In 1880, before anyone was recorded as a resident on Tustumena Lake, the U.S. Census noted the general sparseness of human habitation on the Kenai Peninsula: Census takers counted 13 villages and only 519 people, including three listed as “white” (meaning Euro-American), plus 155 creoles (considered of mixed Alaska Native and Russian descent), and 361 pure-blood Alaska Natives (often mistakenly referred to as Aleuts).
The population of Kenai was 44. There was no Seward, no Soldotna, no Homer, no Cooper Landing, no Moose Pass. Native villages on the peninsula — Kalifornsky, Seldovia, Point Possession and so forth — were spread mostly along the coast and had had their populations decimated by the introduction of diseases, such as smallpox, for which they had few or no natural defenses.
Alaska at this time had been a possession of the United States for only 13 years; it was still 32 years away from gaining territorial status, 79 years from becoming the 49th state. The land was controlled by the federal government, but law enforcement officials were few and far between. Land and other resources seemed, therefore, free for the taking, if one had the requisite ingenuity and the gumption.
Over the next two decades, immigrant waves from the Lower 48, discoveries of gold in Alaska and the Klondike, and the promise of other nearly unlimited prospects began to dot the landscape with newcomers — miners, trappers, hunting guides, entrepreneurs, homesteaders, fox farmers, fishermen. Life on Tustumena Lake mirrored, in microcosm, the changes occurring elsewhere.
Besides the many immigrants who came to live and work at the lake were a handful of U.S.-born adventurers and fortune-seekers. Among them were Ray Curtis, Charles A. “Windy” Wagner, Thomas Odale and Joseph Secora.
Born in Iowa in 1880, Ray Curtis came to the lake in the 1910s in pursuit of gold. He filed on a hard-rock quartz claim near Dirty Canyon, abutting the Tustumena Glacier flats. He built a nearby shelter cabin and, following a vein of quartz, he tunneled more than a hundred feet into the rock in search of gold.
Contemporaneous newspaper articles indicated that Curtis found ore but probably not enough to make himself rich. Twenty years later, he owned a home in Anchorage, where he lived until his death in 1953.
Windy Wagner, who was born in Washington, lived and fished commercially in Kenai for decades, often spending the winters trapping at the lake. He partnered frequently with “Frenchy” (who was European but not French) and sometimes with “Russian Pete” (who was born in a Russia-controlled satellite country).
Arkansas-born Tom Odale, on the other hand, came to Alaska in 1900 and established a home on the lake in the late 1920s originally working for a guiding operation before building and operating his own hunting lodge on what was then called Birch Creek. He retained nearly 50 acres of land on the north shore of the lake but sold his lodge near the end of World War II.
Joe Secora was born in Pennsylvania and came to the lake after the second world war. He began placer mining on Indian Creek and completed three cabins in the area. Secora was one of the last men to live year-round on Tustumena Lake, occupying his north-shore cabin until his death in the early 1970s.
John “Frenchy” Cannon, whose nickname originated as a comment on his style of dress, had actually been born in Ireland. Frenchy was first mentioned in the diaries of longtime lake resident Andrew Berg in October 1932.
Although Cannon built a large cabin near the mouth of Bear Creek, he apparently lived there only sporadically. Like many others, he fished commercially during the summers and trapped during the winters. He likely stopped returning to the lake in the late 1950s, and died in 1998, one year before his namesake cabin burned to the ground.
John Peter “Russian Pete” Kalning was born in 1871 in Latvia, which was then controlled by Russia. He lived for many years in Seward, dying there in 1952 just before his 80th birthday. He fished commercially, mined for gold and worked as a trapper on both Skilak and Tustumena lakes.
Then there was Edward Rothe, a German immigrant who was born in 1886 and came to the United States before the turn of the century. Longtime Tustumena hunting guide George Pollard called Rothe, who may have stood as tall as 6-foot-7, “Long Ed.” Pollard found it amusing that Rothe’s cabin on the lake was small with a low ceiling, whereas the much shorter John Cannon had a two-story place with high ceilings.
Andrew Berg referred to Rothe as “Big Ed,” or as “Black Ed” if he was mad at him. Rothe was perceived as a poor, perhaps even lazy trapper who probably did not build the cabin he occupied near the head of the lake.
Many other individuals came to and departed from the Tustumena scene. Here are a few of the other memorable denizens of the lake between about 1910 and 1940:
TONY MARTIN: Born in Bulgaria in 1886 as Trifon Marinoff, he Americanized his name and made periodic appearances at Tustumena Lake. Andrew Berg’s earliest known reference to him occurred in 1921. Martin trapped most often at the head of Kachemak Bay but also had a cabin on upper Crooked Creek. He lived most of his adult life in Seldovia.
HUGO HOLM: The brother of the more familiar Victor Holm — Hugo was in Kasilof by at least 1917. According to a draft-registration card he signed that year, he was a seaman for the Alaska Packers Association, operating on a ship called Star of Russia. By 1920, he was living in a cabin on the lower end of Tustumena Lake. It is unclear whether Hugo Holm, who returned to his native Finland only a year or so later, actually built his cabin, but Andrew Berg referred to the place as “Hugo’s” even after it was occupied by someone new.
CHARLES EDWARD SANDS: After Hugo Holm left Alaska for his native country, another Finn, known locally as Charlie Sands came to the lake and began living in Holm’s cabin, located at the Tustumena terminus of the trail to Kasilof. Probably, Sands began spending winters trapping on the lake by 1930. How long he stayed in the area is unclear.
BOB HUTTLE: Born Hüttl Rexsö in Hungary, he gradually Americanized his name to become Rudolph Robert Huttle. He lived on Tustumena Lake for about one year (1933-34), caretaking Tom Odale’s lodge, but his presence was important because he was a skilled photographer and an assiduous diarist. Huttle carefully documented nearly everything he saw and did. Shortly after leaving Tustumena, he became the chief of police for the Anchorage Police Department. He could speak and write in German, Hungarian, Slovakian, Latin, French and English.
ABRAM ERICKSON: Abe Erickson was born in Finland in about 1873 and immigrated to the United States before the age of 10. A fox farmer and a trapper, Erickson was well known in Kasilof and constructed two cabins in the Tustumena area — one prior to 1930 along the slackwater stretch of the Kasilof River just below the lake outlet, and the other in 1935 on Caribou Island.
“DR. JOHN AIKEN FLANDERS”: One of the most interesting stories concerning residents of the lake involves a World War I shell-shock victim and former Chicago physician known locally as Doc Flanders. The problem was that Flanders was an imposter. He was actually a German-born drug-addict named Rudolph Albert Gries, who had graduated from medical school with Flanders and had never been in the war. Gries had escaped legal troubles in Chicago and fled to Alaska to become a cannery doctor. He fooled people for years, but his addiction finally gave him away. He wound up in prison in the mid-1920s.
KRISTIAN JENSEN: The brother of longtime Kasilof resident Hans Peter “Pete” Jensen, Kris Jensen immigrated to the United States from Denmark in 1904. He eventually fashioned a poorly built home on Tustumena’s south shore and appears to have been an intensely private person. Andrew Berg mentioned both brothers often in his diaries. Pete moved around Alaska, while Kris stayed put, living out his life in Kasilof.
George Pollard once recalled an amusing story that Tom Odale had told him about Kris Jensen, who lived across the lake:
“Tom Odale [said] you could see Kris Jensen’s lamp in the window. At night you could see the light there from across the lake. [It was] several miles but you could see that light, and one day talking with Kris, Tom said, ‘You stay up pretty late, don’t you, Kris?’ Kris replied, ‘How do you know that?’ ‘Well, I see your light over there.’ So the light went out. Tom didn’t see the light anymore. So next time he saw Kris, he said, ‘How come I don’t see your light anymore at your place?’ Kris said, ‘I don’t like eavesdroppers.’”
Life on Tustumena Lake may have been replete with challenges and strong personalities, but it was rarely ever dull.
Photo courtesy of the Robert Huttle Collection During the brief time (1933-34) that Bob Huttle (right) spent on Tustumena Lake, he documented a tremendous number of structures and described many of the people he met there. One of the men he traveled with frequently was John “Frenchy” Cannon (left), seen here at the Upper Bear Creek Cabin.
Photo courtesy of the Peggy Arness Collection John Peter “Russian Pete” Kalning spent many winters on Tustumena and Skilak lakes.
Photo courtesy of the John Secora Collection Joseph Secora was one of few individuals to live year-round on Tustumena Lake. He placer mined for gold on Indian Creek and completed three cabins in the area.
