Under the Big Dipper: What Happened to Ethel Kavanaugh and Dorothy Clifton After "Wilderness Homesteaders"

WILDERNESS HOMESTEADERS (Caxton Printers, 1950) is the story of how Ethel Kavanaugh and her daughter, Dorothy Clifton, filed a Homestead Settlement Claim for a portion of a secluded little valley on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska. The book chronicled challenges in transporting food and equipment, building a log cabin, and roughing out a crude wagon road with axe, mattock and shovel.Readers, enchanted by Ethel’s colorful account, were left with many questions: What happened next? Did they get title to the land, or did they have to give up their dream? Did they ever get any neighbors? Did the land actually support them? Ethel wrote a follow-up book, applying to Caxton for publishing. She was turned down because she insisted on expensive color pictures. Didn’t her beloved land deserve as much?Her descendants were heirs to the original manuscript and accompanying color negatives. Now, with the advent of self-publishing, UNDER THE BIG DIPPER can finally be shared with anyone wishing for a glimpse into the not-so-distant history of Alaska.This book will be of special interest to: readers of Ethel’s first book, those with an interest in the history of the Kenai Peninsula and the Denali Highway, nature lovers, and especially to Ethel’s and Dorothy’s friends their descendants . . . and those who still dream !