KAREN BREWSTER: This is Karen Brewster. Today is October 7, 2018, and I’m here in Skagway, Alaska, with Bea Lingle at her home here. And this is for the Klondike Gold Rush Bering Land Bridge Climate Change Project.

Bea, thank you for letting me come visit you this morning.
BEA LINGLE: Thank you.

KAREN BREWSTER: And, uh, I know you’ve been interviewed a lot before, but just to start us off a little bit, you were born here in Skagway?
BEA LINGLE: Yes.

KAREN BREWSTER: And you said you’re almost ninety-one?
BEA LINGLE: Yes. I am ninety-one.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, you are ninety-one?
BEA LINGLE: Wait a minute. Yes, I am ninety-one.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yes. You are ninety-one. Ok.

Um, so you -- tell me a little bit about what Skagway was like when you were growing up, in terms of the weather and the kinds of things you guys did.
BEA LINGLE: The -- we had a lot more snow. We had a lot colder winters.

We -- the streets weren’t paved. The businesses on Broadway, most of the buildings were closed down, and they were going into bad disrepair because they were -- there wasn’t enough people here to support what it had been like during the gold rush.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

BEA LINGLE: And during World War II, because there were, I think, 20,000 soldiers here during World War II. And it -- it -- so it has changed a lot.
KAREN BREWSTER: Right.

BEA LINGLE: And I love watching the changes. In all the years I raised the kids, there were 600 people here.

And we sat down -- my niece made a family tree, starting with my grandparents that came during the gold rush, and we were related to 384 of the 600 people.

Some of them were divorces, but we didn’t saw their limb off.
KAREN BREWSTER: Right.
BEA LINGLE: We left it on the tree because they were -- there was kids and cousins and things like that, so.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah, so I was going to ask how your family ended up here. So you had grandparents who came?
BEA LINGLE: My grandfather, and you can see a picture of him way at the top, way over at that end.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.

BEA LINGLE: And he came up, he was -- but not to prospect. He came up to gamble.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.

BEA LINGLE: And I have every one of his genes.
KAREN BREWSTER: You’re a gambler?
BEA LINGLE: I love to gamble.

And then after he’d been here a year or so, he was doing well enough, so he sent for his wife and little girl. He had a house built for ’em, and then he sent for them.

And they just tore the house down this summer.
KAREN BREWSTER: Wow.
BEA LINGLE: But people have lived in it right up until Ada, who was Canadian, went into a home in Whitehorse. Sweet lady.

And so he came up for that, and then his little girl grew up, and they would send her out ’cause school didn’t go very far here.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

BEA LINGLE: They’d send her out after she finished grade school and high school, I guess, to a finishing school back east. He had enough money to do that.
KAREN BREWSTER: Wow.

BEA LINGLE: And she got training for -- to be a nurse’s aide or an English teacher. So she had two professions come out of that so-called --

it was called a finishing school.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.
BEA LINGLE: It wasn’t called a college or anything.

And I have a picture of her in the Bishop Rowe Hospital, which was where our hangar is.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.

BEA LINGLE: We had an air service for awhile. And she also --

What else did she -- well, she substituted in the English classes when they needed her.

KAREN BREWSTER: And so, she was your grandmother?
BEA LINGLE: She was my mother.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, your mother. Ok. I lost a generation.

BEA LINGLE: Well, I didn’t say she was my mother.
KAREN BREWSTER: She was your mother.
BEA LINGLE: I just said my grandfather --
KAREN BREWSTER: -- ’s daughter. So that was your mother.
BEA LINGLE: Daughter that grew up here.

And -- and then she married a man that came to town to work on the railroad. They had just built it. And I think it was about five years old when the railroad would --

Uh, I'm trying to think of his name now. It’s my dad. Uh, Albert Roy Hillery came to town, and they called him Tad or Silvertip.

His hair turned gray early. But he went right to work for the railroad, and he retired from it.
KAREN BREWSTER: Great.

BEA LINGLE: And so that’s how that -- then my mother had four girls. So see, the names were changing.
KAREN BREWSTER: Right.

BEA LINGLE: It started out deGruyter, which is Dutch, and you kinda -- you’re supposed to roll it.
KAREN BREWSTER: Right.
BEA LINGLE: In the middle there.

And starts with a small d-e, capital G, r-u-y-t-e-r is how it was spelled. And so she had four girls, and only two of us had children.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.
BEA LINGLE: So.

KAREN BREWSTER: And Lingle is your married name? Your husband was Ben Lingle?
BEA LINGLE: Yes. I was married for thirteen years and had my four children by my first husband.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.

BEA LINGLE: And then we split up, and I was on my own for two years, and then I -- with the kids.

And then I married the man that lived across the street.
KAREN BREWSTER: And that was Ben?
BEA LINGLE: And that was Benny.

KAREN BREWSTER: Right. And he and you ran the hardware store here for many, many years, correct?
BEA LINGLE: Yes, he bought that. We’d been married about a year, and he bought the hardware store from the nurse that delivered me.

That’s a small town, isolated.
KAREN BREWSTER: That’s a small town, yeah.

BEA LINGLE: And that’s another whole story. But that’s how we got the family up here -- started during the gold rush.

KAREN BREWSTER: Right. So when you were growing up here, you said the winters were colder. What kind of things did you do? Did you go ice skating, skiing?

BEA LINGLE: Well see, I was -- my mother left my dad when I was four months old.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.
BEA LINGLE: And moved to Seattle with: her thirteen-year-old daughter, my sister; me, four-month-old baby; her mother, ’cause my grandfather had passed away and she was still here living in her house; and herself.

And they went to Seattle, and she got a job.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.
BEA LINGLE: Making forty-two cents an hour cleaning women’s rest rooms.
KAREN BREWSTER: Wow.

BEA LINGLE: Now this is the finishing --
KAREN BREWSTER: School.
BEA LINGLE: Education.

And she -- my grandma kinda raised me.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

BEA LINGLE: And I remember the first time I got interested in ages, and my grandma was seventy-two, and I asked my mom, how old would I be -- I mean, how -- where -- how -- how -- what was it?

When I get to be the age of grandma, what would I be? And mother said, seventy-two. So anyhow.

KAREN BREWSTER: So when did you move back to Skagway, then?
BEA LINGLE: Well, mother brought me back every year 'til I was in school, first grade, and to see my dad. Neither one of ’em ever remarried.

And then Dad -- then when I got in school, and mother couldn’t get away at that time to come up and see him because I was in school, so she -- see where's it? My brain is slow.
KAREN BREWSTER: That’s ok.

BEA LINGLE: She -- my dad start coming out. And people started taking vacations. They didn’t take vacations much.
KAREN BREWSTER: Right.
BEA LINGLE: And leave town up here.

But the railroad men made a steady salary, and pretty good, and so my dad started going out and visiting us.

And then when I was eight years old, Mother took me on the train to Vancouver, I think it was, and put me on the Princess Norah, which was a little ship that carried -- I guess it carried about 200 people, and traveled back and forth between ports in Alaska from the Canadian thing.

And she put me on the boat, and she said, "There’ll be -- I’ll know somebody going to Skagway. Oh, there’s Maureen Johnston. Maureen, keep an eye on Bea. She’s going to see her dad for the summer." You couldn’t do that nowadays.
KAREN BREWSTER: No.

BEA LINGLE: And it didn’t throw me at all because my grandmother had been raised on a plantation, and she’d always had servants, so she had always told me how to use a lot of silverware and how to use finger bowls and everything.

And that’s how the Princess ships were in those days. So I was right at home. It didn’t bother me.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

BEA LINGLE: And whoever the lady was that was my roommate, she was seasick the whole time. She was in the bunk and sick.

And it -- it really was unusual because I came back up here in ’47 -- ’45. When I got out of high school, my dad sent me a graduation present, which was a one-way ticket back home. This was always home.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

BEA LINGLE: And I never saw Maureen again or since or before.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. Right.

And so when you came back in ’45, the army was here, right?
BEA LINGLE: Yeah, they were just moving out.

KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. That was a big change for this town.
BEA LINGLE: It was. It was.

KAREN BREWSTER: Wow. So those summers when you came to visit when you were younger.
BEA LINGLE: Um-hm.
KAREN BREWSTER: Do you remember what they were like? Like, were they hot and sunny?
BEA LINGLE: Yeah.
KAREN BREWSTER: Cold and rainy?

BEA LINGLE: No. I don’t remember much rain. And I -- I learned, don’t run on the wooden sidewalks if you’re in your shorts and everything because I fell, and my sister peroxided and fizzed splinters out of me forever.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ow.

BEA LINGLE: I was living with my sister Virginia. Then when my mother retired, she moved back up here, too.

But she and Dad never went back together.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

BEA LINGLE: But he didn’t -- he moved to the place he liked to spend his vacations, which was Tenakee.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.

BEA LINGLE: And he bought four cabins there and left one to each of us girls.
KAREN BREWSTER: Nice.
BEA LINGLE: Yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: And was Tenakee a hot springs resort even back then?
BEA LINGLE: Well, it's hot springs. It was pretty crude, you know, and --
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

BEA LINGLE: But the -- the lot of -- four of the railroad men here in Skagway bought property down there and would go on their vacations there.
KAREN BREWSTER: Good place to go.

BEA LINGLE: Well, their wives weren’t too thrilled with it, but --

KAREN BREWSTER: Maybe they went fishing down there, too?
BEA LINGLE: Oh, they fished, and somebody’s always hunting and fishing.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

BEA LINGLE: And my dad would send crab legs up here to Virginia, and we’d have a feast.
KAREN BREWSTER: Wow.
BEA LINGLE: And deer meat, and bear meat, I think, too.

KAREN BREWSTER: Do people still do that, go crabbing?
BEA LINGLE: Oh yes, right here in town.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. They still get crab out there?
BEA LINGLE: Um-hm.

KAREN BREWSTER: Do you know if they get as much as before, or has that changed?
BEA LINGLE: You know, I don’t know because none of us were very sports-minded that way.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

BEA LINGLE: I hiked a lot.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.
BEA LINGLE: And my kids did.

And my boys’d go camping in the dead of winter.
KAREN BREWSTER: Wow.

BEA LINGLE: But they were so close that I knew where they were. They always said, "We’re going over here on the hillside, or we’re going up to Lower Lake, or -- " So I knew where they were.

KAREN BREWSTER: And was there a lot of snow when they were doing that?
BEA LINGLE: Um-hm.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

So you used to get a lot of snow down here.
BEA LINGLE: Um-hm.

And the wind. Skagway means "home of the wind." The Natives didn’t camp here or didn’t settle here.

KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh. Because it was too windy?
BEA LINGLE: Yeah. They went to Dyea.

KAREN BREWSTER: It’s less windy in Dyea?
BEA LINGLE: Yes.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.

BEA LINGLE: The wind just howls down out -- but it used to be a lot worse than it has been lately.
KAREN BREWSTER: Lately.

BEA LINGLE: And the drifts! I used to climb a drift up to the peak of the roof of my sister Helen, pulling my sled up, hang onto the chimney while I turned around, and then slide all the way down that hill.

And the drift, you know, just --
KAREN BREWSTER: So it was like, two stories high?
BEA LINGLE: No. No.

KAREN BREWSTER: One-story house?
BEA LINGLE: Yeah.
KAREN BREWSTER: Still pretty high.

BEA LINGLE: Yeah. The drift was big.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.
BEA LINGLE: On the south side of the house.

KAREN BREWSTER: ’Cause the wind came from the north?
BEA LINGLE: Um-hm. Um-hm.

KAREN BREWSTER: And that -- that doesn’t happen anymore?
BEA LINGLE: Not that bad.

But last winter, we had an old -- we had about a week of old winter, but it still didn’t get down as cold.

But we had a lot of drifting, and a lot of the houses that had been built in the last twenty years, their -- the shingles came off, and siding.
KAREN BREWSTER: Wow.

BEA LINGLE: There’s a house over here on Alaska Street that’s got a lot of the siding. The house has been there for a long time, and been remodeled.

And we had one of our Native families lived in there.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.
BEA LINGLE: Nice family.

KAREN BREWSTER: And so the newer houses aren’t as warm?
BEA LINGLE: Yes, they’re better. The newer houses are insulated better.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.

BEA LINGLE: But a lot of the houses, when they were built then -- we went years with nothing ever new. Maybe the Presbyterian manse or something.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.
BEA LINGLE: But we never had anything new in town.

And they just couldn’t take the wind, and the old, old-timers, men especially that were involved in building and keeping things up, they knew what was the matter and how the roof should have been.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. Do you remember how strong that wind was last year?
BEA LINGLE: Oh. I think somebody else would have to tell you.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.

BEA LINGLE: I was going to say, fifty-five.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. That’s --
BEA LINGLE: Sixty.

KAREN BREWSTER: Do you remember it being that windy in the past?
BEA LINGLE: Yes.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. That was normal in the past?
BEA LINGLE: Um-hm.

And the kids’d walk to school, and, you know, they’d be all bundled up. And turn around, and walk backwards, so they weren’t facing --

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah, I think they’d get blown -- or blown down the street.
BEA LINGLE: Well, when you were a little kid, it was a problem.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

BEA LINGLE: And Dorothy was allergic to cold.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.
BEA LINGLE: She’d break out in hives.
KAREN BREWSTER: Wow.

BEA LINGLE: And so we -- I said, "Well, turn around backwards and wrap up everything and even your eyes, if you can see through the cloth." And that’s what she had to do.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

BEA LINGLE: And then my son John got his first car, and he wouldn’t bring her home one day for lunch. The kids had to come home for lunch. Now they don’t.

But she -- he wouldn’t bring her, so she came in, and she was crying because it was bitter. And the wind was at her back, but the cold is what she was allergic to.

Made Benny mad, because -- my husband, because she -- he wouldn’t bring her home. He wanted to pick up his friends in his car.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.
BEA LINGLE: It was a truck.

So he went out and yanked all of his spark plugs loose, and he said, Now you’ll learn to fix it. And be more considerate."

KAREN BREWSTER: So when you came back in 1945, was it still cold and windy here, those years?
BEA LINGLE: Um-hm. It was getting better.

KAREN BREWSTER: So it getting warmer now, that’s better?
BEA LINGLE: Um-hm. I think it is.
KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

BEA LINGLE: And our cabin at -- Carcross is a desert.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.
BEA LINGLE: A lot of sand dunes and everything.

And Johnny -- or Benny always -- get my husbands mixed up. Benny always knew I wanted a cabin in the Yukon. I loved Carcross.

So he built one, and it was right on Bennett Lake, and a big sand dune right out in front.

But that sand dune began to sprout little scrubby, I don’t know what kind of bushes they are.

KAREN BREWSTER: So it’s bushes, not grass? But bushes?
BEA LINGLE: No. Yeah, it’s bushes. And some grass.

But now I can hardly see the lake because the bushes are this high.
KAREN BREWSTER: Right. Four or five feet high?
BEA LINGLE: Yeah.

And I went out and trimmed the branches off the lower part so they’d grow into trees, but it’s taking too long. I don’t think I’m going make it.

But anyhow, I love Carcross. It’s just different.

KAREN BREWSTER: So do you spend summer times up there? Or you did?
BEA LINGLE: I did. This year, I tried it, but the family doesn’t like me being there alone, and I know why.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

BEA LINGLE: And I like being in my cabin alone.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.
BEA LINGLE: And it’s just little. It’s only twenty feet by thirty feet, and it’s got one little bedroom and a little living room and a breakfast nook and a little teeny kitchen and an indoor bathroom.
KAREN BREWSTER: Nice.

BEA LINGLE: And they don’t have any water or sewer up there.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.
BEA LINGLE: This isn’t gold rush talk.
KAREN BREWSTER: No.
BEA LINGLE: I don’t know what -- how to -- but it makes.

Living’s a challenge.
KAREN BREWSTER: Right. It takes more work.

BEA LINGLE: Well, what they have is water delivery. The government has it. And you only pay $11 a month.
KAREN BREWSTER: That’s good. Nice.

BEA LINGLE: And then they have what they call pump-outs for your sewage.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.
BEA LINGLE: You have to have a --
KAREN BREWSTER: You have a tank?

BEA LINGLE: Uh-huh. We have two tanks for every house now. You can’t even have an outhouse unless it’s grandfathered in.

KAREN BREWSTER: So besides those shrubs growing up, up in Carcross, have you noticed other changes? Different birds coming through?
BEA LINGLE: No, I -- well, I saw one very light gray bird.

I wish Donovan would feed my birds because I know I’d have ’em all.

But -- and it -- my friend that’s a birder told me it was a Eurasian ring-necked dove, and they were -- only place they were known to be was in Florida. And there was one in Carcross.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

BEA LINGLE: And then the next winter down here -- I saw one down here. And then the next winter, I saw two and three, you know, like that.

And then the other day, Kathy counted seventeen out here.
KAREN BREWSTER: Out here at your bird feeders?
BEA LINGLE: Um-hm.

KAREN BREWSTER: Do you remember about when that was when you saw it in Carcross? Like five years ago, ten?
BEA LINGLE: Um-hm.
KAREN BREWSTER: About five years ago?
BEA LINGLE: Um-hm.

KAREN BREWSTER: So, yeah, they settled in pretty quickly.
BEA LINGLE: They did. They did. I love it.

My squirrel’s out there, really looking for something.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah, you have all these nice Stellar jays out here, too.
BEA LINGLE: And I have magpies. Do you know what magpies look like?
KAREN BREWSTER: Yes. Yes. Yes.
BEA LINGLE: They look like they got their tuxedoes on.
KAREN BREWSTER: Right.

BEA LINGLE: And crows. We don’t have very many ravens. I saw one or two.

KAREN BREWSTER: Has that changed? Did you used to have more ravens?
BEA LINGLE: I think we did. I don’t know. I never paid any attention to birds and stuff when I was littler.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

BEA LINGLE: But now, my sister-in-law told me it was a sign of getting old ’cause I watch birds. But I love it now. Look at. We got four blue jays.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.
BEA LINGLE: Oh, they just flew away.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

Well yeah, you have this nice bird feeder to watch. Have you noticed other things at the bird feeder?
BEA LINGLE: Well, the doves. And we never used to have magpies.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.
BEA LINGLE: And they started coming in.

They were -- they’ve been here now ever since we built this house. And we’ve been in this house six years, I think. Six or seven.

KAREN BREWSTER: So, 2012. ’Cause, yeah, you -- you tore down your old house and then your daughter and son-in-law built this nice big new house.
BEA LINGLE: Yeah. Well, Benny did.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.
BEA LINGLE: He had annuities.

He had done as much as he could saltin’ money away and watching out for our old age. And then he died when he was eighty-three.
KAREN BREWSTER: In 2009, you said.
BEA LINGLE: Uh-huh.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

BEA LINGLE: And they -- it was a lot like -- he had coughed, and then he couldn’t breathe, and like somebody that smoked too much.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

BEA LINGLE: And we had an insurance man up here, 'cause when Benny got going pretty good in the hardware, he wanted to have insurance for all his workers.
KAREN BREWSTER: Nice.
BEA LINGLE: And us and everything.

And then we went to, what is it? Mayo Clinic.
KAREN BREWSTER: Right.
BEA LINGLE: That’s why we went down south. And Benny fell in love with the weather.

So he bought a condo. And I loved our little condo, and it was a small complex, and we didn’t have a social director like a lot of the big places do.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

BEA LINGLE: So we had to make our own. Well, that’s what you do in a little town like this.
KAREN BREWSTER: Right.

BEA LINGLE: So that was just fun, and it was full of Canadians.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.
BEA LINGLE: So we really felt at home.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. Well, you said you liked to hike.
BEA LINGLE: Um-hm.

KAREN BREWSTER: What kind of hiking did you do around here?
BEA LINGLE: Well, one time I made it to Upper Lake.
KAREN BREWSTER: Upper Dewey?
BEA LINGLE: Yes.

But it was a hot day here, but by the time we got up there, it was cold. And I had shorts on, and the snow was this deep.
KAREN BREWSTER: Like a foot deep still up there?
BEA LINGLE: Yeah.
KAREN BREWSTER: Wow.

BEA LINGLE: Yeah, so, anyhow, I was glad to get back down, and I never hiked -- Coming down was worse than going up.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

BEA LINGLE: And I hiked all over this and up AB, and up -- and then when they built the road, it opened up a lot more hiking.

And I loved hiking up there because once I got over the summit, I didn’t have devil’s clubs.
KAREN BREWSTER: Right. You’re out in the alpine tundra, right?
BEA LINGLE: Yeah, and that was fun.

KAREN BREWSTER: With the hiking you did on the hills back here, in the time you did it, do you remember seeing different plants or the trees looking different or different animals?
BEA LINGLE: No. I never --

I heard a noise. I was hiking over in Dyea, and I was by myself. If I couldn’t get anybody to come with me, I'd go by myself. Everybody told me I was stupid. I look back on it, and I’m glad I did. I had a lot of adventures.

And I was going -- I’d heard there was a beaver pond being built in Dyea. And we never had had beavers over there, so I went over there in the area, and I found it.

And I was going to walk the perimeter of the pond. And I was clear down at the other end of it from where I had entered and found it, and getting ready to go around the other side, and there was a big rock, as big as this -- as big as a car.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.

BEA LINGLE: And it was right -- part of it went down in the water. And I thought, well, I’ll just go around and behind it.

And then I heard the most god-awful snarling and growling and just -- something was crabbier than all get-out, you know, and I thought, oh. I’ve never seen one, but that sounds like a wolverine.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.

BEA LINGLE: And so I turned around, and I thought, I’ll let him have -- He was right behind that rock I was gonna go behind.

So I came back, and then other people began seeing one over there.
KAREN BREWSTER: Wow.

BEA LINGLE: But, so, I was right, and I'd never seen one.

KAREN BREWSTER: Huh. Yeah, I didn’t know they had wolverine around here.
BEA LINGLE: I didn’t either.

KAREN BREWSTER: And how long ago was that?
BEA LINGLE: Well, it was when I was still in the old house.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm. So you were in your fifties?
BEA LINGLE: I would say it was about twenty years ago.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.
BEA LINGLE: No, that would make me in my seventies.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. And have you heard anybody talk about seeing another wolverine since?
BEA LINGLE: Um-hm.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.
BEA LINGLE: Um-hm.

KAREN BREWSTER: And even down that low?
BEA LINGLE: Um-hm.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh. I thought they lived up in the mountains.
BEA LINGLE: I don’t know where they live.

But one thing I did see for the first time, and I remember being so fascinated with him, is a marmot.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.

BEA LINGLE: And it was after -- on the other side of the summit.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.
BEA LINGLE: In rocky places.

And in the spring, they’d be running back and forth across the road, getting grass and building their winter nests.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.
BEA LINGLE: And I got to see those.

They’re called hoary mountain marmots.
KAREN BREWSTER: Right.
BEA LINGLE: Because they have a -- it looks like a cape that’s lighter.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.
BEA LINGLE: Over their shoulders.

KAREN BREWSTER: But you hadn’t seen one before?
BEA LINGLE: I had never seen one before. I’ve never seen one down here.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. So when would that have been, you saw them up there?
BEA LINGLE: When they built the road in -- It was ’79.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. Yeah. Hm.

Um, and those beaver in Dyea, do you know when they started -- ? You said they didn’t use to have beaver there?
BEA LINGLE: I had never heard of ’em.

No, I don’t know if I’d ever heard of ’em 'til that one -- they told me. And I never did see the lodge.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.

BEA LINGLE: And they’re usually right at the end of the pond, you know?
KAREN BREWSTER: Right.

BEA LINGLE: ’Cause I saw a lot of ’em up -- a lot of beaver up over the mountains.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, there are?
BEA LINGLE: Um-hm.

KAREN BREWSTER: But that was the first that --
BEA LINGLE: Yeah.
KAREN BREWSTER: -- came over and -- Again, that was about twenty years?
BEA LINGLE: I said, he had his little Park Service hat on and his badge, and came hiking down the pass.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah, well, he made trouble for the Park Service with flooding all that part of the trail.
BEA LINGLE: It never got worse, so I don’t know that they did something.

I -- it isn’t in a place that’s gonna bother anything.

KAREN BREWSTER: Well so, before the park came in and built all that boardwalk on the lower part of the trail, how did you get there?
BEA LINGLE: They have boardwalk up there now?
KAREN BREWSTER: In the lower part of the trail.
BEA LINGLE: They do?

KAREN BREWSTER: Through all that beaver pond area.
BEA LINGLE: Right up here by the lake? Oh, over there.
KAREN BREWSTER: By Dyea.

BEA LINGLE: I didn’t know there was a boardwalk over there.
KAREN BREWSTER: Well, when I walked it in 2010.
BEA LINGLE: Uh-huh.
KAREN BREWSTER: Because the beaver dam had made the water rise so much.

BEA LINGLE: Really.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. So what was the trail like before the beavers were there?
BEA LINGLE: There wasn’t any path or anything. I was just making my own, which I did a lot.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

BEA LINGLE: And I always said, "Never go back the same way you came, ’cause you’ll see more interesting things."
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

BEA LINGLE: And I was hiking by Too Shy Lake one day by myself. Nobody wanted to go out that day, and I got way back in the woods.

And I thought, why did somebody scar these trees up? They just had big slashes in ’em.

And the more hiking I did, and the more of my books I’d get a hold of and read, they were bears.
KAREN BREWSTER: Mm.

BEA LINGLE: It was bear claws. And they mark their territory by clawing the bark.
KAREN BREWSTER: Wow.
BEA LINGLE: So that’s what it was.

KAREN BREWSTER: So did you start to see more or less bears around here as time went on?
BEA LINGLE: Yep. More.
KAREN BREWSTER: More? There’s more bears?

BEA LINGLE: We had ’em -- we had 'em right -- had 'em right down in town about three years ago. They were coming right down in town, and people -- they’d get in the garbage at night and things like that.

KAREN BREWSTER: Those are black bears, then?
BEA LINGLE: Yeah.
KAREN BREWSTER: And that didn’t used to happen?

BEA LINGLE: No, we had coyotes.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, really?
BEA LINGLE: And wolves that would come across the river when it was frozen.

But it wasn’t real -- nobody -- it didn’t matter. They didn’t threaten the humans any. Bears might now.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.
BEA LINGLE: Especially if they’re hungry. So.

KAREN BREWSTER: So do you still get wolves and coyotes down here?
BEA LINGLE: Yeah, I think we had a black wolf last winter. People were talking about.

And then, Katherine, who lives way out across the bridge and out north of town, she and her husband -- she had walked across the river ’cause it was frozen and was over by the '98 cemetery (1898 Gold Rush Cemetery). Do you know where that is?
KAREN BREWSTER: Yep. Yep.

BEA LINGLE: And a bear came out and started coming towards her. And so, she ran back the way she had come.

And she had her dog with her. And he started barking, but as she was running, the bear was coming after her.
KAREN BREWSTER: Wow.

BEA LINGLE: And the dog was kinda making it slow down, but she -- the bear was getting closer and closer.

And she finally was close to where her house is. She lives in a trailer out there.

And her husband opened the door, ’cause he saw her coming. And she went like this and got her inside and slammed the door.
KAREN BREWSTER: Wow.

BEA LINGLE: But that was last year.
KAREN BREWSTER: And that was in the winter time?
BEA LINGLE: Um-hm.

KAREN BREWSTER: Because bears are supposed to hibernate in the winter, I thought.
BEA LINGLE: They come out sometimes.

KAREN BREWSTER: Do you think the warmer weather, they’re coming out early?
BEA LINGLE: Um, it could be. Because that was -- must've been in the spring. But the river was still frozen.

KAREN BREWSTER: So the river freezes still?
BEA LINGLE: Yes, it does.

KAREN BREWSTER: I didn’t know if that these warmer winters people talk about whether the -- changed the river.
BEA LINGLE: I don’t think it freezes as hard or as much.

Because I remember we used to get on sleds. Somebody’d take us way up north of town as far as our road would go, and we’d get on our sleds and hold our rain coats up because they were usually long, like a sail.

And the wind would catch us, and we’d go down the river, and it was fun.
KAREN BREWSTER: Wow.

BEA LINGLE: And it was -- we were sure that there was no open water.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

BEA LINGLE: But, and then we’d have to stop down at this end of it.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

BEA LINGLE: And the -- the car, whoever took us up, would be there, and we’d haul our sleds back over.

KAREN BREWSTER: Wow. You must have got going pretty fast.
BEA LINGLE: Yeah. We did.

I remember one guy. What he got was a big bowl from a bakery, a big metal bowl.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.
BEA LINGLE: And he got in it. And he wasn’t very big person, anyhow.

And that bowl was going like this, and all you could see was his hands and his feet, sticking up.

And he was yelling by the time he got down here. But people ran out and caught him.

KAREN BREWSTER: That was like an amusement park ride.
BEA LINGLE: Yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: But, yeah, so when the river came out and hit the ocean --
BEA LINGLE: Um-hm.
KAREN BREWSTER: It was then open water?
BEA LINGLE: Yes.

KAREN BREWSTER: Do you remember the bay and the harbor?
BEA LINGLE: Um-hm.
KAREN BREWSTER: Did it freeze up?
BEA LINGLE: Hm-um.
KAREN BREWSTER: It doesn’t.
BEA LINGLE: Hm-um. No.

KAREN BREWSTER: Even when you were growing up here and it was colder?
BEA LINGLE: Nope.
KAREN BREWSTER: It never did?
BEA LINGLE: Salt water.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

BEA LINGLE: And the wave action, and the tides.

KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. Yeah, I saw some seals out at the mouth of the river yesterday.
BEA LINGLE: Oh, did you?
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.
BEA LINGLE: I haven’t seen ’em as much this winter. Great.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. So I guess there -- are there salmon coming? What are they eating?
BEA LINGLE: Well, probably hooligan (eulachon).
KAREN BREWSTER: Hooligan.

BEA LINGLE: Yeah, but the salmon didn’t run this year like they usually do.
KAREN BREWSTER: Hm.

BEA LINGLE: One of my grandsons, his brother has a fishing boat now, and he said -- he’s done pretty good, but he did better last year.

KAREN BREWSTER: What’s he fishing for?
BEA LINGLE: Well, whatever the -- what you call it, the season?
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

BEA LINGLE: You know, you can’t fish for halibut during a certain time.
KAREN BREWSTER: Right, right.
BEA LINGLE: And fish for salmon during a certain time.

And it was -- he’s been down by Ketchikan, fishing for, I think it was, some kind of salmon. Just a month or so ago.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

BEA LINGLE: And then yesterday, I think, or the day before, when I saw Dorothy, she said he was due in ’cause that season was over.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. But so on the Skagway River here, this time of year, would that be pink salmon?
BEA LINGLE: I don’t know.

August is when I remember the salmon runs.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.

BEA LINGLE: And one year they came clear up the river, up where -- well, there’s a campground out there.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm. Yeah. That’s pretty far up.
BEA LINGLE: Yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: But they don’t do that anymore?
BEA LINGLE: That was unusual that winter, too.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.
BEA LINGLE: But they were going up a little creek, freshwater creek.

KAREN BREWSTER: But so when the salmon are running, it’s in the summer time and it’s pink salmon or king? Do they have king salmon on this river?
BEA LINGLE: You know, I don’t know one from another.

But they go -- they come in the -- we’ve got a fish ladder.
KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.
BEA LINGLE: In the ore basin.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.

BEA LINGLE: And they would come up there and go up the fish ladder and then Pullen Pond would be just full of them. And they -- they --

We had a guy that started in -- through the school a fish hatchery. And the little fingerlings, they’d get ’em going, and dump ’em, first in this great big net thing and feed ’em and everything.

And then they got bigger, they’d let ’em out, and they'd go a little further, and they’d have big guys, clear up through town, stinking and dying. You know, ’cause that -- they’d come back and mate and die.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. Do you need to take a break for some water?
BEA LINGLE: No.
KAREN BREWSTER: You’re ok?
BEA LINGLE: I have my water right here.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.
BEA LINGLE: And I got Landon’s birthday is coming up. I've got his card.

KAREN BREWSTER: When you lived -- would go up to Carcross, do you go berry picking up there?
BEA LINGLE: No, I used to berry pick around here and can and preserve, but it got to where, when I had five kids, it -- I --

To me, it was cheaper to go buy a jar than to buy all the jars and buy all the wax. You know, we put wax on top.
KAREN BREWSTER: Right.
BEA LINGLE: And everything. And I was busy with kids, you know.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

BEA LINGLE: I did a lot of things with my kids. I took ’em even on winter picnics.

I think we designed the very first snow cones. We’d take paper cups, and I’d take the kids way up the river where they could -- they didn’t -- there wasn’t any yellow snow.

I told ’em, "Don’t use yellow snow or any other color." And then they’d scoop up a cupful of snow, and then I’d sprinkle either Kool-Aid powder or jello on them. Whatever I had in the house.

And then they’d eat it, you know. They thought they had snow cones.

And then they were selling them down in little snow cone carts in the states. I just figured, somebody watched us.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. Well, it sounds like nowadays, yeah, maybe you can’t do that. There’s not enough snow?
BEA LINGLE: You might find a drift.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.
(Background noise)
BEA LINGLE: That’s my clock.

KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, that’s your bird clock. Oh, that’s an owl.
BEA LINGLE: Do you want a pop or anything?
KAREN BREWSTER: No, I’m fine. Thank you.
BEA LINGLE: Four fingers of tequila, or -- ?
(Laughter)

KAREN BREWSTER: Um, yeah, I was wondering if -- I asked about berries and berry picking to see whether there’s been a change in --
BEA LINGLE: Yeah, I’ll tell you what I’m seeing now is apple trees.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.
BEA LINGLE: Loaded.

If you look out the window, this thing is usually loaded. It wasn’t this year.
KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.
BEA LINGLE: But you’ll see a branch. Look at me. Look under the steps.
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, yeah.

BEA LINGLE: See that branch hanging down?
KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, yeah.
BEA LINGLE: That’s how it usually is all over the tree.
KAREN BREWSTER: Wow.

And this year it wasn’t?
BEA LINGLE: Hm-mm. Not this tree. But my daughter-in-law across the street, she has Granny Smith apples. They’re this big.

And her daughter-in-law has a tree in her yard. She just moved up on the hill, bought another house. She and her husband.

But they -- everybody’s got apples this year.
KAREN BREWSTER: And that’s not so normal?
BEA LINGLE: No, and they’re bigger apples, too.

They never -- we could get maybe a crabapple tree going, which is what these are. But they’re -- these Granny Smiths, they’re good just like they are.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. So when you were growing up and coming back here in the summers, people had apple trees back then?
BEA LINGLE: Yes, but they weren’t as many, and they weren’t as productive.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

BEA LINGLE: But I think we had colder winters.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

And I heard this summer was very warm and dry.
BEA LINGLE: Our summers are usually dry.

Last summer, we had a wet summer, and this year, the trees were lush. All over town and on the hills.

And then we had a dry area, season, and we were all glad when that got over with.

But people had their lawns whose -- had dead spots and everything 'cause it was so dry. They were used to having to water them like that, but --

KAREN BREWSTER: So it can get to be eighty degrees here in the summer, even when you would come visit as a kid? That was typical?
BEA LINGLE: I remember seeing it eighty-four many times on the Fourth of July.
KAREN BREWSTER: Wow.
BEA LINGLE: And then they had bad years on the Fourth of July that it started.

I remember one year I was Uncle Sam for the American Legion float, and they had red and white stripes on my top hat, crepe paper. And my top coat, and they made tails.

And it poured down rain, and I had red stripes and blue stripes, stains all down my body. I thought I’d never get under the -- turned to another regular color.

But it’s changing. You can’t tell. We thought summer would never hit, and then we had a week, and it was beautiful and it was warm.

People were laying out in their sun suits on their lawns, and -- Fun.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. You mentioned the wind. Like, I’ve been here for almost a week, and it hasn’t been windy.
BEA LINGLE: No, we don’t have wind like we used to.

Even our south wind. It blows all summer from the south.
KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.

BEA LINGLE: And then all winter from the north. But we’ve had two days of soft, warm north winds.

And nobody can get over how warm it is, but it -- it won’t last.
KAREN BREWSTER: No, so.
BEA LINGLE: They’d better be ready.

KAREN BREWSTER: So this period of no wind is -- is sort of unusual?
BEA LINGLE: Yeah. And you know, Karen, every day after coffee, if my daughter’s driving, she takes me and my friends, my old people I was picking up when I was still driving, and gives us a tour around town. We check on things that are being built, and things going on.

And the bay out here, we're used to seeing white caps and choppiness. It’s been like glass. It’s just been gorgeous.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

BEA LINGLE: And the hillsides are so lush. And the colors.

And we -- Kathy and I -- she just loves it. She’s so glad.

She went to Juneau and went back to college when she was up in years. And she got a teacher’s degree, and she spent her twenty years teaching, and then -- and then they moved back here when I was widowed. And they take very good care of me.

But she can’t get over how lush every -- and I know my mother used to tell me that when she was a little girl, there weren’t any trees on this hillside over here.
KAREN BREWSTER: The back where Dewey trail is, up there?
BEA LINGLE: The what?
KAREN BREWSTER: The one on the --

BEA LINGLE: The hillside, that goes up to Lower Lake.
KAREN BREWSTER: Right. Right.

BEA LINGLE: And she said it was because the trains burned coal. They were steam engines.

Coal throws cinders, and it kept the hillside burned off.

I don’t remember seeing any of that, but they went from coal to oil, I think. Well, about then.

KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm. Well, that’s interesting. And so, when it grew back, now it’s a mixture of the cottonwoods and the spruce and hemlock, and --
BEA LINGLE: Yeah. And the colors are pretty.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yes.
BEA LINGLE: This year, they’re beautiful.

KAREN BREWSTER: So this year, they’re especially beautiful colors?
BEA LINGLE: Yeah. And up in the Yukon, they have a lot more red and vivid.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

BEA LINGLE: When you have a freeze, and we had two frosty mornings so far.
KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

And is it about the right timing for those frosts, or is it early or late?
BEA LINGLE: No, it’s -- it's right.

We -- sometimes we have snow and freezing and everything on Halloween, and other times we don’t, you know. You just never know.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. Well, I was thinking back in the older times when it was colder, when did it start to get cold and snow, and then when in the spring did it start to get --
BEA LINGLE: Halloween.
KAREN BREWSTER: Halloween?
BEA LINGLE: Yeah.

And in the spring, it would be April. May. We have some warm days in May.

And even my house closer-upper up in Carcross. "Bea, it’s beautiful up here. Don’t you want me to open your cabin?" "Ok, Dan. Go ahead."

KAREN BREWSTER: And do you garden?
BEA LINGLE: No.
KAREN BREWSTER: You never did.

BEA LINGLE: Kathy does. I’m good at killing things. She didn’t get her garden planted this year. They were gone during the months she should have been planting.

But she, she said, "You stay on your side of the house, Mom, cause you kill things. I’ll take care of this side."

She’s got some raised beds out there and a greenhouse that just about blew away this winter.

But she’s -- a lot of her stuff that she planted comes back every year.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. Yeah.

Are there other things you can think of with the animals, the birds, the weather, that have changed since you were?
BEA LINGLE: Well, I don’t remember the seal down in the mouth of the river.

KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, yeah? They didn’t use to go there?
BEA LINGLE: I don’t remember seeing ’em. I would have seen ’em. It seems like we’ve had ’em for quite a few years now.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

BEA LINGLE: But when I was a little girl, I don’t remember it. And I was -- kids can run all over this town.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.
BEA LINGLE: And you don’t worry about ’em.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

There also wouldn’t have been that footbridge down there, though, would there? Or has that always been a bridge there?
BEA LINGLE: Well, no, there hasn’t always been a bridge there.

But they’ve tried to keep it up. And they rebuilt it when they built the dike.

They have a dike all along that side ’cause of the river.
KAREN BREWSTER: Right.

BEA LINGLE: We've had one bad September flood one year.

My friend Barb Kalen told me that was a 100-year flood. Once every hundred years, we have that.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

BEA LINGLE: But the creeks coming down off the hillside on this side.
KAREN BREWSTER: Right.
BEA LINGLE: Flooded the town, and it went right up to the back door of the hardware.
KAREN BREWSTER: Wow.
BEA LINGLE: It was just flooded.

And the -- the -- part of the dike washed out where the -- where there wasn’t any dike, the water was coming over it.

And they evacuated the whole town to the old school. It was cement building. And we spent a whole day up there.

And they were trying to patch the dike and keep the water back. And then it quit raining, and the river went down, and we all got back in our homes.

I'd left my poor little Dachshunds in -- in our house and opened a window upstairs and put the table leaf out of the table up to the window sill.

And I figured, ok, they’re going to have to fend for themselves. Because they could swim.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

So were any houses damaged from that?
BEA LINGLE: Mm-mm.

KAREN BREWSTER: Do you remember what year that was? Or decade?
BEA LINGLE: I remember it was September. Um, no, I don’t.

KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. But Barbara Kalen said it was the first time she’d seen such a thing? ’Cause she was older, right?
BEA LINGLE: You know, I think Barb was. Not much.

We did a lot of things together. She was the world’s original hippie.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

BEA LINGLE: Have you met her daughter, Betsy?
KAREN BREWSTER: No. I’m going to, next week.
BEA LINGLE: Oh, good.

KAREN BREWSTER: But I did remember meeting Barbara. She was still alive.
BEA LINGLE: Oh.

KAREN BREWSTER: So, yeah. I can see the original hippie.
BEA LINGLE: She was so much fun. She loved to hike as much as I did.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

BEA LINGLE: And then I got in her car one day, and she -- what was it she did?

She didn’t have a key, but there were two wires hanging down under. She hot-wired her car, and that’s how she got it started.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. Did your mother ever talk about floods here?
BEA LINGLE: She said the river’d get high, and I remember it clear over to Alaska Street.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.
BEA LINGLE: You know, in yards.
KAREN BREWSTER: Right.
BEA LINGLE: On this side of Alaska Street.

But I don’t -- I was a kid, you know, I didn’t --

Two of the little boys that were my age then, they had a tree house over in the trees that grew along the river. And they -- they fixed a pulley thing up, and they had this big, it was like a kettle. A huge soup kettle. It had big, two big handles.

Anyhow, they fixed it themselves and would pull it. Pull themselves in it, when it flooded, and get over to their treehouse.

Well, we heard a bunch of screaming and yelling one day, and we went out and the cable had broken, and the bucket was down in the water, about this far from it going over the top.

And the boys were screaming ’cause they didn’t want to get out in the water because people’s sewer --

KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, that river wasn’t very clean?
BEA LINGLE: Well, the river was all right until it saturated the ground, and people’s cesspools started floating around on top and everything.

And Mavis Sauldean (sp?), who’s gone now, she got tired of listening. She said, "Just climb over the edge and come on back. We’ll worry about it when the water goes down."

They just screamed and were crying and everything. Their names were Lauder and Emmitt.

So she goes -- she says, "Oh! I can’t stand this anymore."

She wades out in that water, and she wasn’t very tall anyhow. And the water was finally up to her here.
KAREN BREWSTER: Waist.
BEA LINGLE: And she reached inside that kettle thing or whatever it was, and put one kid under each arm and came back through.

And they were dangling in the water, screaming harder. And she didn’t care whether they got wet. She figured they could go in the house and dry up, which is what they did.

But they finally quit screaming.

KAREN BREWSTER: Sounds like she was a real tough Alaska woman.
BEA LINGLE: She was. She and her husband.

She was the cook at Clifton, uh, no. Glacier Section. And her husband was the foreman. And that’s when they had section houses up there.
KAREN BREWSTER: Right.
BEA LINGLE: And they don’t have that anymore.
KAREN BREWSTER: No.

BEA LINGLE: And then I’d get to go up there because I played with her daughter, Inez, a lot. And they’re all dead.
KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

So what about out in Dyea? Did you spend time out there?
BEA LINGLE: I did. We didn’t have a road out there for many years, but I hiked out.

And in Long Bay, there was a wreck of an old ship. The wreck of the Canada. And it washed up in there in the winds and everything.

And my mother used to go over there, hike over there, and play in the state rooms. And she’d tell me about it.

Well, I got to where I was hiking clear over to Dyea. And then they built the road to Dyea, Mr. Frolander did. And then my future brother-in-law, he proved up on a -- I don’t know how many acres over there, and built some cabins.

And then he married my husband’s sister. This was before I married Benny. And he married Benny’s sister, and then they built a real nice cabin.

And just -- it had a lot of work done on it. He cleared it. He had a garden.

He loved to garden, and he had a good-sized garden, and he had to put electric wires all around it because the porcupines would get in there and eat his vegetables.

And then we’d -- then my -- Dorothy’s husband bought the property (Jeff Brady). Ed and Jane died, and their kids didn’t want it.

So he bought the property, and he has an artists’ -- it’s called Alderwood Retreat. And he rents out the cabins. He’s had ’em all redone.

And he rents ’em out to artists, writers or painters or whatever, in the summer time, that want to come and get away from everything and work or plot their next book or something.
KAREN BREWSTER: Nice.

BEA LINGLE: Yeah, he’s done pretty good with that.

KAREN BREWSTER: Cool. So have things changed out in the Dyea flats with the -- ?
BEA LINGLE: Oh, the Park Service, you can’t do much in the flats.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah, I meant the -- like, trees and --
BEA LINGLE: Yeah. The trees are growing up. You can still see the piling to the old dock.

And the old slaughterhouse was still standing when I was raising my kids.
KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.
BEA LINGLE: And it’s caved in, and they’ve --

the Park Service has cleaned that all up and made nice little campground for dry camping over there. The Park Service has done a lot for our town, cleaning it up.