Call of the Wild

In jukeboxes across the big, muddy, thawing Alaskan tundra last week, a top pop was Alaska, the Forty-Ninth Star, sung by Anchorage Entertainer-Bartender Freddie Beardon on the new Igloo label (made in Anchorage). And it came close to capturing the confidence and cockiness of Alaskans (We have riches untold--there's oil, fish and gold), hustling toward the greatest summer ever. Some northern high lights:

P:Land-office business in April was up almost 200% over April 1958.

P:Tourism is ballooning, with the season scarcely at hand; in 1959's first four months, Alaskan clocked 3,419 vehicles and 8,418 people pouring through Tok

Junction on the Alaska Highway; a year earlier, for the same period, the tally was 2,433 vehicles, 5,725 people. Hotels are. doing better than ever; Anchorage's Westward Hotel and Traveler's Inn are booked through September.

^ Airline business between Seattle and Alaska is up 15% over last year, and Wien Alaska Airlines has collected more than $130,000 in advance reservations for summertime Arctic tours, the highest ever.

Most publicized new arrivals in Alaska are the "Fifty-Niners," an eager motorcade of 37 pioneers who left Detroit last March to make their homes in the new state. Beset by breakdowns and inept leadership ("Thirty minutes after we left Detroit we were lost," says a newsman who accompanied the expedition), the group has since had tough going. But vivid reporting of the Fifty-Niners' trials has deterred none of a second contingent from Michigan: some 550 men, women and children have registered at $25 a head, will set out in a 100-car train later this month.

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