An Interesting Winchester 1894
An Interesting Winchester 1894
I don’t have any great photos to go with this story, but it’s one that should be told.
It begins for me about fifteen years ago at a summer Anchorage gun show. I stopped by my friend Lee Penwell’s display table to chat and see what he had that was interesting and new. Lee lived about 35 miles off the power grid near the old mining community of Nabesna, Alaska. The Nabesna mine boomed in the 1930s and is positioned forty miles south of Slana, a town on Alaska’s Tok Cutoff Highway. Slana is about 220 miles East/Northeast from Anchorage as the crow flies.
At the show I’d spotted a Newton rifle that interested me. When I mentioned it to Lee, he told me he knew a fellow who had a pair of bare Newton actions. After I said I would definitely be interested in them, he then went on to tell me the same guy had a Winchester 1894 he wanted. The rifle was in terrible shape, but had a wonderful story attached to it.
The 1894 owner lived in Chisana (pronounced Shoo-shanna by Alaskans), another old mining town. It lies southeast of Nabesna on the other side of the Nutzotin Mountains. Chisana also exploded and faded when its gold ran out. There are no regular roads to there, but it can be reached in winter by snowmachine or dogsled and dog team. These routes are often marked on Alaskan maps as ‘Winter Trail,’ meaning they provide access when lakes, ponds, rivers, and bogs are frozen in winter months.
Those winter trails often have sections that are passable during warmer months, and the 1894 owner was hiking along one of those portions one summer. Somewhere a number of miles outside Chisana he noticed an old cooking pot almost completely buried in moss and vegetation just off his path. Curious, he dug it out for closer examination. The design was of those manufactured and used during Chisana’s heyday. On a whim, he pushed his way through the underbrush on the downhill side of the trail as it fell steeply away. Here and there he began finding other pieces of a mushing outfit, eventually arriving at a heavily weathered dog sled. Poking around it revealed a badly rusted 1894 Winchester rifle, wood stocks still intact, but showing much damage from continuous exposure to the elements. There had to be a story here.
When he returned back home to Chisana, he began making inquiries among the old timers. He asked if they knew anything about the old sled he’d found and who it might have belonged to. Gradually, the elderly group came to a consensus.
It seems one winter during the boom days, a certain fellow decided to visit his relatives over in Canada. This would cause no particular economic hardship, as little mining took place that time of the year. He packed up his dog sled with his traveling gear, which undoubtedly included food for both himself and dogs, extra clothing, simple cooking gear, rifle, ammunition, and some form of tent or maybe a piece of canvas for shelter. Off he went.
Months passed and spring arrived. The traveler was expected back but did not return. Not a big deal in those days…it was simply assumed he’d found a better situation in Canada and decided to stay.
Several years went by. A letter arrived in Chisana from the Canadian relatives asking about the traveler. They hadn’t heard any of the usual correspondence from him for quite a long time. Did anyone know of his whereabouts and welfare? Other than being able to say their relative left Chisana several winters ago, the Chisanans could offer no information. An unsolved mystery came into being. No one at either end of the trail ever heard from him again.
Odds are VERY likely a portion of the mystery was now solved, at least as to where some final event happened. Was the traveler attacked by a non-hibernating grizzly? Did he suffer a fatal heart attack? We might assume he was a seasoned traveler to have a dog team and gear, starting out on a journey of that length. It’s doubtful he would have succumbed to cold that close to town. If he’d been knocked off his sled and the team ran off, he wasn’t too far to return to Chisana, or at least been found on the trail. Something obviously happened, but what? Possibilities are endless in a land as unforgiving as bush Alaska in the early part of the twentieth century.
My friend Lee was negotiating to buy or trade for the old, now useless rifle just for its history. Being an engraver, I said if he did gain ownership, I’d engrave a brass plate to attach to its buttstock so the story would go with it as long as it existed.
Over the next year or two when I saw Lee I’d ask if he’d had any success obtaining the Newton actions and the 1894. Imagine my dismay and disgust one day when he told me the owner had packed up and left Chisana, and then consigned his weapons to someone doing Internet sales.
I often wonder if the story went with the old rifle, or if it just became decoration on a wall where it hangs silent about its fascinating past. Who knows? If the rifle and its story were or are separated, a real historical loss will have occurred. Sadly, Lee died a few years ago, but the story lives on at least for now since you know it too.
After Lee died I helped his wife sort through a part of his firearm paraphernalia. I found several of these Colt screwdrivers, and I engraved them like this one for some of his closest friends. I carry mine on my keychain to remind me of him. I can still clearly hear his voice on the phone when he called “Hey, Jim.” Sleep well, old friend.