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My Alaskan Idyll

[Hans] Hjalmar Rutzebeck

Hjalmar Rutzebeck (1889-1980) was a Danish sailor, soldier, farm labourer, lumberman, prospector, miner, fisherman, steel worker, hobo and author, see here. He ran away to sea at the age of 12. In 1910 he joined the US Army and served for 3 years. In 1915 he moved to Alaska where he had a gold claim. He settled near Haines and built a cabin facing what is now called Rutzebeck Lake, just off Rutzebeck Road on a peninsula in Chilkat State Park, about 100 miles north of Juneau, the state capital (not a lot of people know that). Rutzebeck was sent to jail for murdering a man. He had been hired to watch the warehouse of a factory because people were stealing from it. He rigged up a gun behind a door and wrote on a notice: If you open this you will be killed. Someone did, and was. He escaped from jail in Juneau and walked back to his cabin through the snow (see Heather Lende, If you lived here, I'd know your name: news from small-town Alaka, Algonquin Books, 2006). Rutzeback became a US citizen by an Act of Congress in 1922 because he had jumped shipped, so had not officially entered the country.

Rutzebeck wrote two books about his life in Alaska. The first, called Alaska Man's Luck was first published in 1920 in the USA by Boni & Liveright. This is the second, an account of homesteading, first published in 1922.

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Dust jacket (click to enlarge)

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Dust jacket (click to enlarge)

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