I would put this fairly high up the reading list of people interested in Valdez, Alaska – or travellers like me who just had a couple of nights there. I don't think I remembered it being the starting point for so many of those on the Klondike gold rush, and I didn't know that one partnership that hadn't done that well in the industry of gold mining still owned enough land that they could donate a chunk of it to shift the town up the coast a smidge when what was there in the 1960s got wiped out by one of the world's biggest known earthquakes.

Hazelet and Meals were two old muckers who though they had a fortune awaiting them from growing chicory as a coffee substitute on industrial scale in the lower 48, until they didn't – and decided they needed to seek the shiny stuff in the Copper River valley instead. We get three chunks of his reportage, once the forepages have been done and dusted, with two of his old hand-written notebooks conveying how they got to the sites they were interested in – and then breaking off with it seeming a failure, until the third chunk comes in with industrial might, and many a legal case against people claiming the territory they'd staked out as their claims for themselves. There is a lot of end matter to handily put us in the clear as to what followed on after, which is more than useful – although anything added to the original 2012 hardback of this seems weakly written tourist advertorial.

What is of note is the constant moaning Hazelet has about himself and his choices – the decisions he took to take himself away for so many months of several consecutive years from his young sons and his admittedly beautiful (if nostrilly) wife. He feeds on re-reading her letters, never once condoning his decisions to seek the fortune he felt they needed so far away from them. You can see here the third section starting out as a very business-minded script, before falling into much the same sentimental trap as the first two, due to the appeal of Mrs Hazelet.

As a read here in 2023 it's not perfect – the minutiae of the trekking and traversing all the paths and trails to and fro with boats, horses, bulls and manpower is a bit much at times, and things get technical without any editorialising or explanation, with the man writing very much for himself or for people who could understand all the ins and outs of his industry. A wonderful book could be had from crunching some of this with its superb nature notes and descriptions onto pages conveying the whole story of the man and not these few short years, but what we have is still decent enough. The sheer ordeal of hiking up and down glaciers with all of your supplies, moving everything you practically own in stages (with surprisingly little robbery given all the left-behind stashes) is the prime focus for a lot of these pages, and Hazelet does come across as a person you want to cheer on to success. The fact his descendants are still owning a lot of Valdez land and are behind this volume prove its value and authenticity, and it remains a flawed but very worthwhile purchase for those interested.

Interesting read based on a true story of the Alaskan Gold Rush of 1898.

This is a traveler's formal with handy information about the sights & what you might see if you wanted to travel the 300 miles of Richardson Highway in Alaska.

The book includes pictures & real journal entries. Fun to get some insight about what this journey would have been like!

(I was able to preview this book in exchange for my honest review.)

I am so glad that this will now be published as a travel edition. After living in Alaska, this book is so much more than a historical account. Excellently curated, George Hazelet’s epic tale of braving everything Alaska could throw at him is an inspiration. Hazelet’s Journal will soon be a natural addition to every backpacker’s list for those quiet nights by firelight or flashlight and a historical classic.

Thank you, NetGalley!