Hazelet's Journal: A Riveting Alaska Gold Rush Saga - Hardcover

Hazelet, George Cheever

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1938462009 ISBN 13: 9781938462009

Publisher: Old Stone Press, 2012

Synopsis

"This is no staid diary. There are forest fires, floods, gunplay and many other death-defying episodes."  Reviewer, Mark McLaughlin

Hazelet's Journal is a true story that gives us insight into the character of those who went before us, a sense of passion, loyalty, and resilience that was so much a part of the great American spirit that our country was founded upon. It's told in the journalist's original voice, captured for generations to come.

George Cheever Hazelet was inspired by the great tycoons at the dawn of the Industrial Age and became one himself in the chicory-coffee market. But then the markets crashed and coffee became as cheap as the dirt the farmers were trying to cultivate. In this calamitous financial crisis of the 1890s, he turned to the one opportunity that played no favorites--the Klondike Gold Rush.

Hazelet was one of those adventurous souls who went to Alaska in 1898 to seek his fortune. He carved his own path across frozen tundra and snow-covered glaciers to a valley in Alaska scarcely seen by a white man. Here he found not only gold, but coal and oil and rich shafts of copper, the size of which promised breathtaking fortunes. It would also be a valley that would become a symbol of hope for some, despair for others, and lost opportunity for powerful men who did not like to lose. This last frontier was known as the Copper River Country, and it was here that Hazelet set his sights on a new beginning in Alaska. He carried with him the hopes of his family and friends back home in Nebraska as he set out to stake his claim to the gold that seemed to be as plentiful as rain. He remained in Alaska to become one of the most prominent figures of this last frontier.

With his close friend and partner Andrew Jackson Meals, he would figure prominently in the development of both Valdez and Cordova. He would meet the titans of industry and two sitting U.S. Presidents, and he would later become the first mayor of Cordova in 1909.

About this title

About the Author:

John Clark received a BA in fine arts from the University of New Mexico and successfully built and ran a printing and manufacturing company located in Louisville, Kentucky, for twenty-seven years. Today, he is the president of the Port Valdez Company, which traces its land holdings to George Cheever Hazelet and his partner Andrew Jackson Meals original scripting of 720 acres in Valdez, Alaska, at the turn of the twentieth century. He also is the founder of Old Stone Press. He and his wife, Gretchen, live in Louisville, Kentucky.

Review:

Clarion Review
HISTORY
Hazelet's Journal: A Riveting Alaska Gold Rush Saga
George Cheever Hazelet
John Clark, editor
Douglas Keeney, contributor
Old Stone Press
978-1-938462-00-9
Five Stars (out of Five)
Step aside, Jack London, and make room at the bar for George Cheever Hazelet. John Clark's marvelous edit of the journals his great-grandfather penned during the Alaskan Gold Rush are every bit as exciting and authentic as what the author of White Fang and The Call of the Wild wrote. Contemporary in experience and outlook, George Cheever Hazelet should have been the chronicler of the Klondike. He may yet become that.
Beautifully written and lightly edited in order to maintain the pace and emotion of the entries--some hurried, some pensive--Hazelet's Journal is primary-source history at its finest. This is not some musty pile of scribblings left to gather dust but a vibrant document into which generations of the family have breathed life. Clark, a printer by profession, has completed a task begun by his great-grandfather on a train leaving his Midwest home in 1898, and he has done so with a light yet deft hand.
Clark's recruitment of Douglas Keeney--a noted historian, author, and a founder of the Military Channel--to present the prologue adds both gravitas and an independent point of view to introduce the narrative. Clark resisted the urge to "clean up" the journals, noting with unnecessary apology his "editorial decision to leave the journal entries, in almost every instance, exactly as my great-grandfather wrote them."
Not that Hazelet's work needs much correction. This was no schoolboy adventurer.Hazelet was a college graduate, businessman, husband, father of two, and school principal before heading off to seek his fortune in the Alaskan wilderness at age thirty-seven. His was a journey of desperate necessity, an attempt to recoup losses sustained in the depression of the late 1890s and to "be

Kirkus Review:

An introspective collection of journal entries from a traveler in the Alaskan Gold Rush.

George Cheever Hazelet was born in Senecaville, Ohio, in 1861, and when it was time for him to attend college, he, like many others at that time, migrated west, receiving his college degree in Iowa. He began a career as a schoolteacher, but eventually, he became the principal of his local school district. He was well on his way to becoming a town leader in Atkinson, Neb., but before the age of 40, he dedicated his life to a different venture: securing a fortune in the Klondike Gold Rush. Along with his partner, Andrew Jackson "Jack" Meals, a Nebraska farmer with no formal education, Hazelet traveled to Alaska in 1898 to attempt gold prospecting. This intriguing collection of journal entries includes small details that allow readers to get to know Hazelet more intimately: the type of dessert he's eating on a particular night or how he's noticed his face is puffier and older when he looks in the mirror. Editor/publisher Clark, Hazelet's great-grandson, has successfully encapsulated his ancestor's expedition in literary form. The entries engagingly reflect on the hardships of a life digging for gold: "The weather has been extremely cold the past few days / Am quite sure it must be down to forty degrees below zero / The water drove us out of the shaft and we are in hopes that these cold days will freeze it down." Readers may find Hazelet's journal to be captivating reading, as it promises more excitement at every turn. At one point, Hazelet provides a lucid description of encountering a glacier, and a sight of nature's beauty and bounty that he's never seen before. At another, he describes racing down the rapids in his boat at "breakneck" speed, waves crashing into his vessel. An engaging piece of nonfiction about one man's prospecting adventures.

About this edition

• Publisher: Old Stone Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1938462009
• ISBN 13: 9781938462009
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 277
• Editor: Clark IV John