Coming of Age in the West 1883 -1906

Will Gurr's account of his youth opens a window onto western American and Alaskan life and travel as experienced by a boy growing to manhood in hard times. In "Coming of Age in the West 1883-1906" Ted Robert Gurr tells Will's story by annotating a barely legible copy of his uncle's late-in-life memoirs. Will's youth was filled with adventures and dangers. His widowed father, the Rev. Henry Gurr, led his two boys to London and then a dozen Episcopal parishes in the Midwest and West. After several failed attempts to sail a schooner to Gold Rush Alaska and a trek over Skagway's White Pass in harsh weather, father and boys rowed and sailed 100 miles on lakes in the Canadian interior to the mining settlement of Aitlin. They built a rough cabin as winter set in and when the Rev. Gurr was recalled to Skagway, 15-year-old Will stayed behind. For the next seven years he made his own way. His memoirs describe vividly the years in which he worked, hunted and sailed a charter launch along Alaska's Inside Passage. "Coming of Age in the West" ends with an account of Will's life in Chelan, a resort town located at the edge of the Cascade Mountains in north central Washington, where he settled down in 1907. In Will's 70 years in Chelan he became a successful businessman and photographer, married twice, and took a leading role in public life. Family memories, letters and museum records provide rare insights into the character of a resilient and self-confident man with a strong moral compass. The written record is illustrated with 24 restored photographs of Alaska and the West, most of them taken by Will and his father.