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Exploration

 Exploration: 2022 week 36 of #52Ancestors

When I saw the Exploration topic, my great-uncle Harry Jacob came to mind. I know him best for teaching viticulture at UC Davis, but when I interviewed his son Wendell in 2004 I heard another story. In 1919 after graduating from Ohio State University, Harry went to Alaska with a professor as a student assistant/laborer on a three-masted sailing ship, to the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. At least Wendell thought that was the name, he wasn't sure.

A little online research revealed that the professor was Robert F. Griggs, a botany professor from Ohio State. Originally sent to Alaska to study whether kelp beds near Kodiak could be used for fertilizer, he became fascinated with the ongoing effects of a major eruption the year before in 1912. With funding from the National Geographic Society, he led multiple expeditions between 1915 and 1919 to what is now Katmai National Park, and is credited with discovering and naming the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, named for the many fumaroles releasing steam.

Well my great-uncle Harry was definitely on the 1919 expedition. He is named in Griggs' 1922 book The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes as one of the 19 members. Harry and two other students were sent with a man who had been on the 1917 expedition and knew the area, to bring in the equipment and provisions via a water route so they didn't have to be packed in by the other members climbing over Katmai Pass. So "assistant/laborer" captured that assignment pretty well.

There is a group photo in the book of the 1919 expedition. But the caption says that Harry and two others (not the two from the equipment team) left the area before everyone came together for the photo. So close.

Harry went on to teach viticulture to many future winemakers and was rewarded with bottles of their work, but I doubt it was as exciting as the Alaska expedition!

Harry E. Jacob Research Facility


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