Homesteads on Fort Richardson, Alaska - The USARAK Home Page ...

Chambers built a 12' x 18' log house with a 6' x 12' front porch and an 8' x 16' woodshed (see p. 60). Ten acres of the claim had been cleared; two of which were used togrow strawberries. Chambers signed a quitclaim in 1942 and was paid $1,050 forhis improvements. He was a single man, and it is not known if he stayed in Alaskaafter relinquishing the claim.Edvart KjosenEdvart Kjosen was a Norwegian born in 1894. He arrived in Alaska sometimearound 1930 and became a citizen in 1936. Mr. Kjosen filed his homesteadapplication in 1938. A year before he could prove up on the land, thearea was withdrawn by Executive Order 8102, and Kjosen sold his improvementsto the government for $500 in 1942. Little is known regarding Mr.Kjosen’s specific activities on the homestead. He was a bachelor and providedmuch of his living through fishing. In the summers he worked for therailroad as did many other Anchorage homesteaders at the time. 91Figure 16. Edvart Kjosen,1934 – 35. Courtesy of the AnchorageMusuem of Historyand Art.Edvart Kjosen was a skilled skier and taught many Anchorage residents thesport. He was involved in the state’s earliest organized skiing endeavorsand, along with several others, was instrumental in setting up the first skijump in Alaska. 92 Before his death in 1944, Kjosen was also operating ariding stable on East Second Avenue. 93Alvin “Lovey” and Doris MeierAlvin and Doris Meier had a homestead claim directly above Edwin and BerthaMeier’s claim. Alvin and Edwin were brothers. Alvin was born in 1907 in Montana.His father was born in Saxony Germany and married Odile Arcotte, of NewHampshire, in 1900. The family, with six boys, moved to Alaska in 1923 and toAnchorage in 1925. 94Doris Meier was born in 1915 in Lancaster, California. She moved to Alaska withher Mother, Ethel Reynolds, at the age of fourteen. Ethel worked as a cook in theEklutna industrial school for Natives. They stayed at the Eklutna School for abouttwo years and then moved to Eklutna Lake. There, Ethel worked as a cook for meninstalling a dam for the electrical company. Doris went to boarding school in Seattlefor her first year of high school. Mother and daughter then moved to Anchorage,where Ethel found employment in the Anchorage Hotel owned by Frank Reed.Doris also worked waiting tables at dinnertime to earn her room and board. Shefinished high school at the Anchorage High School.Doris and Bertha Meier were good friends, and Bertha introduced Alvin and Dorisat a dance. The couple married in June of 1933, on the same night that Doris graduatedfrom high school. They had four children, two boys and two girls. The boys,Alvin and Arthur, were born in 1934 and 1935 respectively. Their first daughter,Judy, was a baby while living on the homestead. Their other daughter was bornafter they moved back into town.91John Bagoy, personal interview, 23 June 2000.92Ibid.93Obituary, Anchorage Daily Times, 4 Feb. 1944. p. 7.94Pioneer Families Exhibit, Anchorage Museum of History and Art.<strong>Homesteads</strong> on Fort RichardsonAlaska37