The last settlers

by Jennifer Brice

In 1981, blocks of land totaling 30,000 acres near Lake Minchumina were opened to homesites, businesses and mineral leases. Two years later, 10,250 acres in eastern Alaska, near the Ahtna village of Slana, were opened to settlement as well. Would-be settlers besieged the Fairbanks office of the Bureau of Land Management with letters and calls. Over time, however, the hype and the illusions have faded. Fewer than 100 people now make their homes on what is truly the last federal frontier. Of these last settlers, two families, the Hannans and the Spears, are at the center of this clear, unsentimental portrait of people whose daily existence is forged out of the crucible of myth.