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Rex E. Beach
REX E. BEACH is engaged in
the manufacturing business in
Chicago. Although a young
man, he has "mushed" on the Yukon,
mined in the Nome country, and written some very clever stories about the
Northland. When he was in Nome
his friends knew his genius for storytelling, but the magazines did not discover him until he had broken away
from Alaska, and had engaged in the
prosaic and practical business of a manufacturer. His Northland stories, which
have been published in some of the leading magazines of the United States, bear
the impress of striking originality and are
a vivid word-painting of fact. They are
told in strong terse English, which immediately chains the reader's attention,
and holds him captive to the end of the
narrative. I remember Rex Beach in
Nome, but did not know him well.
I remember attending a minstrel show
in which he was the chief burnt-cork
artist, furnishing the audience with more
merriment than ordinarily falls to the lot of the Nome citizen during his period of winter
hibernation. I mention this incident as an evidence of the versatility of a man who
has the capacity to entertain his friends, in addition to the ability of a successful man of
business and the genius which has given him in New York the soubriquet of "The
Bret Harte of Alaska."
Believing that Mr. Beach should have a place in this album of Northwestern Alaskans, I wrote him for a photograph and the material from which a sketch could be
prepared, and this is his reply:
"I went North in '97 with the first rush, and spent two years on the Yukon,
mining with varying success. I say 'varying' because most of the time I was broke and
during the rest I owed money. Then I went home and sparred for wind.
"The summer of 1900 I spent in Nome, and acquired some good properties; came
out in the fall, and went in again that winter via Katmai. En route I slept much of
the time in Indian huts, acquiring as complete a knowledge of the local flora and fauna
as any man living — particularly intimate was my study of the latter.
"For two years I mined in the Nome and Council City Districts; then entered the
manufacturing business in Chicago, where I now am. With pride I point to the fact
that I am the only college man in the first stampede who did not work his way out
from the Yukon on a steamboat — the one I left on had all the roustabouts it needed.
My only further claim to distinction is that I have never worn nugget jewelry nor
sold any rich claims for a song."
Rex Beach has a strong individuality. He belongs to the class of men that do
things. He is esteemed among his friends because of the sunshine of his character, and
because of his unfailing fund of wit and anecdote. The work of writing his stories
is
the pastime of a busy man engaged in another line of endeavor.
Source: Nome and Seward Peninsula by
R. S. Harrison. Seattle: The Metropolitan Press, 1905.
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