W7BOE 1952 Buxton, Oregon

Here are some excerpts from a letter written by Virginia Hanson in 1979. Virginia lived in Pilot Point, Alaska with her school teacher parents for 16 years.

"We went to Alaska in 1929, just before the depression in the States. We never realized there was a depression up there except after the first year of my mother's being on her government assistant teacher salary, they cut her off, but she went on teaching all the rest of the time we were there without a salary.....Dad taught grades 5-8 and mother taught grades 1-4.....Mother ordered a post office unit from Washington D.C. so we could have a post office in the village. Our village was called Ugashik when we first went there. An old village up the Ugashik River from us was called Old Ugashik. Well, the bag of post office equipment happened to get routed through Old Ugashik and the old German cannery watchman stole it and set himself up a post office. We kept wondering why the equipment never arrived, but finally found out why. So, Washington D.C. told us to send in three suggestions to rename the village (to get a post office they would have to give up the name Ugashik). Washington D. C. chose the name Pilot Point from the three submitted names. The post office kit finally arrived and mother was the postmistress.

Mother took a six week practical nursing course from our church in 1929 and was the nurse and doctor for the village. The government kept her supplied with basic medicines to dispense to the villagers free of charge. My father even had to enter into doctoring one time. One of the villagers froze his foot and dad had to amputate some toes to save the foot. He went to the cannery winter watchman for the village and asked if they had any instruments. Dad sterilized the instruments and did the dreaded job. Mother treated accidental gun shot wounds, frost bitten or frozen feet, pneumonia, scarlet fever, TB, pediculosis, ring worm, impetigo and so forth. Dad saved the village from scarlet fever by radioing the government to send in a doctor and nurse to vaccinate the villagers, as they were exposed to it by sailors off of the government teacher supply boat called "Boxer" in 1931 (when the boat delivered supplies all up the coast as far as Nome). Other villages were hit hard.

My folks organized the first S.D.A. Eskimo church. John Spoon, the Eskimo Chief of our village used to attend and many other Eskimo's did. The Aleut did not, as they had the Russian Greek Catholic Church in the village.

Dad also handled the W.P.A. jobs for the villagers when Roosevelt authorized them to give the poor jobs. He and the villagers built three miles of road from the village to the lake that the planes landed on, and some other roads throughout the village and down to the beach. Our village had three cars and later a fourth one.

In 16 years that my folks lived there, we observed a volcano blow up (Aniakchak) to the south of us near Chignik. The ashes caused hardship on the wild birds such as ducks, geese and on the deer because they would eat the reindeer moss and take in ashes as well. We had no wild berries for a couple of years after that. It ruined our water supply as well because we got our water from the lakes.

We also encountered being flooded twice by tidal waves. The school house was located on the "flat". Our front yard was the beach. It was on the terrifying side to find ourselves completely surrounded by water and waves breaking and lapping at our porches by several feet. That evening, the cannery winter watchman managed to get to a boat at the cannery dock and rowed to us in the dark and pulled up to our front porch. He asked us if we would like to be rescued and taken to the hill and stay at their place for a night or two or until it was safe to come back...you bet we did! The next fall, another tidal wave surrounded us. This time it was in November and icebergs were all over the "flat" when the water receded.

We were there to witness the first landing of an airplane in our village. The whole village turned out. It was Father Hubbard, called the "Glacier Priest". He was headed for Aniakchak to camp and study it. He is supposed to have predicted that it would blow up before it did. Soon after that, air plane mail service came to the village, once a month at first, then twice a month. It was a lot better than once a month by boat and a couple times a winter by dog sled.

Taken from http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~coleen/pilot%20point.html with permission from Samuel C. Hanson's grandson, George Hanson in Girdwood, Alaska

Sam K7BOE at Pilot Point, AK

QSL from the estate of W6SKK
Info & Photos courtesy of George Hanson
Last 3 photos courtesy of Patrick Rigg