Last Frontier Days.
By Hank Nuwer
John Hegness liked to tell people he’d come from Hell.
And he had. His birthplace was Hell, Norway, which wasn’t named for a hotspot you’d like to avoid in the afterlife.
Nope, his own personal Hell took its name for the Old Norse word for “luck” or an “overhang,” it seems.
Hegness was born February 3, 1877. He was 16 when he and his brother Ed came to Dawson City and then, a few years later, to Nome in search of gold.
He was a man of medium size with brown hair and blue eyes, according to his draft registration records.
His true talent came from sled-dog racing.
His claim to fame came in 1908 when he and his team raced from Nome to Candle and won the top purse in the first All-Alaska Sweepstakes Race. Before running, he and other mushers buried food for themselves and dogs along the route.
The race was dreamed up by prominent Nome citizens Albert Fink and Scotty Allen during a conversation in a Nome saloon.
Fairbanks historians Jack and Linda Distad said the exhausting race began on None’s famed Front Street, continued along the icy Norton Sound to Safety, Dixon, Council and the mining town of Candle, then reversed course and back to Nome. The distance then was reckoned at 408 miles.
Hegness won that first grueling, bone-chilling 1908 race, but he never was able to repeat.
That short-lived great race itself ended in 1918 during World War One. It was often cited as the inspiration for the later creation of the Iditarod race.
The Alaska Prospector of Valdez reported that the winner won a purse of $25,000, but the Fairbanks News-Miner put the prize as $19,000.
Hegness was a bachelor until October 15, 1913, when he married Marie Louise Le Boulanger of Berkely, California, at the home of George Diamond in Nome. She was originally from Massachusetts, the daughter of a father who was an immigrant from France. Her mother, a widow at the time of Louise’s marriage to John, had family roots in Scotland.
For a few years he served as an appointed U.S. postmaster and mail carrier in Nome, while dabbling in mining for gold.
The Nome Nugget of December 26, 1913, reported that there was a 6 p.m. cutoff date for mail and packages the evening before Hegness made a run.
The Cordova Times on May 13, 1919, reported that Hegness had a harrowing encounter in a blizzard the previous March. All but two of his dogs died in the cold, and he was saved by fortune on Lost River when he spotted a prospector’s cabin.
Hegness decided to try his hand as a skipper following the end of World War One.
On October 8, 1919, he piloted the 15-ton, wooden ship Hettie B. when it became stranded on a sandbar while on route to Nome. A rescue boat picked up seven passengers and three crew, but the boat, uninsured, was a total loss.
Hegness purchased a boat he dubbed Silver Wave to take passengers and cargo on runs along the Bering Sea Coast. Unfortunately, he wrecked that boat in 1924.
Hegness was a certified sourdough in 1928 when he arrived with his dog team in the nick of time to rescue famed pilot Russel Merrill whose plane had bogged down in snow and trapped him in the Interior. (See my column online last November 13).
Apparently Hegness had a quirky sense of humor.
When he reached Merrill, frozen and nearly out of grub, the pilot asked if he might hitch a ride to Barrow, the Anchorage Daily News reported.
“Sorry, but I’ve got a full load,” Hegness joked, according to the paper.
Merrill was equally quick with a quip. The pilot still had a small ration of rice with him untouched. Merrill joked that he was saving it up for a real emergency, the newspaper reported.
Hegness started a campfire and gave the pilot life-giving hot soup before bundling him in blankets and heading to Barrow for medical assistance.
The old timer was in the news again in 1932 when he served as a guide for the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film crew on location north of Barrow in Teller to film the movie Eskimo.
By the beginning of World War Two Hegness had moved to Washington State, but he returned to Point Barrow as a guide for the Navy and federal government oil survey team in 1944.
The Nome Nugget reported tin March of 1945 that Hegness was seriously ill in Everett, Washington, and under the care of daughter. Helga Hegness Later. Mrs. Later left her home in California to minister to her father.
Hegness recovered. His wife Marie Louise died in California at age 63 on September 15, 1948. He returned to Norway by ship in 1951 to see his surviving relatives.
John Hegness died at a ripe-old 86 years on September 29, 1963. In his last years he lived a quiet life an assisted living home for seniors.
The old musher was survived by daughter Helga, her sister Brenda Hegness Delaney, and five grandchildren and seven grandchildren.
The Mushers’ Hall of Fame in Wasilla honored Hegness by inducting him as a member.
Hank Nuwer is an adjunct professor at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. He is currently conducting research for his next book at Indiana University’s Lilly Library. While there he’s excited about visiting his son Adam and daughter-in law at their home in Bloomington and (hopefully) beating them both in combat matches of Scrabble. First published in the Cordova Times.