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

8.1 EligibilityToday there are few visible remains of the homestead era left on Fort Richardson.Several deteriorating cabins have been located as well as cleared areas, which areprobably related to homestead agricultural activities. It is likely that most of thehomestead buildings were destroyed by military activities. The ready cleared fieldsand building sites would have held attractive potential to military personnel whenselecting building or training sites. Interview testimony, historic records, and currentinvestigations all provide evidence that the military occupied, destroyed ordismantled many of the homestead buildings. The need for raw materials and rapidconstruction of buildings in war times leads to such activities.It is possible that some of the few remaining homestead traces are eligible for theRegister under criteria A or C. In order for a homestead property to be eligible, itshould have been patented or had significant improvements constructed on the land.The minimum requirements of patent (under the homestead regulations of 1919)were: living on the land for three, four, or five years – with seven, six or fivemonths of residence respectively per year; building a habitable house; and cultivatingone-sixteenth of the land by the second year and one-eighth of the land by thebeginning of the third year. In order for properties to be eligible under this context,the residence, with historic integrity, must be in place and some trace of clearedfields should be evident.The following patented homesteads have the highest potential for being eligible:John Whitney, James H. Wilson, Christ Folberg, John E. Kulin, Victor Carlson,John H. Thompson, William H. Weaver, Fred Zinis, John Hoglund, Gus Hunter,Clarence L. Donald, Leon Porlier, Samuel Sly, John Kenote, Robert Prizer, andJohn J. Harrington.<strong>Homesteads</strong> that did not make it to patent, but still had substantial improvementsand cleared fields are also possibly eligible for the National Register of HistoricPlaces. These include the unperfected claims of: Leopold Nieminen, Victor Harder,Clarence Harpham, Benson Hitchcock, James Murray, William Chambers, EdvartKjosen, Alvin Meier, Edwin Meier, Victor Ogren, and William Stolt.Properties without significant improvements are not eligible for the National Registerof Historic Places under the homestead context. It was usually, but not always,possible to find records of what a claimant built on the land. When the records werenot available, the cancellation of a claim at no cost to the government was taken asproof that no substantial improvements were constructed. As such, the followingunperfected homestead claims are ineligible for inclusion in the National Registerof Historic Places: Claude L. Fenton, Frank E. Harpham, Albert Hoserud, JamesKennedy, Keith Kinney, Warren O’Malley. Also ineligible under the homesteadingcontext are buildings constructed by a person who purchased a patented land. Anythingbuilt by James Campbell, Jack Mannick, Thomas Price or Samuel Keist arenot eligible due to this restriction.Aerial investigations of several sites, correlated with aerial photographic maps,yielded no significant finds on the following homesteads: Edwin Meier, Albert48<strong>Homesteads</strong> on Fort RichardsonAlaska