MOST HONEST GAMBLE

Evening Star, Issue 23093, 20 October 1938, Page 15

MOST HONEST GAMBLE

BIG PRIZES FOR WINNERS Every spring when the seasonal break-up of ice occurs on the frozen interior rivers of Alaska and the Yukon Territory, large numbers of people in this part of the world become tremendously excited, for they stand a chance of winning a rich prize. They gamble on the weather, writes Leonard Delano in the ‘ Wide World Magazine.’ » At Dawson, Y.T., and at Nenana and Fairbanks, Alaska, responsible folk conduct what is known as “ Icepools. In return for a fee you receive a ticket bearing your name and recording your guess as to the _ day, hour, and minute when the ice in the river will “ break-up ”; the lucky individual who is most nearly correct takes the pool. The Dawson pool is concerned with the Yukon ice at that point, and in May, 1937, the winner received approximately fifteen thousand dollars.

At Fairbanks, where they run a “ minute ” pool only—the guess being as to the exact minute of the breakup, and not the day or hour—a lucky individual got three thousand two hundred dollars. It is at Nenana, however, that • the ice-pool committee, elected by local citizens, handles by far the largest amount of money. Last year the total entries at one dollar each passed the seventy-four thousand mark, and the stake was won by a fortunate man of Fairbanks. Sale of tickets is restricted to actual residents of Alaska or the Yukon Ter-

ritory, and is supervised by strong local committees and a careful selection of agents. The Nanana Ice-pool, to take one example, has become quite an institution. The little town of Nenana, with a population approximately five hundred, is located on the Tanana River, 59 miles south of Fairbanks. If you should look out some time during March or April over the frozen surface of the Tasman you would observe a very ordinary-looking pole, with atripod base, standing on the ice some two hundred yeards from the Jjank. Strung from this _pole is a wire which connects with a small box at the summit of another pole shore. Inside this box the official stop-clock of the Nenana Ice-pool xa ticking away the days, hours, and minutes until such a time as the spring thaw comes. Then the ica moves down-river, and the pole with it, the pull on the wire recording on the click the exact second of tha “ break-up ” and determining the winner of “ the world’s most honest} gamble,” as old-timers have called itBack in the boom days of 1917, betting on the break-up time of the ice in front of the freight wharf of tha Alaska railroad roused so much intereset that , two men. responsible employees of the railroad, eventually; agreed to act as stake-holders for a pooling of all wagers _ among the workers and local inhabitants. From , then on the pool became an annual event, conducted on a strictly nonprofit basis. , . ■■ Tickets are sold all over Alaska, and that residence in Nenana gives a purchaser no special advantage is shown by the fact that no dweller in the town has been lucky since interest in the pool first spread throughout the territory. Not that the people of Nenana haven’t tried, mark you! Though thoroughly familiar with local conditions, participants in the pool are sometimes badly fooled, as was the case last year. Unusually warm weather prevailed in the interior of Alaska in March, and particularly at Fairbanks where the annual “ Dog Derby ” was held on March 12, 13, and 14. The dog teams panted and gasped in hitherto unprecedented temperatures—3o and 40 degrees above zero—and, as a result of _ this unseasonable spell, the majority of icepool tickets forecasted ah early breakup—in April. Late in March, however, the weather turned cold again', and the ice held firm until May 12, when it “ went out ” unexpectedly during a storm,the rising waters, fed by thaws upriver, tearing the ice loose in great masses. Aside from the thrill of betting when the ice will move, few spectacles are more impressive than to see hitherto silent, frozen streams releasing their pent-up energy in articulate groanings and rumblings.