Anchorage enters Perry Smith’s story as the destination of a family project: his father bought land on a highway outside the city and planned to build a hunting lodge there. Perry’s journey north, delayed by a motorcycle accident, eventually brought him to the site, where father and son built the lodge together.

Setting and Plans

In 1952, while Perry was still completing his military service, his father was preparing to settle near Anchorage. He had acquired land beside the highway and imagined a hunting lodge for visitors, asking Perry to come north and help construct it. The plan gave Perry a concrete destination after his discharge: he set out for Alaska by motorcycle, but a skid near Bellingham delayed his reunion with his father for about a year.

The Lodge Outside the City

By the time Perry reached the proposed site, his father had already cleared the ground, cut timber, and hauled wagonloads of native rock. They completed the construction themselves, with occasional help, and opened Trapper’s Den Lodge at the end of 1953. The lodge could sleep twenty people and included a large dining-room fireplace and the Totem Pole Cocktail Lounge, where Perry was expected to entertain guests. Anchorage thus marks not simply a point on Perry’s route but the setting of an ambitious attempt by father and son to build a shared life and livelihood.