The Copper River Valley

The author: The Copper River Valley, sometime after 1938 

Rosalene Nicolai: Native Village of Chittyna and downtown Chitina, 2003

Wesley Dunkle, West High School, Anchorage, 1956

W.A. Richelsen,  Bonanaza Mine, Kennecott, Alaska, 1938

Johnny Gakona, Traditional Native Village of Taral, 1899
 

* That was a Tuesday. As we all know, that turned out to be the day of the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York City. Nothing  happened that day. The 1000 books on order were shipped one week later to Anchorage,  Alaska.  So, in more ways than one, this is a truly historic book !

Ron Simpson:	The author is a political science and military science major who graduated from Oregon State University in 1972 before serving for a brief time in the U.S. Army in Okinawa.  Currently the author lives in Copper Center, Alaska, where he operates the Copper Rail Depot Saloon and Uncle Nicolai's Inn.  The author is a direct descendent of Chief Nicolai.
	Author's Family Tree	Interview of author by UAF re: Copper River & Northwestern Railway
Rosalene Nicolai Gadanski: (picture is of Elizabeth Peratrovich--a most-fitting model on which to base Rosalene	Rosalene is the fictional daughter of Johnny Nicolai Gadanski who is himself fictional. She is a composite character based on certain female Native leaders of the 20th Century. I have recently given added importance to her role in this story as the last-remaining modern-day link into the past.
Wesley Dunkle:	Dunkle became a  noted geologist, largely due to his work as one of the  original Kennecott consultants whose projections of ore layout and reserves proved amazingly accurate.   Subsequently, he developed the richest gold mine in the Talkeetna Range--the Lucky Shot before working on this own Golden Zone mine at a time when Alaska was still largely wilderness.
W.A. Richelsen:	Walter Richelsen was the chief engineer and also the last superintendent at Kennecott.  WA. appears at the beginning and also near the end of this story. Walter passed away in 1962. Well into the 1950s he still worked for Kennecott as its Alaska representative based in Seattle.
Johnny Gakona: (picture is of Johnny Galauska, on whom Johnny Gakona Gadanski is based)	Johnny is a composite (fictional) character half-breed, grandson of Nicolai and a cousin to Cap created by the author to assist in the telling of this  story.  It turns out he may have had a real historic counterpart as a sla'cheen to Cap Goodlataw, who was a historic character.  See the picture at the bottom of this page.
Skolai Nicolai	Chief Nicolai, the Tyone of Taral : Nicolai was the Ahtna chief who made the deal with Lt. Henry Allen and later with the prospectors and possibly even Stephen Birch himself. This book revolves around the spirit of Nicolai although he rarely appears personally in this long narrative.

More to follow as this story develops on-line

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