Alaska's Skyboys


Book Description

This fascinating account of the development of aviation in Alaska examines the daring missions of pilots who initially opened up the territory for military positioning and later for trade and tourism. Early Alaskan military and bush pilots navigated some of the highest and most rugged terrain on earth, taking off and landing on glaciers, mudflats, and active volcanoes. Although they were consistently portrayed by industry leaders and lawmakers alike as cowboys—and their planes compared to settlers’ covered wagons—the reality was that aviation catapulted Alaska onto a modern, global stage; the federal government subsidized aviation’s growth in the territory as part of the Cold War defense against the Soviet Union. Through personal stories, industry publications, and news accounts, historian Katherine Johnson Ringsmuth uncovers the ways that Alaska’s aviation growth was downplayed in order to perpetuate the myth of the cowboy spirit and the desire to tame what many considered to be the last frontier.




Aeronautical Decision-Making and Aviation Safety in the Alaskan Operational Setting


Book Description

Aeronautical Decision-Making and Aviation Safety in the Alaskan Operational Setting introduces the reader to the real-life experiences of aviators who fly in remote settings such as Alaska in the United States. It covers the challenges related to limited aviation infrastructure and support that affect human factors like aeronautical decision-making and its impact on aviation safety. Through a unique blend of meticulous case study analysis and semi-structured interviews with Alaskan pilots, this book offers a comprehensive understanding of the proverbial challenges of flying in Alaska. It uncovers the human factors elements specific to this environment, shedding light on the factors that influence a pilot’s decision-making, which may contribute to the high rate of accidents in Alaska and other remote regions. The content is supported by historical and socioeconomic perspectives on remote-setting aviation operations. Global perspectives are discussed with narratives from one author’s experiences flying to remote airstrips in Africa. The book concludes with practical recommendations to improve decision-making and aviation safety in these remote settings, making it a must-read for aviation professionals. This insightful research is not just for academic consumption. It is a practical guide for aviation professionals, including pilots, dispatch teams, air traffic controllers, and aviation support personnel. It offers valuable insights into the human factors involved in flying in Alaska, which can be directly applied in other aviation resource-constrained geographical regions, making it an indispensable resource for those in the field.




Sky Pilot of Alaska


Book Description

This is a new release of the original 1949 edition.




Alaska's Midnight Son


Book Description

This book describes numerous stories of adventures on the ocean, on land as well as flying in Alaska. The reader may wonder how the writer is still here to relate his adventures. He dedicates this book especially to all the men and women in the Armed Forces who are coming home now from the world fields of battle. It is his honest desire that all Veterans will find their dreams and goals and go after them to matter what. All adversities can be overcome through determination, prayer, and hard work. He did.




Cowboys of the Sky


Book Description

Explores the seventy-year history of aviation in the rugged terrain of Alaska, where bush pilots transported supplies, personnel, mail, wildlife, and criminals




Alaska


Book Description

A tour of Alaska's history, landscape, geography, and culture includes photographs, illustrated sidebars, little-known facts, and maps as well as travel tips and practical recommendations for visitors to the forty-ninth state.




Cowboys of the Sky


Book Description

For more than 80 years, bush pilots have carried supplies, delivered mail, and transported emergency personnel over Alaska's rugged terrain. They've flown with felons handcuffed to the seat, with corpses strapped to the wing, and with drugged polar bears sleeping in the cargo compartment. Ever since aviation came to Alaska planes have been far more important than cars or truck to the residents of the far-flung bush communities. In Cowboys of the Sky: The Story of Alaska's Bush Pilots, humorist and historian Steven C. Levi takes you on a wild ride through the heyday of aviation in Alaska, from the golden years, before federal regulations curbed the more dangerous and outlandish flying practices, all the way to the present. Through photographs and anecdotes, you'll meet brave and colorful pilots, the true cowboys of the sky who carved the face of America's Last Frontier.




Home Is the North,


Book Description

A portrait of the land and people of wilderness Alaska presented through the experiences of an orphan whose year of decisions, responsibilities, and growth help him to accept the future.




The Pony Rider Boys In Alaska


Book Description

This book is a result of an effort made by us towards making a contribution to the preservation and repair of original classic literature. In an attempt to preserve, improve and recreate the original content, we have worked towards: 1. Type-setting & Reformatting: The complete work has been re-designed via professional layout, formatting and type-setting tools to re-create the same edition with rich typography, graphics, high quality images, and table elements, giving our readers the feel of holding a 'fresh and newly' reprinted and/or revised edition, as opposed to other scanned & printed (Optical Character Recognition - OCR) reproductions. 2. Correction of imperfections: As the work was re-created from the scratch, therefore, it was vetted to rectify certain conventional norms with regard to typographical mistakes, hyphenations, punctuations, blurred images, missing content/pages, and/or other related subject matters, upon our consideration. Every attempt was made to rectify the imperfections related to omitted constructs in the original edition via other references. However, a few of such imperfections which could not be rectified due to intentional\unintentional omission of content in the original edition, were inherited and preserved from the original work to maintain the authenticity and construct, relevant to the work. We believe that this work holds historical, cultural and/or intellectual importance in the literary works community, therefore despite the oddities, we accounted the work for print as a part of our continuing effort towards preservation of literary work and our contribution towards the development of the society as a whole, driven by our beliefs. We are grateful to our readers for putting their faith in us and accepting our imperfections with regard to preservation of the historical content. HAPPY READING!




Walter Harper, Alaska Native Son


Book Description

Walter Harper, Alaska Native Son illuminates the life of the remarkable Irish-Athabascan man who was the first person to summit Mount Denali, North America's tallest mountain. Born in 1893, Walter Harper was the youngest child of Jenny Albert and the legendary gold prospector Arthur Harper. His parents separated shortly after his birth, and his mother raised Walter in the Athabascan tradition, speaking her Koyukon-Athabascan language. When Walter was seventeen years old, Episcopal archdeacon Hudson Stuck hired the skilled and charismatic youth as his riverboat pilot and winter trail guide. During the following years, as the two traveled among Interior Alaska's Episcopal missions, they developed a father-son-like bond and summited Denali together in 1913. Walter's strong Athabascan identity allowed him to remain grounded in his birth culture as his Western education expanded and he became a leader and a bridge between Alaska Native peoples and Westerners in the Alaska territory. He planned to become a medical missionary in Interior Alaska, but his life was cut short at the age of twenty-five, in the Princess Sophia disaster of 1918 near Skagway, Alaska. Harper exemplified resilience during an era when rapid socioeconomic and cultural change was wreaking havoc in Alaska Native villages. Today he stands equally as an exemplar of Athabascan manhood and healthy acculturation to Western lifeways whose life will resonate with today's readers.