Fanny Quigley and Kantishna

27 August 2012
4:51 PM

Sunrise at	6:18 AM	in direction	64°	East-northeast
Sunset at	9:25 PM	in direction	295°	West-northwest

Duration of day: 15 hours, 7 minutes (6 minutes, 46 seconds shorter than yesterday)

I have a weekly desk calendar that I keep to the left of my computer at work and under the Blue-Max lamp so true colors reflect from its pages; my eye catches the photos each time I look that way.  The pictorial calendar's subject matter is, well, Alaska.  You'd think living here I'd get enough of the views of this state, but apparently that is not the case because there it is, each week providing a different glimpse from intimate close up shots to panoramas (The Original Alaska 2012 Calendar, Weekly).

I flipped the week over today to find the entire photo was a close up of some rough hewn boards, a metallic lock and two flower stems in bloom. One stem held the deep pink of Fireweed in bloom, the other Monkshood's rich violet petals.  The simplicity of the photo, and stark contrast between the two blooming plants and the background reminded me of the Southwest.  I read the caption to find I was looking at the exterior of one side of Fanny Quigley's cabin, taken by Alissa Crandall. 

I had no idea who Fannie Quigley was, but clearly, a story was afoot and I wanted in on it.  At the top of the list of Google search results, I found a thorough, but brief description of Fannie Quigley and her contribution to mining on the pages of the Alaska Mining Hall of Fame.   I had it in mind from the start that her life would parallel that of Baby Doe Tabor of Colorado in some way, and I guess it did in that they both died alone in their cabins, they died within a few years of each other, and their fortunes were made and lost in mining.  But there the similarity became more sketchy because Fannie worked for a living, and worked hard.  While Baby Doe had to be cared for by the community in Leadville and provided a home on the mine because she had no other, Fannie earned the comfort of her tidy cabin.  While Baby Doe's story reads like that of woman who withdrew from the world, Fannie's was filled with friends and acquaintances who remembered her fondly.

She was raised in Nebraska during unbearably hard times, leaving home at 16.  She found her way to Dawson City, married, divorced, ultimately moving to Kantishna, Alaska where she mined, married again, divorced again, and lived until her death.  In the Yukon, she started by cooking for the miners, hiking back into the hard to reach claim areas.  She learned to trap, hunt, and work claims.  She survived winter after winter in the Yukon  and territorial Alaska and raised wonderful gardens above tree-line in summer.  She was a wonder and by the photos I saw credited to Searching for Fannie Quiqley: A Wilderness Life in the Shadow of Mt. McKinley, very striking in her youth and as she aged

In the process of reading about her, I stumbled across a destination in Alaska I hadn't heard about before, the Kantishna Roadhouse.  I knew of Camp Denali, started by Ginny Wood and Morton Wood, along with friend, Celia Hunter.  I mentioned Morton "Woody" earlier this year when I remembered Les Viereck as one of the four climbers who walked from the railroad to the south buttress for their climb of Denali.  But I had no idea that the community of Kantishna, fully contained within the park was there, 95 miles from the park entrance.  Although on a road, cars are prohibited in the park past mile 14 at the Savage River. Kantishna can be reached via one of two ways, by one of the buses contracted by the park or community to make the trip or Kantishna Air Taxi.

Possible plans for a trip next summer are hatching.