Did Will Rogers visit Seward, Alaska?

November 13, 2025 Seward Folly by Doug Capra © 2017

WE’RE HEADIN’ UP ALASKA WAY Part 1 in a series

On July 30, 1935, as Hollywood director Clarence Badger drove by the tall, wooden gates of Will Rogers’ estate in the Pacific Palisades of the low Santa Monica hills, he noticed the gates were open. It had been nearly a dozen years since the two had worked together, and he had known the comedian even earlier — when Rogers first came to Hollywood. Now Rogers was a big star. Badger had passed the estate many times before and was always tempted to just drop in, but the gates had always been tightly shut. Today they were open.

Badger decided to drive by, but then he suddenly hit the brakes. The open gates seemed welcoming. Should he just drop in? Would Rogers even remember him? In 1919, Badger had directed him in his second film, and then went on to do fifteen more popular movies with him for Goldwyn Pictures before Rogers returned to New York, where his career had begun in vaudeville. Once talkies became popular, Rogers returned to Hollywood with 20^th Century Fox, but since Badger directed for another studio, their ways parted.

Badger decided to take a chance. He backed up. “I shot the car through the gate’s welcoming arms,” he remembered, “sped along an ever-rising dirt road that wound its way up through holly and sycamores, crossed sylvan devils, and came out atop a high mesa.” From there he could see the Pacific Ocean. The estate itself was impressive. A white fence enclosed a nearby polo field. A single horseman with a polo mallet galloped about. The horseman stopped and the two eyed each other.

“My first glance identified him,” Badger recalled. “It was Rogers. I knew that he identified me, too, for as I climbed from the car I heard a shout, ‘Clarence!’ then a sound of approaching hoof-beats. He leaped from his pony, vaulted the fence, and grasped my hand. ‘Howdy, Clarence,’ he panted, ‘gosh, been a long time.’”

After some small talk, the two settled on the back patio with drinks. Soon, Rogers’ wife, Betty, and his two sons, Will, Jr. and Jim, joined them.      

“Tell you a secret, Clarence, I’m plannng to leave these here parts next week,” Rogers revealed. “Goin’ on a roamin’ around holiday. Flying around, I mean. Me an’ Wiley Post, we’re headin’ up Alaska way. Goin’ to see Alaska!”

Rogers had known Wiley Post for ten years and they often discussed Alaska. Post first saw the territory in the summer of 1931, when he and Harold Gatty crossed Alaska on their record-breaking round-the world flight – New York to New York in eight days, fifteen hours and fifty-one seconds. In 1933, Post soloed and beat that time by nearly a day. During that trip he experienced a forced landing at Flat – but he made the flight in 18 hours and 49.5 minutes. Both Rogers and Post were also from Oklahoma.

Badger asked Rogers what he’d do up in Alaska. Some fishing and hunting? “No, nuthin’ special,” the comedian responded, “just wander around. I’d like to see that goldminin’ town Skagway, and the old gold fields of ’98, an’ that Matanuska Valley where they settled all them farmers broke from the Depression. Maybe go all the way up north to the top, to that Barrow. Last human settlement on the continent, they call it. I’ve always been crazy to go an’ see what it’s like up there.”

Badger always remembered this meeting with fondness, especially his old friend’s final words, for this would be the last time they would ever meet. “Here we spent an hour or so reminiscing. It was a treasured, never-forgotten hour,” he recalled. As the director left Rogers’ estate, the two walked down to his car. “After I’m back, Clarence,” Rogers said, “I’ll get in touch with you an’ the missus, an’ we’ll have us a real nice evenin’ together, a good old pow-wow an’ dinner with all the fixins.”  Two weeks after their 1935 meeting, Rogers and Post would be dead in a crash near Barrow.

In 1935, Will Rogers was a busy man. When he returned to Hollywood after his New York break, he made nearly twenty movies in six years, which made him a top star. In 1934, movie magazines listed him as Hollywood’s most popular box office hit – bigger than Clark Gable, Shirley Temple and Joan Crawford. Nearly 700 newspapers carried his column, his records and books sold well, and he had a popular radio show.

What brought Will Rogers to Alaska? And did he and famed pilot Joe Crossen make a short hop to a spot just north of Seward while Rogers was in Anchorage? The evidence strongly suggests they did. But if so, why was it kept secret?

On May 4, 1935 — nearly three months before the Alaska trip — the Seward Gateway, under the editorship of Ernest F. Jessen, published an article titled “SOURDOUGHS ASK WILL ROGERS TO PAY THEM A VISIT: McKinley Park Veterans Are Seeking a Chance to Swap Lies with Will.” In one of his syndicated columns, Rogers said he wanted to visit Alaska to “swap tales in some cabin with the oldtimers.” The sourdoughs at McKinley Park took him at his word, and sent a letter to Rogers through the Seward Gateway. “Right here is the place to come,” they told him. When it came to swapping tall tales, they said, “our champs can put any Oklahoma cowhand to shame.” Dog mushers and cow-punchers had much in common, they reminded Rogers. But nothing could compare with politicians. “Too bad you couldn’t have made it this winter in January and February. Our local congressmen were holding their biannual shindig and we could have shown you real blasts of Arctic wind.”

There were many reasons why Will Rogers came to Alaska with Wiley Post. One reason may have been this invitation from the local sourdoughs – and Ernest Jessen, editor of the Seward Gateway, was the go-between. When he got to Alaska, the town of Seward was definitely a place he wanted to visit. Although he didn’t get to town, he most likely did meet with a few locals somewhere between Seward and Mile 18, where a gap in the Seward Highway known as the Missing Link was under construction.[1]

TO BE CONTINUED

Doug Capra is the author of The Spaces Between: Stories from the Kenai Mountains to the Kenai Fjords, poetry, plays and many articles about Alaska history. His Forewords appear in two reprints of American artist Rockwell Kent’s books published by Wesleyan University Press in 1996—Wilderness: A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska, and Northern Christmas. In 2023 the Alaska Historical Society presented Capra with the Evangeline Atwood Award for his work. His new book, The Last Homesteaders: Life and Death along the Edge of Alaska will be published soon. He can be contacted at capradr@yahoo.com

PHOTO CAPTIONS/CREDITS

1.     Will Rogers (left) and Wiley Post in Renton, Washington, shortly before they left for Alaska. 2.     Seward Gateway, May 4, 1935.

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[1] When the Laughing Stopped: The Strange, Sad Death of Will Rogers by John Evangelist Walsh.