Pioneer spirit lives on in print

July 3, 2007

By Will Elliott / Frontiersman

PALMER - When famed Alaska artist Fred Machentanz died in 2002, the president of the state's oldest gallery called his passing the end of an era.

&#8220Fred was the last living painter who could paint the romantic period of Alaska's history from personal experience,” said Tennys Owens, president of Artique Ltd. in Anchorage.

Some of Machentanz's best known works depict a white-bearded sourdough, usually with his trademark rifle and willow walking stick. Nostalgic as the images are, they are less romanticized than viewers might think, Galena author Kim Ueek said. Ueek's great uncle was the sourdough in those paintings.

Alaskana Bookstore in Palmer hosted a book signing Friday with Ueek and two other local authors. Cheryl Homme signed &#8220Cures and Chaos,” a book about a brilliant but troubled doctor in frontier-era Palmer. Mary Lovel signed her memoir &#8220Journey to a Dream,” which tells of her family's odyssey from Missouri to a wilderness homestead along the Alaska Railroad in the 1960s. Ueek's book &#8220The Man from Sheep Mountain” details the adventures of Ed Ueek, who ran an 80-mile trapline by foot and dog in the Matanuska Valley and served as the model for Machentanz's sourdough paintings.

&#8220Those pioneers have incredible stories,” Ueek said. &#8220And we're losing them every day. It was a slice of history that should be preserved.”

Ueek said his great uncle's life was sensational enough without embellishment. Arriving in the Valley in 1929 with just change in his pocket, Ed Ueek started a trapline near Sheep Mountain, now on the Glenn Highway near the Matanuska Glacier. Ueek's biography tells of a trapped wolverine reviving as Ed Ueek carried the animal home over his shoulder, a cabin burning down in mid-winter and the stamina Ed Ueek retained even as an old man - riding a horse, splitting wood and living in his cabin at 92 years old.

As such, Ed Ueek regarded these experiences matter-of-factly and viewed them as part of the lifestyle he loved rather than something to brag about. Though Ed Ueek left the state for Texas in his 80s, he missed his old life, his great nephew said. He returned soon after, living his final years in a log cabin at Sheep Mountain.

&#8220Alaska was in his blood,” Ueek said. &#8220He really hung on to the way it was. I think he just thrived on that.”

Mary Lovel tells a similar story in her memoir. After driving to Alaska and finding Anchorage on the wrong side of the frontier, the Lovels staked 160 acres of homestead land at Sherman in the 1960s along the Alaska Railroad 32 miles north of Talkeetna. The railroad's flag-stop train service provided transportation from Talkeetna to the cabin. A large but scattered community of cabin families dwelt along the railroad then.