Trapping museum opens doors in Valley

In 1917, a trapper sold a single silver fox for $1,500, according to a poster from the time. The trapper bought a brand new car and had some money to spare.

Today, that same fur would probably sell for less than $100 -- not even a down payment.

Also in the early 1900s, Montgomery Ward and Sears, Roebuck and Co. fiercely competed for trappers' furs. They published annual fur handling guides, and rewarded trappers for their skills. For example, according to one guide, a trapper could win a new car with something as simple as a well-skinned, well-handled muskrat.

Then there's an 1897 illustration showing a gathering of animals in a forest -- fox, coyote, wolves, badgers -- and a bear sits at the head of the group with a gavel in his hand and a tree stump in front of him. With their comical, almost human faces, the animals intently look to their bear leader and, according to the caption, participate in a convention of all fur animals protesting against trapping.

"It's not just dead animals and traps," said Bob Green, owner of Fort Green Gift Shop and Museum. "There's a lot of history involved."

The president of the Frontier Trappers Association, Green has run a trapping supply shop out of his home near Wasilla for years. Recently, with the encouragement and help of his son, he built Fort Green -- an impressive log structure on the Palmer-Wasilla Highway that house a gift shop, trapping supply store and, now, the museum.

For $3 admission, visitors can wander through the Northern Trappers Fur Industry Museum and through the history of trapping in Alaska and America. They can read price-listing posters from the early 1900s that make today's fur prices seem dismal. They can see trapping baskets woven more than 100 years ago, and stand awe-struck in front of bear traps that would take up most of a bathtub.

The collection is the accumulation of more than 50 years. Green began gathering traps as a teen-ager growing up in Massachusetts, where he ran a bait and trap shop. After years of collecting traps, he eventually had more than he could handle and began to refine his taste, like a baseball-card collector who seeks out the more rare, more valuable items.

For the past decades, most of these collectors' items were in boxes in Green's house, and his son kept telling him, "You know, Dad, you've got all this stuff in boxes and you don't even know what you have. And wouldn't it be nice to share it?"

Green agreed, and last month opened what he believes is Alaska's only trapping museum.

Visitors expecting piles of rusty old traps jammed into a dusty shed with a few ancient furs nailed to the wall will be pleasantly surprised when they walk into Fort Green. Warmly lit and spotlessly clean, the museum features light-colored wood floors and display cases. Framed calendar pages with colorful artwork line some of the walls. Traps of various sizes and models are neatly arranged on the wood beams overhead, and a handful of head and full-body animal mounts are sprinkled about the room. A corner display case holds a curious hodge-podge of antiques arranged on furs -- a muskrat spear, arrowheads, an antique container advertising "skunk animal bait," a much-sought-after antique ax head and a "set gun."

Set guns were hunting-type rifles rigged with a trigger that held a hunk of meat or other bait. It would be set like a trap in the woods and when an animal tried to pry the piece of meat off the hook, it would set off the trigger and be shot. It was effective -- too effective, according to Green. Today such a contraption would be too dangerous to use because of the threat of a child or other unintended victim setting off the gun.

Nearby, a display of trap springs describes the varying power of the steel tools. Throughout the museum, Green has left room for narrative signs that describe the history and significance of each item.

"I could really load this place up with traps," Green said, "but I didn't want to do that." Instead, Green said, he wanted to appeal to a broader audience, including women and people who are not necessarily interested in trapping specifically.

But if it's traps you want, traps you will get. One of Green's most rare is an antique Texas Wolf Trap, but it's not just the trap itself that makes it unique.

"What makes it really valuable is that it has the complete chain and grapple," Green explained, pointing to the unusual flat-link chain that came original with the trap.

Green also has a collection of some of the first steel body-grip traps ever made, as well as some of the hardest-to-find Newhouse traps.

But the displays of paper memorabilia, of books, calendars, catalogs, trapping tags and posters, are actually more at the forefront in the museum's arrangement. On these written pages, there are references to "Russian America," now known as Alaska, and descriptions of the furs worn by soldiers fighting around the globe during World War II. There are pre-Civil War documents, as well as a complete collection of the books in the series called the "Trappers Library."

Green says during these first days of having the museum open, visitors seem to be enjoying the displays. Most spend a half hour or so to walk through, and those who take the time to absorb it all can spend an hour or more.

And each trapping season, past and present merge at Fort Green. Trappers from around the state come to Fort Green to drop their furs off and, as Green sorts through them and prepares to send them to the North American Fur Auction, the trappers wander through the museum and revisit a time when a silver fox could buy a car.

The museum is open daily from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and is located about three miles outside of Wasilla on the Palmer-Wasilla Highway.