Anchorage Daily News

One hundred years ago, a group of men sailed to the northern coast of Alaska on an expedition to find a land mass rumored to exist in the Arctic Ocean. Sea ice disabled the ship, they didn't find the land and after wintering in the North everyone hurried back to warmer places. Except for Ernest Leffingwell.

Leffingwell, a geologist, teacher and a veteran of the Spanish-American War, stayed behind on Flaxman Island, a sandy wedge of land north of Alaska's coast and 58 miles west of Kaktovik. He lived for nine summers and six winters in a cabin made from the ship that took him there in 1906.

From that lonely home base, Leffingwell made 31 trips around the area by sled and small boat, covered about 4,500 miles and camped in a tent "about 380 times." This detail he included in a 250-page report for the U.S. Geological Survey that reads like a manual on how to live and perform science in the Far North. He gained fans from the works.

"He wasn't a traditional scientist," said University of Alaska Fairbanks permafrost scientist and world traveler Kenji Yoshikawa, a Leffingwell admirer. "He was more like an early explorer from the 18th century."

"Unlike his counterparts of the time who were mostly looking for glory and doing only enough science to support that, Leffingwell quietly wandered on his own, dedicating himself to a better understanding of this interesting place," Matt Nolan of UAF's Water and Environmental Research Center wrote on his Web site.

Nolan found rock cairns at spots where Leffingwell photographed Okpilak Glacier in the Brooks Range in 1907. Nolan repeated Leffingwell's photos in 2004 and shows the impressive loss of ice since Leffingwell hiked there from the coast at his Web site www.uaf.edu/water/faculty/nolan/mccall/anwrpanos/okpilak/okpilak.htm .

In addition to taking photos of things that interested him, Leffingwell wrote observations of everyday life including dogs' reactions to wearing packs made of sealskin ("A good dog will pack half his weight all day, but he does not enjoy it."), and the prevailing opinion about polar bears ("Locally they are regarded much as wolves are in cattle country.")

Leffingwell must have loved northern Alaska because he stayed there long after expedition money ran dry. His father gave him funds to help with his dream, and he earned a few thousand dollars selling furs. He even tried whaling with Native crews in spring of 1910.

"A full-grown whale was worth nearly $10,000 at the prevailing price of $5 a pound for whalebone," Leffingwell wrote in his USGS paper, "The Canning River Region, Northern Alaska." "About six weeks were spent on the ice near Point Barrow, but no whale was killed."

Local Natives on and near Flaxman Island and white prospectors taught Leffingwell how to survive in the area. He learned well, judging from his writing. "At Flaxman Island, during the summer of 1907, about 400 eider ducks and brant were stored in the icehouse for winter consumption," he wrote in his customary passive voice.

As for hard science, Leffingwell named the Sadlerochit formation, which is the reservoir of the Prudhoe Bay oil field, and wrote about oil seeps that inspired government officials to create what is now the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. He also took photos of rocks on Flaxman Island he thought glaciers had dropped, though geologists thought there had never been glaciers in the area. Scientists recently found ancient glacial ice not far from Leffingwell's camp.

"He made the first (detailed) map of the coast, and he was the first guy to explain ice wedges; you can still use his definitions today," said Torre Jorgenson of ABR Inc. in Fairbanks. "One hundred years later we're still rediscovering things he discovered."

Ned Rozell is a science writer at the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks. He can be reached by e-mail at nrozell@gi.alaska.edu.

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