While spending some time in the UAF library last month I found myself mostly all alone because it is summer in Alaska and apparently that means few people want to study. (I can't blame them - you have all winter to hit the shelves.) One gentleman I did meet was downstairs on the Alaska floor pouring over microfilm from a fifty year old newspaper. He has spent the last fifteen years reading through every Alaskan newspaper the university has looking for reports of mining accidents. He doesn't have a political agenda but rather a historical one - he told me he thought it was awful that so many men (I think they were all men) had died working mines in the state and no one knew who they were or where their accidents occurred or even how many there were. He had recorded over 8,000 dead when we talked and was still looking; his plan is to write an academic book on the history of mining in the state with an appendix that lists information on every death he finds.

Can you think of a purer historic quest?

One of the cool things about AK is the huge number of small newspapers that have existed over the past century or so - especially small papers from mining camps and villages. UAF has a ton of them in the archives and accessible through microfilm. It's the only reason anyone would be able to find the individual names this gentleman was looking for but it still takes someone to go looking for them or to even think about them for them to matter again. He said he couldn't believe that no one had written about them already but he was glad the story was still waiting for him.

That's one cool way to spend your retirement, isn't it?

[Post pic: Stampeders near Sheep Camp on the Chilkoot trail. 1897. You can find out more here.]