While an experiment station must be maintained in the Copper River Valley, the present location of the station may not be found to be the most desirable. When railroads are built through this country the station should be moved to the railroad so as to be accessible. Two companies have filed plans with the land office showing the lines they have projected through this part of the interior, but it will be wisest not to select a permanent site for a station until one or the other of these railroads is actually built.

EQUIPMENT OF THE STATION.

A team of horses was secured last fall from the U. S. Geological Survey through the kindness of Mr. F. C. Schrader, the chief of a party which had been operating in the Copper River country. This party used a number of horses, which were discarded at the close of the season, and Mr. Schrader turned two of the best over to Mr. Neal. These horses were fed in Valdez until trail work began in the middle of January. Mr. Neal then started to haul out the station equipment, consisting of two plows, a smoothing harrow, a disc harrow, a mower, a light wagon, a grain drill, a complete set of carpenter's tools, hand tools, spades, shovels, mattocks, hoes, rakes, scythes, forks, axes, etc.; also tents and camping outfit, feed for the horses, seed grain, provisions, and household effects for himself, aggregating about 4 tons in weight. To move this outfit 105 miles over a rugged mountain chain through a country where there are no roads and where the snow was in places 15 to 20 feet deep, or even more, and the temperature most of the time. from 10 to 30 degrees below zero was a formidable task, the hardships of which it is difficult to appreciate.

METHOD OF TRANSPORTATION.

A brief description of the present mode of hauling supplies into the interior is therefore pertinent. The snowfall on the Valdez side of the mountains aggregated 78 feet in depth last winter. It may readily be comprehended what it means to make a road through such a depth of snow. No one man with a team could make any progress at all, but by joining forces with many others it is made possible. All who have goods to move begin at the same time and cooperate. A force of men, with as many horses as are available, is sent ahead to break the trail each morning. They go as far as they can and return to camp by noon. They may make 7 or 8 miles or they may make 2 or 3, depending upon the depth of the snow and the nature of the ground. In the afternoon. they hitch to their sleds and pull their goods over the broken trail until nightfall, when they make camp, and next morning the procedure is repeated. They cooperate in breaking trail, but the trail once broken each man hauls his own goods.

ALASKA STATIONS-SAMPLES OF BARLEY AND OATS GROWN AT UNITED STATES EXPERIMENT STATION IN THE COPPER RIVER VALLEY, SEASON OF 1903.

For hauling they use a style of sled which has been invented for the purpose. It is lightly but strongly built, 9 feet long and 30 inches wide, and about 1 foot high. The runners are rounded at both ends, so it can be pulled forward or backward with equal case, and for this reason these sleds are usually styled "double-enders." The goods to be moved are securely strapped to these so that nothing falls out when they turn over, which they usually do many times a day. Where the ground is level and the trail has become firm one horse can pull two loaded sleds. Under less favorable conditions it takes a horse to each sled, and sometimes two. When a man has much goods to be moved he unloads his sled at the terminus of the broken trail and goes to the camp, reloads his sleds, hauls up this load, and so on again and again, until all the goods have been removed to the new camp.

The difficulties encountered can not be fully conveyed in words. The soft snow is packed down by the horses and sleds to a deep rut the width of the sleds, with walls on either side several feet high. The travel also wears holes in the trails due to the uneven surface. A loaded sled runs swiftly down a little incline and buries itself in the snow at the bottom. The hole thus formed is deepened by each passing load until the trail in many places becomes a succession of short hills and hol lows, which taxes the draft animals greatly. These holes are usually referred to by freighters as "chuck holes."

The loaded sleds always have the right of way, and in going back empty the driver must pull into the soft snow to let the loads pass, and frequently horses sink in so deep that it takes hours to dig them out. The camps can not be far apart. If they are, there is danger that the trail will drift full and require breaking anew before the freight can all be hauled up. Mr. Neal spent three months with the team and one man to help him in moving the equipment from Valdez to Teikhel, 48 miles inland. At this point the horses gave out and could do no more. The season was now so far advanced that there was danger of the ice breaking up and making further traffic impossible, for the winter trail follows the streams and lakes as far as practicable because of the easier travel on the ice, and Mr. Neal was compelled to go to Copper Center very light and to hire the more necessary things hauled while the less necessary portion of the equipment was stored in tents at Teikhel.

The method of transportation here described is the only practicable one by which the interior can be reached with anything like large quantities of goods. Professional freighters charge 20 cents per pound for hauling goods from Valdez to Copper Center on the snow, and after investigating conditions I am satisfied that this rate of charge is not unreasonable.

In summer everything must be carried in on the backs of either horses or men, the rate then charged by freighters being 50 cents

S. Doc. 148, 58-2-22

per pound. Considering that it takes from eight to ten days to make the hundred miles with a heavily loaded pack train, that in the average condition of the trail a horse can not carry much over 200 pounds, and that horse feed, hay and oats alike, costs 25 cents per pound on the north side of the summit, this rate is not unreasonable.

THE TRAIL.

The trail is known as the United States military trail and was constructed by the War Department in 1898 and 1899. For some miles out from Valdez it is cleared about 12 feet wide, over level ground, and in dry weather is a very good road; but when the mountains are reached it narrows into a winding bridle path, the trees and rocks having been cleared away in places so as to make it passable for horses. Through Keystone Canyon a very excellent piece of trail has been constructed by blasting a path along the side of the mountain for a distance of 4 miles. Considerable work has also been done in bridging the larger streams and in making a zigzag path up the deep sides of Stewart Divide. The trail as it now exists is of very great value in the development of the interior, and in dry weather it can be traveled with comparative ease; but after heavy rains it abounds in mudholes, making it well-nigh impassable.

The summit of the mountains is reached some 20 miles from Valdez. In summer time it offers no great obstacle to traffic, as it is not a steep climb, but in winter the frequent and severe storms and deep snow on the summit render the passage at times dangerous. The Stewart Divide, which is rather a steep ridge some 40 miles from Valdez, is much more difficult to climb, because it is steeper, the trail having to zigzag in places to reach the top of the sharp ridge. The winter travel follows the streams around this ridge. Aside from these two elevations there is no arduous climb to make, but the traffic over the low places where horses sink to their bellies in mud is even more laborious than to go over the hills, and crossing some of the streams which are not bridged is dangerous when the water is high.

THE COPPER RIVER COUNTRY.

The valley of the Copper, speaking in general terms, is a basin surrounded on all sides with mountains. It has an area of about 10,000 square miles, which will have more or less value as farming and grazing lands.

The streams tributary to the Copper have also valleys of considerable extent, and afford equally good farming land. At a conservative estimate these tributary valleys will have an area of 5,000 square miles of more or less valuable agricultural land, or a total area of 15,000 square miles.