Once upon a time, down in Kasilof, the fox was an important and substantial cash resource. In today’s dollars, one silver black fox fur could go for more than $1,500 at the hight of the fox farming boom in the late 1920’s.
And just as now in Alaska, not long after came the bust. Little remains of the fox farming industry in Kasilof today, but a handful of volunteers are trying to bring a portion of it back to life.
On a day with temperatures in the single digits, I get a warm greeting and from Bud Crawford and an introduction to the rest of the team, Don Barber, Glen Heeren and Gary Titus. Bill Nelson and Mike Wiley round the original crew that’s restored a number of cabins at the Kasilof Historical Museum over the years. But Titus is the de facto crew chief. He ran the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge Cabin Management program for 15 years, so restoring old cabins, or fox kennels as the case may be, is just another day at the office.
“We use the same hand tools, the same marks, the same notches they do. They wouldn’t know the difference if they ever came back and saw this. And that’s all we do is try and make it the same.”
On this frosty day, they’re putting a couple fresh logs under the kennels. They have several examples out here, many donated from the nearby McLane homestead. The kennels are just a few square feet, and they seem way overbuilt for just a little fox. But one of the reasons those furs commanded such a high price nearly a century ago, was how persnickety the little critters could be. The pens had to be built in an isolated area away from disturbances, and they required regular attention. And 1920's Kasilof presented plenty of challenges, not least of which was keeping food around so the foxes could be fed every day.
The farms clearly took a lot of time and a lot of attention. By the end of the 20’s, the furs were selling for a small fraction of their peak value as the country and fashion trends headed toward the Great Depression. A final nail in the coffin would be the onset of World War II.
But new nails are being driven today, in order to preserve this unique piece of the Peninsula’s history. Now, insofar as there’s any kind of a process for this kind of restoration, it starts at the bottom and goes up. Old logs that have basically turned into mulch have to be pulled out. New logs have to be trimmed, notched and dovetailed seemlessly next to their century-old counterparts.
A chainsaw is one of the few modern tools put to use here. Dedication to old world craftsmanship is great, but hey, it’s seven degrees. Best to keep things moving along. The chainsaw carves notches into the side of the log, then a slick (recently purchased and a valued addition to the toolbox) is swung back and forth between the legs as you stand over the log and cleanly scoop out all the excess, giving a nice, smooth, hewn surface on which to place the next log.
Even though it’s all done by hand, free form, it’s still very exacting. A little like carving out puzzle pieces once you know the shape that’s missing. Titus says bringing that attention to detail to the job is second nature after working under national regulations at the Refuge.
“Being a federal worker, I had to follow those. And they’re engrained in me now, I can’t escape them. And I know it’d be easier sometimes (to use a different method), but I have to do it this way. That’s how I was trained and that’s the way I see it.”
There’s a lot to one of these kennels. It really is just a tiny log cabin. Why they were built this stout? It's hard to tell; to keep the bears out, so they’d last a long time, maybe because the foxes escaped from anything else. Or, perhaps, just to give some volunteer historians one more puzzle to solve during the long, cold winter, almost a century later.