Our first featured book is "An Expedition to The Copper, Tanana, and Koyukuk Rivers in 1885" by Lieutenant Henry T. Allen.

On March 30, 1867 then Secretary of State, William H. Seward, purchased Alaska from the Russians for seven million dollars. Critics attacked Seward for the secrecy surrounding the deal with Russia, which came to be known as "Seward's folly." The Russians had approached the American government earlier about purchasing Alaska but negotiations stalled because of the American Civil War. They finally came to fruition in 1867 two years after the war ended.

However at the time much of Alaska was still an unknown territory but with the government's preoccupation with the plains Indian Wars it wasn't until 1880 when General Nelson A. Miles was put in charge of the U. S. Army's operations in the far Northwest. However, after leading legendary campaigns against the Cheyenne, Comanche,  the Sioux tribes under Sitting Bull, and the Nez Perce war to be placed in charge of the Northwest was a near dead-end for the Cavalry General. After two years he broke away from his headquarters at Vancouver and made an inspection tour of Alaska and for the rest of his life was fascinated with America's last wilderness frontier. 

In 1883 Miles send Lt. Frederick Schwatka on an exploration of the Yukon River basin. A year later he authorized a more ambitious effort to map a route through the unexplored Alaska Range connecting the Copper River with the Yukon drainage. This first attempt, a large and costly expedition headed by Lt. William Abercrombie in 1884, failed miserably. Abercrombie stated that the route was not practical, as the mountains, glaciers, rapids, and streams to be crossed were too great an obstacle. 

The failure of Abercrombie's expedition soured Miles' Washington superiors on the exploration of "Seward's Icebox," but with the General's insistence and the General's aide-de-camp Lt Henry T. Allen's willingness to attempt the exploration with only two other men in his party finally won approval. On January 29, 1885 Lt. Henry T. Allen, Cavalry Sergeant Cady Robertson, and Private Frederick W. Fickett left Portland at dawn on the Northbound steamer Idaho. 

This 1885 expedition is one of America's epic journeys of exploration. Overshadowed in its day by the final years of the Indian wars in the American west and later by the excitement of the Klondike gold rush, Allen's adventure is, nevertheless, remarkable for the sheer distances traveled, the brutality of the conditions, and the value of the maps and documents created along the way. 

Allen's original report was published by the Government Printing Office in 1887. This book is a soft cover reprint of that report published by Alaska Northwest Publishing in 1985. It contains the entire narrative portion of Lieut. Henry T. Allen's official report on the 1885 expedition. However this reprint has omitted the general sections on Alaskan natives, minerals, animals, geology, and climate. Sections of maps in the original report have been reproduced and enlarged enabling the reader to follow the trail of Allen's expedition from the mouth of the Copper River in March, 1885 to its arrival at St. Michael on the coast of the Bering Sea five months later.