Last Frontier Tales
A Lost Treasure Found: Cordova Times Book Review
Paul Solka: Alaska Painter and Chronicler of Pioneer Life
By Hank Nuwer, Cordova Times
Solka: In His Words and Art
Ray Bonnell and Chuck Gray, Editors
Fairbanks: Pingo Press, 2025; $25
The late Alaskan and Oregonian pioneer Paul Hans Andrew Solka Jr. led a remarkable life. He did many things and did them all well. Yesteryear folks would have called him a Renaissance figure.
A self-taught artist and longtime printer during the boom era of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, Solka gifted subscribers a painting every Christmas for years to serve as the paper’s signature greeting.
On occasion, the paper printed his sketches and sold them as Christmas greeting cards.
The stunning paper book cover depicts the self-taught Solka’s painting of a pioneer cabin in midwinter dwarfed by what appears to be Denali, formerly Mount McKinley. It was commissioned by the News-Miner in 1980. He painted an estimated 2000 paintings, many winter landscapes, in watercolors and acrylics. He also rendered pen-and-ink sketches.
Solka also was an amateur historian, Alaska folklore collector, News-Miner columnist/printer, Army Air Corps WWII aerial photographer, pamphlet author, and advocate for an Alaska Constitution in its territorial days.
Lest this inspiring man’s contributions slip like gold dust through a pioneer’s cabin floorboards, editors Ray Bonnell and Charles “Chuck” Gray have put together an attractive almanac. The title is “Solka: In His Words and Art.”
Solka’s later writings were edited by Nan Coppock-Bland, former associate director of publications at the University of Oregon. Coppock-Bland died, at age 82, on February 8, 2026.
The 200-page book is replete with historic photographs and includes a center section of six color plate reproductions of Solka’s paintings. My favorite is a 1975 watercolor painting of the former Birch Lake Roadhouse located 55 miles southeast of Fairbanks on the historic Richardson Trail.
Gray, a News-Miner publisher emeritus, was Solka’s longtime friend and a fellow printer at the paper. Gray contributed a four-page preface that serves as an introduction and tribute to his late News-Miner colleague.
The white-bearded, bespectacled Solka had the gentle facial features of a scholar. Gray describes him as a “humble, unusually talented Alaskan.”
Solka was born October 5, 1908, in Ishpeming, Michigan. His parents were Jennie and Paul Solka, Sr.
His father, a pioneer gold miner, settled the Solka clan on Tenderfoot Creek near the Middle Tanana River in 1915.
The family relocated to Shaw Creek above the Tanana River in 1922. His mother, Jennie Caspara Olseb Solka home schooled him. His father taught him to hunt and fish. He picked up painting on his own and enrolled in art correspondence school courses.
The family then moved to Fairbanks so that he and his brother Dick could receive formal schooling. He remained in Alaska until 1967, surviving the great Fairbanks flood and its destructive aftermath. Later, until retirement, he earned his keep as a typesetter for the Eugene Register-Guard in Oregon.
However, for years he continued to paint his Alaska scenes and, a born storyteller, wrote his memoirs, newly edited, and condensed in the present volume.
Perhaps the volume’s most compelling tale was inspired by a story his father used to tell about the “Lost Gold Mine of the Tanana.” Briefly, two miners hit paydirt on a small creek. The first fell ill and was buried by the partner. Then the second went to Tacoma where he also grew ill and passed.
Many prospectors tried to find that gold bonanza. Up to 80 men tried in 1904 alone. Several used a map drawn up by a German saloonkeeper, a close friend of the deceased second partner.
Solka’s father also prospected. One year, he discovered a large quantity of platinum. Disappointed that it wasn’t a mother lode of gold, he threw the platinum away, unaware of its true value.
Paul Hans Andrew Solka died following a stroke on October 14, 1998.
The lively account reads as if he still lived among us.
I personally regard the book as a gem, or more appropriately, a gold nugget.
I highly recommend it for all lovers of Alaska history. Alaska’s libraries and museums ought to find shelf space and make copies of “Solka: In His Words and Art” available to the public.
UAF adjunct professor of journalism Hank Nuwer has won first-place awards in column/commentary writing in three states: Indiana, Ohio and Alaska. He is the former managing editor of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.
