of sixty-seven families from Wisconsin who had been selected for a special federal government program. The program had two goals: to alleviate the crushing unemployment crisis in the upper Midwest and to help populate the sparsely settled northern territory. Purchased from Russia in 1867, Alaska Territory in 1930 had a population of sixty thousand, slightly larger than Madison’s—split evenly between indigenous people and whites.² Colonel Otto F. Ohlson, manager of the Alaska Railroad, proposed the idea of an agricultural resettlement project to Harold Ickes, the US secretary of the interior. Ohlson argued that increasing the population around Anchorage (just 2,736 residents in the 1930 census) could help the government-owned railroad operate in the black. This bold idea appealed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.³

Twenty-eight-year-old Arville Schaleben was working at the Milwaukee Journal’s downtown office when the Federal Emergency Relief Administration announced a farm resettlement program in Alaska’s Matanuska Valley. Government officials were limiting the government program to citizens of northern Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, with preference given to families of northern European descent who might be “fitted by living habits” to the northern latitude.⁴ Schaleben recalled a coworker exclaiming, “Just think how history would have been enriched if there’d been a reporter on the Mayflower. … We’ve got to go with our people and live with them!” To Schaleben, this was an attractive possibility. Throughout the summer of 1935, with Schaleben reporting from the field, the newspaper would emphasize how the coverage was contributing to the historical record.⁵

The Milwaukee Journal offered the most comprehensive news coverage in the state, with reporters across Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula, but embedding a correspondent with the far-flung emigrants was an expensive endeavor for the publication, which tended to focus on more serious news. The newspaper was thriving, with a weekday circulation of 179,000.⁶ Yet the news industry was in the throes of rapid change. Harry Grant, the newspaper’s publisher, was competing with radio, newsreels, and glossy illustrated magazines. He was also squared off against two Hearst-owned newspapers—the Milwaukee Sentinel and the Evening Wisconsin—that were filled with sensational stories, gossip columns, and comics.⁷ Publishers recognized that sensationalism sold papers. In the opening months of 1935, for instance, millions of Americans were glued to coverage surrounding the trial of Bruno Hauptmann for the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby. Columnist H. L. Mencken acerbically suggested that the nonstop coverage was “the biggest story since the Resurrection.”⁸ The Milwaukee Journal understood that it needed to provide Depression-weary readers with human interest stories. Stories about modern-day pioneers from Ashland and Abrams headed to Alaska might be a good fit.

Northern Wisconsin residents were familiar with hard times. The seventeen-county cutover region was in an economic free fall, characterized by high In 1927, 2.5 million acres across northern Wisconsin—about one-quarter of the region’s land—was for sale for nonpayment of taxes. The scale of human suffering was immense. Historian Robert Gough demonstrated how in Price County, a representative northern county, one in six residents was on relief by the mid-1930s. Concurrently, policy makers developed a new economic vision for the region’s future: in their view, tourism and reforestation offered the best hope for improving conditions. Yet that future was years away. In the meantime, several government programs encouraged cutover farmers to seek a different future by relocating.