Harry Johnson Trapping Cabin

The Harry A. Johnson trapline cabin exemplifies the isolated homes used by people who chose to live on the edge of civilization.  Between 1896 and 1923, thousands of people came to Alaska's Kenai Peninsula to search for gold or to work on the railroad.  Those who stayed can be divided into those who built the towns and villages and those who avoided them.  Harry Johnson came in 1904 to work on the Alaska Central Railway and stayed for sixty years.  Typical of many, he lived by a variety of occupations, subsistence hunting, trapping, mining, seasonal work with the railroad or the Alaska Road Commission, longshoring in Seward, and wildlife photography. 

Johnson, a thirty year old blacksmith from Pennsylvania, arrived in Seward, Alaska and went to work for the Alaska Central Railroad as a meat hunter.  By 1911 the Alaska Central and its successors were bankrupt.  Johnson switched jobs and worked at a logging camp at Bird Creek on the north side of Turnagain Arm.  He also trapped furs. He prospected for gold finding, in 1911, a vein laden with gold in Lechner Gulch near Ptarmigan Lake north of Seward.  Johnson also sold wildlife photographs to a souvenir shop in Seward.  

By 1920 Johnson was one of ten residents of Moose Pass.  Only ninety people lived in the five hundred square miles northwest of Seward.  In 1921, Johnson built a cabin near Resurrection Creek eighteen miles south of Hope, and moved there.

In 1926, Johnson built his trapline cabin one winter day's walk southwest of his home.  The cabin allowed him to expand his trapping area and photograph animals rarely seen in more heavily traveled areas.  He never used a telephoto lens and patiently waited until the animals felt safe enough to approach his camera.  In his photos of porcupine, lynx, or ermine, you can see their individual hairs and see into the eyes.  He was considered the best wildlife photographer of the time in Alaska.

Even the most reclusive answered the call during World War II.  Johnson worked as a freight checker for the U. S. Army Transport Service in Seward.  After the war, he became less reclusive, and allowed his trapline cabin to be used by others for wildlife photography and for hunting.  In 1948, he built a home in Moose Pass.  He still returned to the mountains and trapped into the 1950's.  He died, ninety years old, in Seward in June 1965. 

The Harry Johnson trapline cabin was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 5, 2000.