Did Will Rogers Visit Seward, Alaska?

November 27, 2025 Seward Folly by Doug Capra © 2017

Part 3 of 4

“We plan to sort of wander around…and see a lot.”

The weather was good that August 7 morning in 1935 when Wiley Post took off from Seattle with Will Rogers on their way to Alaska – but conditions looked ugly further north. Their first intended stop was Ketchikan with predictions of low-hanging clouds and strong winds. The weather remained mild as they crossed over Puget Sound, Vancouver Island and along the Canadian coast. Wiley dropped down against the gusts as Ketchikan appeared ahead. He studied weather conditions as he sped over the town barely a hundred feet off the ground. “I think we’ll keep going, Will,” he told Rogers. “Weather’s pretty foul around here. If it gets worse we’ll be socked in for who knows how long. Two or three days, maybe. Juneau’s only another couple of hours straight north. OK?” Rogers never claimed he knew anything about flying or planes. “You’re the boss,” he told Post.

On the evening of August 7, a crowd welcomed the two when they landed in Juneau. They were expected. Three hours earlier someone in Ketchikan had wired the territory’s capital when the two hadn’t arrived as scheduled. From within the crowd, a tall, moustached man approached Post and slapped him on the shoulder. “Joe, you made it,” Post said as they shook hands. “Here he is, Joe Crosson, the man who saved my bacon in ’33.” Rogers shook his hand and said, “Wiley here tells me that you’re the best pilot that Alaska ever had. Or ever will have.” Crosson gave Rogers a recently published book, Arctic Village by Robert Marshall. The humorist took the book with him, dipping into it throughout the trip.

Crosson certainly was one of Alaska’s best bush pilots. After only nine years in Alaska flying flimsy planes over rugged, mountainous terrain, in 1933 he had aided Post when he was forced down in Alaska on his round-the-world flight. Crosson brought him a new propeller and a mechanic to help get him on his way. Four years earlier Crosson had been the pilot to lead the search and finally find the missing plane with the frozen bodies of Carl Ben Eielson and his navigator Earl Borland. The two were on a rescue mission to supply an ice-bound sailboat off the northern coast of Siberia. To meet Rogers in Juneau, Crosson had traveled a thousand miles from his home in Fairbanks, leaving his wife and three children behind. 

Post and Rogers spent that first night with Governor John Weir Troy who hosted them to an Alaska crab and salmon banquet followed by a radio interview. Though appreciative, Rogers wasn’t happy with all this publicity. He had hoped to avoid too much notice, a peaceful getaway from the hustle and bustle of Hollywood. Perhaps that’s why he and Post were cautious about precisely where they would visit next when asked by the press. “Would Cordova about 450 miles in a direct air line form Juneau be the famous pair’s next stop?” newspapers wondered. “Or would Post stretch the distance to Seward or Anchorage another 150 miles?” These questions went unanswered. During the radio interview, Post was vague about their itinerary. “We plan to sort of wander around in the interior and see a lot,” he said, “and hunt and fish and just sort of wander around.”

Bad flying weather kept them in Juneau on August 8 – Rogers in his room part of the day reading Arctic Village while Wiley saw to servicing the plane. But the humorist couldn’t avoid his fame. The Juneau Chamber of Commerce begged him to speak at their luncheon that afternoon. That evening they had dinner with popular novelist Rex Beach who happened to be in Juneau. Rogers’ first silent film back in 1918 was based upon Beach’s novel Laughing Bill Hyde. They discussed whether Rogers and Post would visit Barrow. It would be along flight they agreed, whether they left from Juneau or even from Seward. Apparently, a Seward stop was considered. Post wasn’t enthusiastic about such a long flight, but Rogers was interested. Beach recommended that Rogers check out Charlie Brower in Barrow for some good copy. Brower had gone to Barrow fifty years earlier, married an Alaska Native woman and settled down with a dozen children. He had gone whaling with the locals, and had known Amundsen, Stefanson and Sir Hubert Wilkins. His would make a good story.

Rogers wanted to see the “real” Alaska. The territory’s capital and largest city didn’t satisfy that need. After nearly a 45-hour visit, he and Post left at 12:25 p.m. on August 9. They were still mysterious with the press: “When they took to the air they did not know whether or not they would make a brief stop at Skagway or fly direct to Dawson, there to stay for an indefinite period before proceeding to Fairbanks, then to Nome,” the press reported. Hundreds of people lined the city docks to watch their departure. “The plane skimmed down the channel then circled over the city and then headed toward Lynn Canal and the interior country.” Watching the takeoff, Crosson was surprised by the “abrupt, nose-high takeoff.” The pontoons whipped up a “smother of foam.” With all the power he had, Crosson wondered why he didn’t rise at a lower angle, “the safe way, as all seaplanes did.”

By August 12, Post and Rogers were in Fairbanks having dinner with Joe Crosson and his wife. They had skipped Skagway and spent twenty-two hours in Dawson. From there they overnighted in Aklavik where they “ate fish an’ walked on snowshoes, near froze to death in them howling winds, then flew off again…Almost went to Barrow ‘steada coming down here,” Rogers told Crosson, who asked why. “Lousy weather,” Post said. They remained in Fairbanks hoping for better weather up north, but on August 14 flying conditions were still ugly for the Barrow trip. Weather in Fairbanks was fine, so Crosson flew Rogers over Mt. McKinley, then to Anchorage where a crowd arrived to greet them. 

What happened next? History tells us that in Anchorage they switched to a smaller plane and Crosson flew them to the Matanuska Valley where for two hours Rogers interviewed settlers for a story. From there they flew back to Fairbanks. The next day they headed north to Barrow, where the two died in a crash. But did they make a quick dash from Anchorage to Seward before heading to the Matanuska Valley? Is this when Joe Crosson flew Will Rogers to a spot just north of Seward to meet with Leon Urbach, president of the Seward Chamber of Commerce? No written sources confirm a Seward stop. But photographs do.

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 CREDITS

1. From right to left: Will Rogers; Leon Urbach; probably pilot W.J. (Joe) Barrows who flew for PanAm and was with the group; and probably pilot Joe Crosson. This photo seems to be taken at the same location as the one with the Seward Machine Shop. Both photos were probably taken on August 14, 1935. Photo courtesy of Dorothy Urbach.

2. Joe Crosson, about 1930.