Visitor Information

Calendar

Comforts

What to see & do

Weather

History
- Sullivan Roadhouse
- Richardson Highway
- Our City Name
- End of the Ak Hwy
- Three Pipelines
- Stories of Delta

Facts

 Business/Relocation

 Local news

 Site Map

Judy Ferguson's first book, Parallel Destinies sells for $19.95 and can be purchased through Judy Ferguson at 907-895-4101 or outpost@wildak.net.  It is also for sale at Diehls', Granite View, Kelly's Country Inn, Tanana Trading Post and other stores.  It can be purchased on-line from Outdoors Alaska.

Interested in fishing while you are in Alaska?  Take a look at the selection of fishing books on our partner site OutdoorsDirectory.com  Click on the image for more information.

Judy Ferguson is a well known writer to many Interior Alaskans. More than just a writer, Judy has lived Alaska up close and personal for more than 30 years, much of that time in a home site on the Tanana River with her husband Reb.  These stories are all copyrighted by Judy Ferguson.

 
With hard work 'outpost' becomes home 
By Judy Ferguson

DELTA -- When Reb and I married in 1969, ``squatting'' on public land in Alaska was not uncommon. Very little government land was available to homestead or purchase as the Native Land Claims Act had not yet been settled. About 1969 through the '70s, the state began to offer some land for a short time: remote, 5-acre parcels, called the ``Open-to-Entry'' program.
Reb and I were exploring these remote parcels, looking for land where we could build our home. We rode our horses over the hills of Quartz Lake and decided to spy out a cove on the Tanana River. We didn't realize the rolling moss was hiding permafrost, which can unsettle a cabin floor, but we also didn't consider the knoll's building possibilities at the back of the sloping land. The sun was warm; we felt this was it and we staked our 10 acres.

In 1972 we had the land cleared, pushing all the spruce and moss into berms. The raw earth was divided into three fields. Reb threw fertilizer, oat and brome seed with a pie plate in wide circles over the dirt, which patterned the pastures with unique circles of grass. The fields were an oasis in the forested wilderness, rising toward the cumulus clouds, which rolled in every afternoon from Thompson Lake.

Every morning, in 1973, Reb traveled in his riverboat to his job at the Bureau of Land Management. As his boat would roar downstream, small against the seated majesty of Mt. Hayes, our 3-year-old son, Clint, and I would turn and prepare to do some clearing and re-seeding of the pastures. Every day we worked out in the sun and our only shelter was a wall tent. We had no farming equipment, only our hands and two horses.
Reb pounded spikes into a log, creating a ``make-shift'' harrow. Riding my horse, I tore up the ground for seeding, dragging the log behind. With a Pulaski, I up-ended turf for our first garden. I read the university Extension brochures, and mixed sand and loam into the dirt for two weeks. I was amazed as the plants grew.

We had to spend every summer hour building a house, as in three months the cold would arrive. Reb boated four house logs up every night after work. I hitched up Klondike, our sorrel horse, and dragged one log at a time up a short hill and into the main field. The sweet, sticky sap covered my hands as I draw-bladed each log, racing to get them all peeled before the sap quit running around the middle of July.

Reb had begun a cellar in the main field, but I kept envisioning our golden log home on the hill, overlooking the 10 acres. Reb said that I could probably never have a well up there. One morning we found melted ice had filled the cellar hole. We discovered thawing permafrost was honeycombing the pastures. We abandoned the field site and decided to build on the hill, which meant everything would always have to be carried up the knoll: stoves, firewood, water and food.
But, we had a clear view of the Tanana River, the Granite Mountains, Donnelly Dome and distant Isabel Pass as I laid the fiberglass and Reb spiked the logs together. Clint handed his dad nails; and, the vista began to be shut out, cut up and framed, seen, then, only through open windows and doorway. Jon Dufendach and Brad McAllister, neighbors from across the river, helped us raise the ridge logs onto the waiting gables.

Before the cold wind blew in the first sifting snow, and one month after laying the first logs, we had a cardboard door and a roof over our heads. A rusty, 55-gallon stove was blasting heat into the empty interior. Our Coleman lanterns hissed out their brightness into the October gloom. We'd made it. The river was filled with ice and neighbors were no longer available.

We learned, years later, that neighbors, far away, could see the lights of ``the cabin on the hill'' being lit in the evening the only, little ``eyes'' in the dark wilderness beyond the river, what we called ``the outpost.'' It was the beginning of a family and of 13 years of remote homesteading.
Now, in the spring of '96, we begin our plants at our ``downriver'' house, where we've wintered the last 10 years. The river is running clear and I saw geese flying yesterday. Soon we will be taking hundreds of little transplants, chickens, turkeys, horses and dogs to our homestead, up the river. Our daughter, Sarah, will be in the garden with me planting peas and Ben, our youngest, has his corn to transplant. In the evenings, we will sit on the porch swing, looking out at the Alaska Range as the midnight sun washes the river with golden light, listening for the return of Reb's outboard.

Back to Stories of Delta home page

Home | Visitor Information | Business & Relocation | Local News | Calendar | Site Map