Alone in the woods of Alaska stands a solitary sauna decaying back to the earth. This is the story, based of that sauna and the man who built it.
A few years ago my brother and I built our own sauna at the family cabin in the small community of Hope, Alaska. In the process of getting ready I asked locals about saunas in the area. We were looking for examples to study for ideas. This is where I learned that the now-dead old-timer goldminer, Herman Keno, had a Finnish-style sauna. I already knew of Keno from my early childhood but it turned out there was much more to his story.
Way back in 1971, my family took a hike up Bear Creek, in Hope, Alaska. The small town of Hope is located on the Kenai Peninsula about two hours drive south of Anchorage. It is not widely known but Hope had an gold rush in 1896 that preceded the great Klondike rush by one year. Before Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau even existed, thousands rushed to the "cities" of Hope and nearby Sunrise. During this era all of the small creek valleys leading into the Turnagain Arm district were thoroughly explored and prospected. Bear Creek is one of these valleys more or less part of Hope's larger Resurrection Creek valley system.
Bear Creek intrigued my parents. They had just helped found the Hope and Sunrise Historical Society after purchasing a cabin in the area. In 1971, one of the Society's first efforts was to reprint a remarkably detailed map from 1912 which showed roads, trails, named mines, marked cabins and mining structures throughout the area. This was the Sleem map. By the 1970s large sections of the area had been abandoned by miners. Old trails and even road had long since become overgrown. The Sleem map revealed a number of cabins and mines up near the top of Bear Creek valley. Wouldn't it be fun to see what was still up there? In the early summer of 1971, my family planned an exploratory hiking trip.
The first night of the hike we spent in Keno's cabin part way up the valley. Keno was a Finn. He was one of the few remaining old timers who moved to and stuck it out in Hope after the gold rush and eked out a living. It was known that he arrived in Hope sometime after the Nome gold rush, which was at its height approximately from 1899 to 1909. When he was in Nome he worked primarily as a blacksmith. Maybe he had some money saved up from Nome? Maybe he did odd jobs? He did keep up mining claims in Bear Creek so it's possible that he made a modest living from them. Although it was probably nothing significant. After arriving in Hope he established a load mine with a partner up above the tree line of the Bear Creek valley. In his later years he lived by himself. However he did it, he managed to survive, alone and mostly isolated, in a hand-built log cabin on the lower section of Bear Creek.
To this day, Keno has a dark reputation in the small Hope community. Rumors persist about the disappearance of his mining partner in the 1950s. Whether there was foul play or not, he is more remembered as a tough Finn, someone who was resilient, quiet and kept to himself. He also had a reputation as a heavy drinker and sometimes a mean one. The late Billy Miller, himself a longtime local, was at least a generation or two younger than the goldrush old timers. He loved Hope, the land and the lore and ways of the people who came before him. He was the source of much of the information in this story and told me of the existence of Keno's sauna. I'm sure a few others knew of the structure. But no one else knew what it actually was, or why it was built or what it meant to someone born in Finland.
Way back in 1971, my family took a hike up Bear Creek, in Hope, Alaska. The small town of Hope is located on the Kenai Peninsula about two hours drive south of Anchorage. It is not widely known but Hope had an gold rush in 1896 that preceded the great Klondike rush by one year. Before Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau even existed, thousands rushed to the "cities" of Hope and nearby Sunrise. During this era all of the small creek valleys leading into the Turnagain Arm district were thoroughly explored and prospected. Bear Creek is one of these valleys more or less part of Hope's larger Resurrection Creek valley system.
Bear Creek intrigued my parents. They had just helped found the Hope and Sunrise Historical Society after purchasing a cabin in the area. In 1971, one of the Society's first efforts was to reprint a remarkably detailed map from 1912 which showed roads, trails, named mines, marked cabins and mining structures throughout the area. This was the Sleem map. By the 1970s large sections of the area had been abandoned by miners. Old trails and even road had long since become overgrown. The Sleem map revealed a number of cabins and mines up near the top of Bear Creek valley. Wouldn't it be fun to see what was still up there? In the early summer of 1971, my family planned an exploratory hiking trip.
The first night of the hike we spent in Keno's cabin part way up the valley. Keno was a Finn. He was one of the few remaining old timers who moved to and stuck it out in Hope after the gold rush and eked out a living. It was known that he arrived in Hope sometime after the Nome gold rush, which was at its height approximately from 1899 to 1909. When he was in Nome he worked primarily as a blacksmith. Maybe he had some money saved up from Nome? Maybe he did odd jobs? He did keep up mining claims in Bear Creek so it's possible that he made a modest living from them. Although it was probably nothing significant. After arriving in Hope he established a load mine with a partner up above the tree line of the Bear Creek valley. In his later years he lived by himself. However he did it, he managed to survive, alone and mostly isolated, in a hand-built log cabin on the lower section of Bear Creek.
To this day, Keno has a dark reputation in the small Hope community. Rumors persist about the disappearance of his mining partner in the 1950s. Whether there was foul play or not, he is more remembered as a tough Finn, someone who was resilient, quiet and kept to himself. He also had a reputation as a heavy drinker and sometimes a mean one. The late Billy Miller, himself a longtime local, was at least a generation or two younger than the goldrush old timers. He loved Hope, the land and the lore and ways of the people who came before him. He was the source of much of the information in this story and told me of the existence of Keno's sauna. I'm sure a few others knew of the structure. But no one else knew what it actually was, or why it was built or what it meant to someone born in Finland.
Billy also told me a personal story about how he saved Keno's life. He was driving down the Hope road in the middle of winter when he thought he saw a foot sticking up out of a snowbank. Billy stopped his truck, ground the transmission into reverse and backed up to double check. Sure enough, it was a human leg. He got out to find Keno passed out behind a pile of plowed snow. Keno was purple and near dead. Billy dragged him into the bed of his pickup and then back to his cabin where he propped him up in front of his large turn-of-the-century kitchen wood cook stove. Eventually Keno recovered, sobered up and went on his way.
Every so often Keno had a habit of going into Anchorage and picking up prostitutes or maybe lady drinking friends and be out them back to Hope. Some of the woman were native Alaskan. He had a reputation of spending a few days or weeks with a woman and then dumping her out on the Hope road. Back then this was pretty tough business since the Hope road was a single-lane dirt road 14 miles off the main Seward Highway. In the winter it might be quite a while before someone drove by. The road might go for weeks before locals or the State got around to getting it plowed.
Keno died in his cabin sometime in the winter of 1970-71. His body was found in the spring when someone thought to check on him. It is remembered that locals who were cleaning up his affairs found a skull. I've heard that it was in his cabin and also that it was found on the grounds of his property or on his claim. A search was conducted but no body was found. One version of the story was that it was a skull of a native woman. Was this a skull of some woman he brought from Anchorage? Was this his old mining partner? Maybe he simply found the skull of some previous miner? Also around the turn of the century, the Dena'ina Athabaskans camped at the base of Bear Creek not too far down from his cabin. It's possible he found a Dena'ina grave. No one knew for sure, but due to his prior behavior with woman, and the earlier unexplained absence of his old partner, suspicions remain.
He was old when he died. The winter must have gotten to be too much for him. When my family did our hike up Bear Creek the weather was so rainy my parents elected to sleep in Keno's cabin instead of a tent. We slept in the open loft of his cabin. I don't remember much of this night other than I was extremely disturbed since the adults had been talking of the recent finding his corpse. In the morning we explored his cabin. Everything about it was old and mysterious. I remember it being filled with a fantastic collection of abandoned relics and glorious junk: broken tools and mining implements, worn out leather boots and old beer bottles. Coffee cans and tobacco tins stored miscellaneous rusty bits. My father related the story of when his body was found, glass jars containing Keno's piss were stored all around the cabin. That winter he had become either too sick or too indifferent to go outside in the cold to relieve himself. These are the sort things that get seared into a young person's memory.
One of the other reasons my parents wanted to visit the cabin was that it was slated by the Chugach National Forest Service to be destroyed. This was an era when the forest service had a misguided policy of burning old cabins. They considered them to be a nuisance and fire hazard. Probably Forest Service bureaucrats wanted to erase any potential legal gray areas of land use and ownership. Abandoned cabins could present problems if someone moved into them, renewed a mining claim or somehow tried to "prove up" on the land. During this era a number of historically-significant cabins in this region were wantonly destroyed.
We spent the night in the cabin and somehow I survived Keno's ghost. In the morning we hiked up the valley. Somewhere farther up the trail I distinctly remember the family coming upon a drinking ladle placed on a hook next to small creek trickling down the steep hillside. It was intentionally left as a stop for hikers to get fresh drinking water. To us, the ladle represented a living remnant of hospitality and kindness from Alaska's gold-mining past and possibly a hint of another side to this old man's personality.
Every so often Keno had a habit of going into Anchorage and picking up prostitutes or maybe lady drinking friends and be out them back to Hope. Some of the woman were native Alaskan. He had a reputation of spending a few days or weeks with a woman and then dumping her out on the Hope road. Back then this was pretty tough business since the Hope road was a single-lane dirt road 14 miles off the main Seward Highway. In the winter it might be quite a while before someone drove by. The road might go for weeks before locals or the State got around to getting it plowed.
Keno died in his cabin sometime in the winter of 1970-71. His body was found in the spring when someone thought to check on him. It is remembered that locals who were cleaning up his affairs found a skull. I've heard that it was in his cabin and also that it was found on the grounds of his property or on his claim. A search was conducted but no body was found. One version of the story was that it was a skull of a native woman. Was this a skull of some woman he brought from Anchorage? Was this his old mining partner? Maybe he simply found the skull of some previous miner? Also around the turn of the century, the Dena'ina Athabaskans camped at the base of Bear Creek not too far down from his cabin. It's possible he found a Dena'ina grave. No one knew for sure, but due to his prior behavior with woman, and the earlier unexplained absence of his old partner, suspicions remain.
He was old when he died. The winter must have gotten to be too much for him. When my family did our hike up Bear Creek the weather was so rainy my parents elected to sleep in Keno's cabin instead of a tent. We slept in the open loft of his cabin. I don't remember much of this night other than I was extremely disturbed since the adults had been talking of the recent finding his corpse. In the morning we explored his cabin. Everything about it was old and mysterious. I remember it being filled with a fantastic collection of abandoned relics and glorious junk: broken tools and mining implements, worn out leather boots and old beer bottles. Coffee cans and tobacco tins stored miscellaneous rusty bits. My father related the story of when his body was found, glass jars containing Keno's piss were stored all around the cabin. That winter he had become either too sick or too indifferent to go outside in the cold to relieve himself. These are the sort things that get seared into a young person's memory.
One of the other reasons my parents wanted to visit the cabin was that it was slated by the Chugach National Forest Service to be destroyed. This was an era when the forest service had a misguided policy of burning old cabins. They considered them to be a nuisance and fire hazard. Probably Forest Service bureaucrats wanted to erase any potential legal gray areas of land use and ownership. Abandoned cabins could present problems if someone moved into them, renewed a mining claim or somehow tried to "prove up" on the land. During this era a number of historically-significant cabins in this region were wantonly destroyed.
We spent the night in the cabin and somehow I survived Keno's ghost. In the morning we hiked up the valley. Somewhere farther up the trail I distinctly remember the family coming upon a drinking ladle placed on a hook next to small creek trickling down the steep hillside. It was intentionally left as a stop for hikers to get fresh drinking water. To us, the ladle represented a living remnant of hospitality and kindness from Alaska's gold-mining past and possibly a hint of another side to this old man's personality.
There was also a nice old log structure, more like a work shop, surprisingly almost right on the trail. It was still fairly intact but the roof had recently caved in. We didn't get too far past here. Either we ran out of steam, the weather turned bad, or we were hindered by alders tangling the old road. We never found the mining cabins my parents were looking for but it was a great outing.
Not long after our stay, Keno's cabin was torn down. The Hope community rallied and it was spared being burned down by the Forest Service. A local resident was allowed to take it apart and remove it. The plan was to rebuild it closer in town. Sadly it was dismantled but never put back together. The logs were left somewhere where they have certainly since rotted into oblivion. This is particularly sad because Keno had a reputation for being a fine rustic craftsman. The cabin had a gambrel (barn-shaped) roof. Integral in the log construction was the second-story loft where we stayed. This cabin was commonly regarded as one of the larger and finer of the extant log structures from the early days.
The cabin is gone but a few items of Keno's remain in the community. My family salvaged his old beat-up and leaking copper water boiler. There is his hand-made table which is now in the Hope and Sunrise Historical Society Museum. It is used as staging in the school house.
Not long after our stay, Keno's cabin was torn down. The Hope community rallied and it was spared being burned down by the Forest Service. A local resident was allowed to take it apart and remove it. The plan was to rebuild it closer in town. Sadly it was dismantled but never put back together. The logs were left somewhere where they have certainly since rotted into oblivion. This is particularly sad because Keno had a reputation for being a fine rustic craftsman. The cabin had a gambrel (barn-shaped) roof. Integral in the log construction was the second-story loft where we stayed. This cabin was commonly regarded as one of the larger and finer of the extant log structures from the early days.
The cabin is gone but a few items of Keno's remain in the community. My family salvaged his old beat-up and leaking copper water boiler. There is his hand-made table which is now in the Hope and Sunrise Historical Society Museum. It is used as staging in the school house.
Keno's table, now at the Hope Museum
Billy Miller, rescued his hand-made barrel stove. It too is on display at the museum. The stove had been left for trash outside after the cabin was torn down. It was a crude device but it serves as an example of some of this old Finn's great ingenuity and craftsmanship. Barrel stoves are typically made out of used 55-gallon steel drums. These days there are kits that come with ready-made cast-iron pieces: a door, legs and a stove pipe mounting flange. As a blacksmith, he had the skill and tools to work his own stove from scratch. The most interesting feature is an oven built completely into and through the cylindrical barrel. The ovens of wood cook stoves are a little tough to get hot enough for baking. This oven would have had no problems getting plenty hot! Also the top had two burners for stove-top cooking. Each burner had a lid which could be slid aside so pots or pans could be heated directly over the open fire. Once the cooking was done the lid could be closed to keep smoke out of the cabin.
Detail of the oven. The hinge and the door latch remain but the door is missing.
Detail of the oven. The hinge and the door latch remain but the door is missing.
As mentioned it was Billy Miller who told me of Keno's sauna, This was what lead me down the path of this personal recollection and got me asking locals about Keno. Once I learned about the sauna, I had to return to the site to see if for myself.
Not far from the foundation of Keno's former cabin, the sauna structure still remains, but only just barely. The sauna is built very much like his cabin. It is well-constructed and hand hewn. Differently sized and shaped logs are carefully notched and fitted together. Mirroring the former cabin, it has a gambrel roof. Benches are built higher off the ground, about three feet up, to elevate the bather to where the heat lingers in the small space. Closer examination reveled that benches are integrally built, Lincoln Log-style, into the walls. This helps demonstrate that this little structure was indeed put together for one purpose only: sweat bathing.
Detail of the bench from the exterior as it is built into the sauna
The same bench on the inside of the sauna. Photo taken through an opening in the roof
Surprisingly it had a poured-concrete floor, complete with marbled vinyl tile and a drain. Of course the hand-mixed concrete wasn't very thick and the floor is now broken up by the intrusion of tree roots. Oddly I could still make out remnants of padded red vinyl that once covered the benches, vaguely suggestive of a 1960s Anchorage massage parlor. The finished floor and vinyl benches must have been a strange contrast to the rough cuts and bare logs. In spite of this, I bet it worked just fine.
I couldn't make out whether or not there had been a stove pipe in the roof. The back section of the roof was just too far gone. But, judging by the soot on the walls of the interior and lack of any evidence of a stove, my best guess is that Keno's sauna was a traditional Finnish smoke sauna or savusauna. This is where a fire is built in an unvented stove or simply in rocks inside the structure. After the sauna reaches the appropriate temperature the fire is put out and the door opened to air out the room. Then the sauna begins.
For a cold plunge, Bear Creek is just outside the front door. The setting couldn't be more beautiful. Going from this sauna into the creek would have been wonderful. The creek, as you might imagine, is clear and ice cold. I know this because during my return pilgrimage I was compelled to strip down and jump in.
Today two towering cotton woods are slowly squeezing the sauna together like a vice. The roof has collapsed and the back wall is mostly rotted back to forest humus.
Surprisingly it had a poured-concrete floor, complete with marbled vinyl tile and a drain. Of course the hand-mixed concrete wasn't very thick and the floor is now broken up by the intrusion of tree roots. Oddly I could still make out remnants of padded red vinyl that once covered the benches, vaguely suggestive of a 1960s Anchorage massage parlor. The finished floor and vinyl benches must have been a strange contrast to the rough cuts and bare logs. In spite of this, I bet it worked just fine.
I couldn't make out whether or not there had been a stove pipe in the roof. The back section of the roof was just too far gone. But, judging by the soot on the walls of the interior and lack of any evidence of a stove, my best guess is that Keno's sauna was a traditional Finnish smoke sauna or savusauna. This is where a fire is built in an unvented stove or simply in rocks inside the structure. After the sauna reaches the appropriate temperature the fire is put out and the door opened to air out the room. Then the sauna begins.
For a cold plunge, Bear Creek is just outside the front door. The setting couldn't be more beautiful. Going from this sauna into the creek would have been wonderful. The creek, as you might imagine, is clear and ice cold. I know this because during my return pilgrimage I was compelled to strip down and jump in.
The view from just outside the door of the sauna towards where Keno would take his cold dip
It's sad that such a beautiful location is possibly marred by the disturbing tales of Keno's behavior. Still, standing outside the sauna on a sunny summer day in the midst of the wild forest conveys nothing but peace. Who knows what went on in the mind of this man? Whatever the case, I'm sure the sauna gave him profound consolation and strength. It helped him cope with a rough and challenging life of long cold dark winters and solitude.
