Free Land in Alaska

[Washington Hunter]

Moosie, I'm surprised you didn't get in on this. Or did you? You're not the Boise attorney's friend, are you?

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

People hear ‘free land,’ make a beeline for Alaska


RACHEL D’ORO; The Associated Press
Last updated: March 20th, 2007 01:30 AM (PDT)

ANCHORAGE – They dropped everything to fly or drive north and camp out in 25-degree-below-zero weather.
They dreamed of the homes they would build amid the spruce and cottonwoods of the town of Anderson, population 300.

And within hours Monday, they had spoken for all the land Anderson had offered free to anyone willing to put down roots in Alaska’s frozen interior.

Bright and early Monday, 44 parties were waiting in line for a shot at the 26 large lots offered to the first people who applied and submitted $500 refundable deposits.

Few locals were among them, but there were plenty of people from down south, including Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Florida and Wisconsin.

“People are jacked,” Mayor Mike Pearson said. “They’re jubilant. It’s like a minifestival.”

And those are just the ones who hustled to show up after news broke about the giveaway, which requires that winning applicants build a house of at least 1,000 square feet within two years.

Boise attorney Jeremie Dufault claimed one of the 1.3-acre lots for a summer home and talked a friend into getting an adjacent lot so they could vacation together.

“This is a brilliant and innovative way to create a neighborhood because now we all know each other and we’ve been through this together,” Dufault said about waiting in line.

No. 26 was Ross Shoger of Portland, who was on a 6 a.m. flight Saturday just hours after he heard about the offer. The 23-year-old flew to Fairbanks, then hitchhiked to Anderson, where he plans to do odd jobs to make a living in a town where most employment opportunities require some driving.

Those who failed to make the initial cut, including piles of applications expected this week in the mail, still have a chance because city officials gave the first 26 people in line a week to change their minds about making the commitment.

Despite the brutal winters of the interior, where temperatures can plunge to 60 below, callers zeroed in on two words: free land. Thousands of people called from all 50 states, Canada, Taiwan, India and South America.

“This is insane,” said Anderson High School teacher Daryl Frisbie, whose social studies class developed the homesteading idea to boost the town’s dwindling population. “It’s more than I ever imagined.”

Originally published: March 20th, 2007 01:00 AM (PDT)

 

[AkBearHunter]

There's a reason that land is free and no Alaska residents jumped on it.

 

[cjcj]

60 Below??? I`d rather be at the swimming pool.....i hear summer is a bugfest.

 

[Moosie]

I would have been all over it. Free land is Free land, Even if it's swamp

Next time poist the info BEFORE its over ... DANG !!

 

[guppie9]

There was an article in this mornings paper that said people were offering the locals $1000 to stand in line for them.

http://newsminer.com/2007/03/20/6035/

Hey, neighbor: Anderson takes in future residents from the cold
By Eric Lidji
Staff Writer
Published March 20, 2007


ANDERSON — The plat pinned up in Anderson City Hall was covered in names by noon Monday, and the Northern Lights Subdivision began to transition from a news item to a neighborhood.

More than 40 people from around Alaska and the Lower 48 lined up in the cold for a chance to get one of 26 free plots of land. In the hours before dawn on Monday, people curled up on the ground in sleeping bags and emergency blankets arranged on beds of spruce branches and stood inches from flaming burn barrels spewing sparks into the air.

Sharon and Eric Warner were the first in line, arriving at 1:30 p.m. on Saturday, more than 40 hours before the city would begin accepting applications.

“It’s his birthday today,” Sharon Warner said about her husband. “What a present.”

The Warners had been living in a rented trailer since moving to Anderson from Idaho two months ago. Their daughter, who attends Anderson High School, was part of the group of students who proposed the land giveaway to the Anderson City Council.

Anderson officials, taken with the students’ idea, decided to give away land in an attempt to spur growth in the small town, population 279, and possibly boost economic development.

After news of the land giveaway spread, city employees fielded nonstop phone calls from around the world, from a lawyer in Milwaukee offering $1,000 to anyone who would hold his place in line (offer declined), to a soldier in Iraq requesting the same favor for free (offer accepted).

Anderson Mayor Mike Pearson said at the height of exposure, around the time representatives from the “Oprah Winfrey Show” called, high school teacher Daryl Frisbie turned to him and said, “We’re five minutes into our fame.”

High school students on spring break showed up at 5 a.m. to cook breakfast, raising money for a trip this week to Juneau to lobby the Legislature on behalf of their school district.

“Tomorrow we’ll still be a small community,” Frisbie said. “The real story is the kids.”

In Yakima, Wash., Chris Waddle, No. 10 in line, and his friend, Jeremy, No. 11, heard about the giveaway and immediately hopped on a plane for Alaska. Waddle sells commercial real estate, and the last flight the two friends took on a whim was bound for Biloxi, Miss., the day after Hurricane Katrina.

“We were looking for a story to tell,” Waddle said about their off-the-cuff decision to fly to Alaska. “Even better, 20 years from now we’d be in our log cabins telling the story.”

The two set up an e-mail list with all the people waiting in line in the hopes of culling resources when the time comes to clear the spruce and birch trees covering the lots and start building on the property.

That list impressed 72-year-old Bill Peele, of Fairbanks, No. 23 in line.

“I’d rather be in a small community,” Peele said.

Peele moved to Fairbanks with his wife several years ago after retiring from a job at the Bayer plant in Clayton, N.C. During his 25 years with the company, he would save up vacation days and take month-long trips to Alaska, climbing Mount McKinley in 1979 and 1982, and running the Iditarod in 1991.

Potential neighbors bonded throughout the weekend, sharing food and making runs to Clear Air Force Station for money orders.

Troopers patrolling the Parks Highway passed through Anderson several times over the weekend, once quelling an alcohol-induced dust-up and another time resolving a line etiquette dispute. Other than that, though, the event was orderly.

Nervous energy built up around Anderson in the week before the application deadline.

Some residents questioned whether it wouldn’t be more realistic to reverse the economic development plan by creating jobs and then giving lots away to the people who moved to Anderson for employment.

Pearson, the mayor, believed the young and not-so-young families and individuals queued outside proved their worthiness through “baptism to Alaska,” braving the Interior weather, which dipped well past 20 below zero.

“I think we got the better people here, the ones who are really going to do it,” Pearson said.

Realizing the city had more interested applicants than lots, Pearson hinted that 800 more city-owned acres could become future lots, depending on the success of the current giveaway.

“We do have room for growth,” Pearson said.

Susan Gilbertson, No. 27, missed the cut for a free lot by one place in line but preferred to view her position as being first on the waiting list should someone ahead of her default on the contract to build within two years.

Gilbertson, who lives in central Oregon with her husband and children, wanted to move back to Interior Alaska, where she and her husband met, but didn’t want to rush the planning.

“This will give us time to really see what we want to do,” she said.

The desire to take some time for reflection was also on the mind of Anderson School principal Geoff Buerger, who knew the event would spawn future lesson plans in social studies, civics and journalism classes for weeks.

“We haven’t had a chance to digest it,” Buerger said.

Contact staff writer Eric Lidji at 459-7504 or [email protected].