AHS Blog

From Russia with Love – Celebrating the accomplishments of Russian mining engineer Peter Petrovich Doroshin

by Thomas K. Bundtzen

In April, 2014, the Alaska Mining Hall of Fame Foundation (AMHF) inducted Peter Petrovich Doroshin into its organization during a ceremony held at the foundation’s museum in Fairbanks. To many familiar with the late Russian-American period, Doroshin is credited with finding the first, albeit small, concentrations of placer gold on the Kenai Peninsula in 1848, but he was never able to develop a commercial scale mining operation. Some historians have thus concluded that the Russian mining engineer failed in his attempt to diversify the economy of the far-flung Russian colony in North America.

Doroshin’s activities in Russian America were far more comprehensive than just prospecting for placer gold. During his five-year assignment with the Russian America Company, the bright, energetic mining engineer secured structural-quality stone for improvements to building foundations in Sitka and Kodiak and located high-quality marble for ornamental stone applications. He provided detailed analysis of coal resources through coastal regions of Alaska from Southeast to north of Kotzebue. This work eventually led to the brief development of a coal mine at Port Graham on the Kenai Peninsula, which operated at a small scale from 1857 to about 1861. He oversaw mineral exploration north of Cook Inlet and in the Yakataga area, using information provided by native prospectors. While conducting extensive field examinations of Alaska’s geology, Doroshin secured some of the first fossils ever collected in Alaska, and shipped the collections to museums in Europe. He provided some of the first descriptions of the elusive but highly profitable ‘ice-mining’ ventures near Sitka and Kodiak, which provided ice for food preservation applications in the gold rush boom town of San Francisco. Details of Doroshin’s activities in Russian America are documented in a series of his articles in Russian Mining Journa’ in 1866.

Upon his return to Russia in 1854, Peter Doroshin would serve with distinction in the Crimean War, and, later, successfully developed coal and gold mines in Russia. He eventually served as the chief of the Russian Naval Mining Office, an institution that required his talents to help locate and design new harbors, determine sites for coastal light houses, provide navigation charts, and identify locations of energy resources, mainly coal, to fuel a growing naval fleet. Prior to his death in 1875, Doroshin achieved the rank of Acting State Councilor, approximately equivalent to a rank of a regional governor in the Russian Imperial system.

Russian researchers discovered Doroshin’s biography on the AMHF website (www.alaskamininghalloffame.org), and contacted the writer. An annual conference entitled The Ural Mineralogical School Resource Conference, was organized in Ekaterinburg, a large Russian city in the southern Ural Mountains. This conference, which took place on September 22-26, 2014, was organized by the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Ural State Mining University. Several conference themes were addressed, including natural resource management, mineralogical studies, and the history of Russian geology. Because of the interest generated by Peter Doroshin’s induction into the AMHF, a paper and poster was assembled by Vladimir and Evgeny Sphikerman of the St. Petersburg Mining Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia that discussed Doroshin’s activities both in Russian America and in European Russia. The poster was presented in the Russian language, but features Doroshin’s biography as published in English on the AMHF website. The relevance to featuring Doroshin at the Ekaterinburg conference was that he conducted pioneering work on lode gold mining projects and mineralogical studies in the Ural Mountains both before and after his involvement with the Russian America Company.

Despite his visibility, neither the AMHF nor the Russian researchers in St. Petersburg have been able to find a suitable photo or portrait of Peter Doroshin. A search for an image of Doroshin in archived files stored at several Ekaterinburg museums will be initiated.

Book Review: Hawley, A Kennecott Story

Charles Caldwell Hawley, A Kennecott Story—Three Mines, Four Men and One Hundred Years 1897-1997. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2014.

Review by Thomas K. Bundtzen

Much of the historic mining legacy in Alaska focuses on the search and development of gold. Although copper, a base metal, may seem less glamorous than gold, its discovery and development played an important role in the early development of Alaska. As the world entered the 20th century, copper proved vital to the industrial revolution and indispensable to electrification for millions of people. The international search for copper included Alaska’s Kennicott Glacier area in the Wrangell Mountains, the namesake of Kennecott Copper Corporation (Kennecott), a mining organization that was destined to become the world’s largest copper company for much of the century.

Charles C. Hawley, who has studied Alaska mining history for more than 50 years, traces the story of three signature copper mines; the Bonanza in the Wrangell Mountains of Alaska; Bingham Canyon in Utah, just southwest of Salt Lake City; and El Teniente in Chile, all of which were to become the cornerstones of Kennecott activities worldwide. The mines became linked to a single corporation, Kennecott, in 1915. The accomplishments of four mining engineers: Stephen Birch, Daniel C. Jackling, William Braden, and E. Tappen Stannard are inextricably linked to the success of the three mines.

Hawley provides detailed analysis of many of Kennecott’s other Alaska activities, which included the Beatson Mine in Prince William Sound, construction and operations of the Copper River and Northwest Railroad (CR&NW), and the creation of the Alaska Steamship Company, the latter two of which provided for transport of goods and services to and from the remote mine sites. These necessary subsidiaries were important early transportation projects for the Alaska Territory; they also provided surface transportation for many Alaskan travelers.

The lives of the miners and their dependents in both Alaska camps are well researched, including working conditions, medical care, educational opportunities (schools), safety concerns, environmental issues of the day, and social and recreational activities that extended well beyond the mine workplace. Hawley describes similar mine and social and economic issues for miners in Utah and Chile.

The political discourse between Kennecott President Stephen Birch and the Guggenheim’s ‘Alaska Syndicate’ (who financed and initially owned the industrial conglomerate) versus congressional delegate James Wickersham is discussed. Right or wrong, attitudes concerning the role of corporate resource development in Alaska that were so actively debated during the Kennecott period would have far reaching consequences that are still felt today.

In the end, the Kennecott copper mines (including company predecessors) in Alaska, which began operations in 1905, finally closed down for good at the end of 1938, but the Bingham Canyon and El Teniente mines in Utah and Chile respectively continued to supply copper for Kennecott. Kennecott was bought out by the London-based RTZ Group in 1997, one of the world’s largest mining conglomerates—thus ending a 100-year legacy put forth by the company’s original founders.

Hawley’s account places the Kennecott story and its principle characters within the broader picture of the American mining industry as it evolved its most critical and revolutionary period. His book is intended not only for geologists (like the reviewer) and engineers but also for historians and the inquisitive general reader. Accounts of numerous failings by many individuals furnish human interest along the way. In addition, Hawley wants the reader to consider controversial issues of mineral discovery, operations, and sustainability in an increasingly crowded world, where resources are not distributed equally.

As Richard Sadler, professor of history at Weber State University states:

I know of no book that attempts to do what this book does. This book is a major contribution to the field of mining, mining history, the history of the American west, the history of copper production, and economic history.

This reviewer agrees.

How Seward Escaped Being Named Vituska

By J Pennelope Goforth

 

The curious story of the naming of the town of Seward was documented aboard the steamer BERTHA out of Seattle bound for Alaska on her regular monthly voyage in the summer of 1902. A party of engineers for the Alaska Central Railway headed to Resurrection Bay and a professor of history from the University of Washington made their acquaintance on deck. The result of their meeting has preserved how the town of Seward narrowly escaped being called Vituska.

 

“It is not often that complete documentary evidence is preserved showing the manner and reason of naming a city. For that reason it is thought best to here record the letters and orders resulting in this honor to the memory of the great War Secretary of State,” wrote professor Edmond S. Meany in 1907. Meany, best known as the publisher of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and for his long association with the University of Washington, was also an avid historian who wrote many articles about the early years of the Pacific Northwest.

 

In Meany’s day, Alaska was the destination of anyone who wanted to make their fortune: fishing salmon, mining gold, and building railroads. It was all happening in the economic boom in Alaska. He had graduated valedictorian in 1885 at the University of Washington with a degree in science. To put himself through college he worked as a journalist. His credentials sent him to the World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893. This trip impressed him so much that later in life he was instrumental in crafting the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition of 1909. By 1897 Meany headed the History Department at the university where he taught courses in forestry and Pacific Northwest history. And he went on to found the Washington Historical Quarterly in which he described the naming of the railroad town in Resurrection Bay.

 

In fact, Meany played an instrumental role in seeing that the town bear witness to one his heroes, William Seward. In a piece that ran in the Washington Historical Quarterly in the spring of 1907, he lists the correspondence that documented the process. Fittingly, he begins with a letter he received from C. M. Anderson, the Chief Engineer of the Alaska Central Railway Company dated June 23, 1902:

 

Dear Sir: I have been giving some thought to the question of a name for the town at the southern terminus of the Alaska Central Railway. This town will be a nice commanding site on Resurrection Bay, which Bay is the only open port the year round on what is known as the South Coast of the main part of Alaska, and is about in the middle of said South Coast, being between Prince William Sound and Cook’s Inlet.

 

One of our engineers has suggested the name ‘Almouth,’ meaning mouth of Alaska. While not satisfied with the name, I am not myself able to think of a better one, and wish that you would make some suggestion to me in the matter.

 

Within a week Meany responded:

 

I thank you for the opportunity of suggesting a name for the southern terminus of the new railroad. The name above all others most appropriate for a prominent city in Alaska is Seward.

 

The Alaska Purchase Treaty was concluded 30 March 1867; ratifications exchanged at Washington on 20 June 1867; proclaimed 20 June 1867. The treaty was signed by William H. Seward for the United States and Edouard de Stoeckl for Russia.

 

The purchased empire was little appreciated. It was ridiculed by Harper’s Weekly and others as ‘Seward’s Paradise,’ etc. Practically all the negotiations were conducted by Seward.

 

More than any other one man is he responsible for American ownership of Alaska.

 

By all means let us honor the great War Secretary of State. I have examined the official list of U. S, post offices dated 1 January 1902, and find no Seward in the list.

 

Mr. C. L. Wayland, U. S. Inspector of Post offices, will soon leave for Alaska. He establishes and often names new post-offices. You should see him and arrange for the name you decide upon.

 

I am somewhat familiar with the history of Alaska, and if Seward is found impossible for any reason I could suggest other names that would commemorate significant facts. To me this method of naming cities is much to be preferred to the plan of sticking pieces of names together as ‘Almouth’ or ‘Bucoda.’*

 

Anderson liked the idea much better than Almouth. The following day he recommended the name to the president of the railroad company, G. W. Dickinson who agreed. “Good idea to have concurrence of P. O. people. Ask WayLand,” Dickinson penciled in a note to Anderson that same day.

 

Here’s where it gets tricky.

 

Anderson dutifully wrote to Postal Inspector Wayland, “Please act on Mr. Meany’s suggestion if you can do so.”

 

On July 4, Wayland responds:

 

In compliance with your attached request I would suggest the name of ‘Vituska,’ pronounced Ve-tus-ka, and being made up (1) of the first (and chief) name of Vitus Bering, the Dane, who for Russia in 1728 to 1741 discovered Alaska, the Bering Sea and Strait and thus completed the discovery of North and South America begun by Columbus 250 years before, and (2) of the final syllable of Alaska.

 

This is a positively distinct and striking and solid name and sounds exactly like it belonged to Alaska — as it does.

 

I can’t share Prof. Meany’s aversion to names made of pieces. It has been the loving task of all lexicographers to show how nearly all words were built of pieces and to show the meaning of the word through the meanings of its pieces.

 

Only a few days later on the July 8, Anderson reluctantly passes on Wayland’s suggestion to Dickinson for final resolution:

 

If thought best to accept Mr. Wayland’s suggestion to name the terminal ‘Vituska,’ I would suggest that the name of the Bay be made ‘Almouth.’

 

While not personally very pleasantly impressed with the name ‘Vituska’ in respect to Mr. Wayland’s suggestion, shall use said name unless I receive contrary suggestion from you.

 

Dickinson penciled, “O. K. — G. W. D.” on the original letter. This string of letters was provided to Meany on that trip aboard the BERTHA in July of 1902 according to Meany. At the end of the article he writes, “The only missing item is the order, if any was given, by which ‘Vituska’ was set aside and the originally suggested name of ‘Seward’ was decided upon for the city thus founded in Alaska in 1902.”

 

*Bucoda is a town in Thurston County, Washington, named in about 1874 using the first two letters of three principal investors in local industries- Buckley, Coulter, and David.

Sources: Washington Historical Quarterly Spring 1907, Vol. 1, No. 3, page 159.

Preliminary Guide to the Edmond S. Meany Photograph Collection, University of Washington Libraries, December 2014.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucoda,_Washington LAC 032815

Debunking a Myth: Enough, Already!

by J. Pennelope Goforth

 [Reader discretion advised: this rant contains strong language and truthiness.]

It’s right up there with Dewey Wins! and Mission Accomplished and it’s just as wrong. The phrase has been said so many times in ignorant error that I refuse to let it be a search word term in this opinion piece. You know the one I’m talking about. The one that describes Secretary of State William Seward’s support for the Treaty of Cession as a mindless act of stupidity.

 

Yet, every anniversary commemorating the cession of Russian America to the United States inevitably begins with it. It’s a hook, a writer’s tool to get your attention. Usually it leads to the made up story where the good conservative guys claim the purchase is a pig in a poke; that the bad politicians rammed it down the throats of unwilling Americans with Seward at the helm. And in the process showered Russia with millions of undeserved dollars. Rubbish. That a scurrilous phrase invented long after the event should define the purchase of Alaska is a travesty. The story line has been twisted, players miscast, and the whole show is a misleading sham passed off as history.

 

So I say enough already, stop perpetuating this myth! The purchase of Alaska is not the story of an ugly duckling, an underdog, or any other child’s cautionary tale. To continue to subscribe to the fantasy that the cession of Russian America represented an act of foolish recklessness demeans Alaskans, both Native and sourdough. It may be in vogue to bash government, but bloodying our own noses in the process is a greater folly. As Stephen Colbert would quip, Where is the truthiness in that?

 

So how did it come to this? Short answer: writers on autopilot, parroting a catchy phrase repeated over the decades without checking facts. Add to that the gradual memory loss over time, the lumping together of disparate events in hindsight. And the inevitable mishmash of who said what to whom when. In the span of 150 years since the event too many of the articles written and rewritten with different aims have misused the phrase. Like a lie repeated a thousand times, it comes to be perceived for truth. Plus, from a journalistic point of view, what’s going to sell newspapers: inflammatory rhetoric or documented evidence?

 

The truth is that phrase had nothing to with the treaty of cession that transferred the title of Russian America to the United States in 1867. Nada. Zip. Zilch. In fact, it wasn’t even written, much less printed or spoken, or even thought of in 1867!

 

You can look up the newspapers, journals and congressional records of the first couple of quarters of the year 1867. Check the political and editorial commentaries of the day. Read the research of others in both unpublished dissertations and published papers in journals. You won’t find that phrase because it wasn’t in use at the time.

 

Richard E. Welch, in his study of American opinion on the purchase of Russian America, surveyed 48 major news outlets of 1867 and 1868. He found that almost all of American editors and writers favored the idea. Except for Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune−followed in lockstep by the Sun and the Independent. Colorful phrases abounded throughout his editorial vitriol: “Johnson’s Polar Bear Garden,” “Walrussia,” and “Russian Fairy Land”. Contrast that with the World statement in April 1867 advocating the purchase: “It is an advancing step in that manifest destiny which is yet to give us British North America.” But Greeley’s politically motivated opposition melted like ice during breakup even before the House approved the check for $7.2 mil to Russia.

 

The Philadelphia Inquirer was so bold as to editorially proclaim: “[Alaska] might become very useful to any power having naval interests in the Pacific…A time may come, when the possession of this territory will give us the command over the Pacific which our extensive possessions there require.” Welch goes on to report that papers received “numerous letters to the editor were published, all of them favorable to the purchase.”

 

The National Intelligencer trumpeted: “The Russian possessions will secure us furs, fish and lumber in the greatest abundance to say nothing of the undisputed route of an overland telegraph. The fisheries, in the hands of our hardy seamen, would be of priceless value…”

 

My personal favorite is the bold headline: “Now is the Day and Hour for the Confirmation of the Treaty with Russia”. The editorial went on to enthuse, “American civilization has pushed itself through to the Pacific sea where a commerce is growing up…”

 

Americans at that time were well aware of the commercial and economic bonanza that Russian America represented. Russia, in tough financial straits following the Crimean War and hostilities with the British, was in no position to grow the meager colonies. In fact, the Russian administration feared losing them to gold stampeders or other resource privateers since it didn’t have the navy in place to defend the vast territory. In the United States, western and eastern commercial interests in Russian America were already making fortunes for New Bedford, San Francisco, and Boston merchants. The overland telegraph expedition, the extensive whaling industry, the burgeoning codfishery, the wildly successful ice trade, proven reserves of coal and copper, plus rumors of gold fueled the dreams of American entrepreneurs and capitalists. To say nothing of the continuing value of the fur trade.

 

Following the California gold rush of 1849, the annexation of California and the opening of the Oregon Territory, American citizens believed it was their manifest destiny to continue to acquire land. Historian Howard I. Kushner wrote: “In San Francisco of the 1850s, increased interest in Russian-America was born of the hysteria and hope of instant fortune responsible for countless enterprising schemes.”

 

Congress was even more informed as they had been hearing proposals from their constituents in favor of acquiring Russian America as early as the 1850s. Historian Victor Farrar suggests the first purchase movement began as early as 1838 when negotiations over the 1824 convention broke down. California Senator William M. Gwin brought up the proposition to purchase it in 1859. Steady reports on the resources of the North Pacific had been coming in to numerous congressional hearings for years from various expeditions and surveys. Only the Civil War interfered with further action.

 

Author Walter Stahr, in Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man, reveals the true inception of that degrading slur on his subject. He tells us that at the time of the purchase, most Americans favored the move. It wasn’t until 1877, a decade later, that the phrase was uttered for the first time by ‘a settler’. “How else would the Secretary of State have been able to convince 37 U.S. senators, who never agreed on anything to ratify the agreement, with only two voting against it?…I essentially think it was a myth,” Stahr wrote.

 

So let the myth die. Cease the repetition of this untimely phrase in conjunction with the purchase of Alaska. Write enthusiastically, truthfully, about Alaska history as the 150th anniversary approaches. Let us as Alaskan writers, journalists, storytellers, and historians bear witness to Colbert’s truthiness, our own self-esteem, and respect for Alaskans. We can do this, Nation!

 

Sources:

Colbert, Stephen. http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/63ite2/the-word—truthiness. LAC: 031115

Farrar, Victor J. The Purchase of Alaska. 1934.

Welch, Richard E. American Slavic and East European Review, Vol. 17, No. 4, 1958.

HarpWeek. http://www.harpweek.com/09Cartoon/BrowseByDateCartoon.asp?Month=April&Date=20

Kushner, Howard I. Seward’s _____”?: American Commerce in Russian America and the Alaska Purchase. California Historical Quarterly Vol. 54, No. 1, 1975.

Stahr, Walter. Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man. New York: Simon & Schuster. 2012.

SIKULIAQ: History in the Making

by J Pennelope Goforth

 

Earlier this month Seward welcomed the Polar Class 5 ice-capable vessel SIKULIAQ to its homeport. The name derives from the Inupiaq for ‘young sea ice’ and is pronounced ‘see-KOO-lee-auk’. She is a new 261-foot oceanographic research vessel. A commissioning ceremony and community reception for the SIKULIAQ was held in Seward.

 

The ‘commissioning’ of a vessel is one of the major events in a ship’s life, right up there with launching, christening, sea trials, and sinking. For example, when U. S. Naval vessels are commissioned, the crew stand attention at their stations, the flags are raised, the orders of the vessel are read aloud, and the ship is said to ‘come alive’. She has her name and now she has her mission. This is only the second such ceremony to be carried out in Alaskan waters. The first was the USS ANCHORAGE on May 4, 2013, in her namesake port of Anchorage. Over 4,000 Alaskans packed the dock just north of Ship Creek to witness the new vessel come alive.

 

The research vessel will be home for scientists in the U.S. and international oceanographic community through the University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System as they conduct high technology arctic waters studies. Researchers can collect sediment samples directly from the seafloor, host remotely operated vehicles, use a flexible suite of winches to raise and lower scientific equipment, and conduct surveys throughout the water column and sea bottom using an extensive set of research instrumentation. The ship will also be able to transmit real-time information directly to classrooms all over the world. The vessel design strives to have the lowest possible environmental impact, including a low underwater radiated noise signature for marine mammal and fisheries work. The state-of-the-art ship will have accommodations for up to 26 scientists and students at a time, including those with disabilities.

 

The newest discoveries of the mysteries of icy northern waters and its inhabitants will come from the voyages of SIKULIAQ over the few decades. Sufficient ice strengthening will allow the vessel to work safely in moderate seasonal ice, operating over a longer period than formerly possible in the North Pacific Ocean, Gulf of Alaska, and the Bering, Chukchi, and Beaufort seas. Equipped with both bow and stern thrusters, the ship also is propelled by innovative ‘ice pod’ type Z drives developed by Finnish marine engineers at Wartsilla.

 

The vessel is owned by the National Science Foundation and operated by the School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, as part of the U.S. academic research fleet.