Eric Gordon Johnson: Campbell Airstrip Traditions

I remember the first time my mother told us about the Thanksgiving mushing trip to Campbell Airstrip in 1947. It was 1955, and the six of us kids listened intently as we sat around the turkey at the Norris’s Howling Dog Farm. (It was their turn to host Thanksgiving dinner.)

“You were along, too,” my mother said to me.

“How could that be? I replied. “I wasn’t born until 1948.”

“You were born six months later, so you were inside me.”

For fun back in 1947, my parents, Gus and Virginia Johnson, and their friends, Earl and Natalie Norris, had loaded their camping gear “and me” onto three dog sleds and headed east through the woods from the Norris’s house. They mushed through the MacInnes’ homestead over to where Wendler Middle School is now. From there they followed Campbell Airstrip Road around the bottom of the hill at the future Alaska Pacific University and through the Boniface and Baxter Homesteads to the airstrip. There were no established dog-team trails in 1947. Campbell Airstrip Road, packed with snow, was the only road out that direction and made for good mushing.

They spent the night in a cabin a quarter of a mile east of the airstrip. It had probably been built during World War II, when the Army stationed soldiers, fighters, and bombers at the military reservation airstrip. After cooking breakfast the following morning, they returned home the same way they had come. At the time, I don’t think my parents and their friends realized they had started a Thanksgiving tradition—or how big a part Campbell Airstrip Road and Campbell Airstrip would play in the lives of our families.

My first memory of Campbell Airstrip Road, in 1953, was of our mother carrying buckets of my siblings’ dirty diapers back a quarter of mile towards town to Chester Creek to wash them (we didn’t have a well drilled until later). In 1950, my parents had filed for and obtained a Trade and Manufacturing Site of two-and-a-half acres along the route of their Thanksgiving mushing trip, just north of where Campbell Airstrip Road would later cross Baxter Road.

After that first excursion, the Johnson and Norris families continued to get together for Thanksgiving, alternating homes. The two families grew to 11 members. Ours eventually included me, Vicky, Bret, and Heide, oldest to youngest. The Norrises added J. P., Rita, and Teddy.

I remember the construction of Baxter Road around 1955. This gave us driveways: one from Campbell Airstrip Road and one from Baxter Road. Around that time several dog mushers moved near us: Clyde Bastian, Walt Parker, and Bill Young. Whenever one dog lot would begin barking at a moose or a bear, the hundreds of dogs in the neighborhood would chime in—ours included—and no one would sleep. When I was six, I remember Clyde mushing down Campbell Airstrip Road and his dogs running right over me. I can still feel their paws and see the sled coming at me before Clyde raised it up on one runner to avoid hitting me.

Starting in the late 1940s, the Norrises and the Johnsons were members of the Anchorage Sled Dog Association and continued to mush dogs. I remember subsequent Thanksgiving tales of Earl and Natalie winning the Fur Rendezvous race, which ran from downtown out to Campbell Airstrip and back. Once the race left downtown, the route did not stay on Campbell Airstrip Road as it did on that 1947 trip but followed the creeks and swamps instead. It was fun standing in the snow, watching the teams burst out of the woods where the trail crossed Campbell Airstrip Road near Chester Creek.

One summer day, I bicycled three miles along Campbell Airstrip Road from Baxter Road to the Tastee Freez on Fireweed Lane, where a large cone cost 35 cents. As I climbed on my bike to pedal home, I tipped the cone, and the swirled vanilla ice cream fell to the ground. I had no money for another cone and—more than a half a century later—can still feel the sting of disappointment of riding home without my ice cream. To this day, it has been hard for me to keep from pigging out on ice cream.

Growing up on Baxter Road, my friends and I would often ride our bikes over to Campbell Airstrip to camp and fish. We also liked to search for World War II “C” Rations and blank ammunition the soldiers left behind on the military reservation after maneuvers. Sometimes, when the soldiers were doing live mortar practice, they would chase us out of the reservation. Later, in Boy Scouts, Winter Camporees and summer survival camps were held at the airstrip. I earned part of my hiking merit badge by walking Campbell Airstrip Road back to Airport Heights and returning home—a total of five miles.

In the early 1970s, when the New Seward Highway was constructed north of Tudor Road, the road ran right through the Norris’s old homestead. The State bought them out, and the family moved north to White’s Crossing near Willow. What remained of their land became University Center Mall. Our two families continued to swap Thanksgivings, only now we made the drive from either Willow or Anchorage. This Thanksgiving tradition has continued for 68 years, but only Natalie Norris and I remain from the original Campbell Airstrip expedition in 1947.

Today I live up in what used to be the town of Basher, east of Anchorage. I often skijor with my dog around Campbell Airstrip in the winter and bicycle around it in the summer. My wife Gail and I watch at the airstrip when J.P. Norris or his wife, Kari Skogen, competes in the Fur Rendezvous Sled Dog Race, just as his parents did. We also watched their daughter Lisbet end the ceremonial start for the 2014 Iditarod Race at the airstrip. Whenever I drive past there on my way into town, I remember my mother’s tale of the Thanksgiving mushing trip of 1947.

 

 

 

Eric Gordon Johnson was born in Fairbanks in 1948 and moved to Anchorage in 1949. He graduated from East Anchorage High School in 1966 and then attended University of Alaska Fairbanks. He earned a degree in Civil Engineering in 1970 and a master’s degree in Engineering Management in 1973. Johnson worked for the Alaska State Department of Transportation and Public Facilities as a Geotechnical Engineer, retiring in 2000. He sings in the Anchorage Concert Chorus and Anchorage Opera Chorus. He has completed a two-year home study course in fiction writing by the National Writer’s Association. Johnson was awarded an honorable mention in the University of Alaska Anchorage and Anchorage Daily News’ first writing contest in 1981 for a short story titled “Old Man.” He enjoys cross country skiing, hiking, biking, and—until his feet betrayed him—mountain running. He and his wife, Gail, still make their home in east Anchorage.