Pilgrim's Wilderness: A True Story of Faith and Madness on the Alaska Frontier

by Tom Kizzia

  Robert Hale was my original source for the story of his wanderings in the 1960s, his meeting with Kurina Rose, and his conversion experience. Kurina Rose Hale later added many details. The writer Mark Kirby made contact with several of Hale’s past wives and shared his notes. Further details about these years were provided by Patsy Hale, by Rose’s mother, Betty Freeman, by Mary Walker regarding life at Apple Valley, and by Ellen Sue and Ted Pilger regarding the Sunnyridge commune.

  5: Motorheads

  Papa Pilgrim’s writings were obtained from Kelly and Natalie Bay and Neil Darish. Joseph and Joshua Hale described the slaying of “Old Slew Foot.” The account of the Motorheads’ visit is drawn mainly from interviews with Steve Lindbeck, Carl Bauman, Peter Dunlap-Shohl, and Darish.

  6: The Rainbow Cross

  An excellent source for the natural and human history of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains is Enchantment and Exploitation: The Life and Hard Times of a New Mexico Mountain Range by William deBuys (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985). Details on the history of Mora and the local Mexican land grant came from an interview with historian Malcolm Ebright of the Center for Land Grant Studies in Guadalupita, New Mexico, from The Mora Land Grant: A New Mexican Tragedy by Clark S. Knowlton, reprinted in Spanish and Mexican Land Grants and the Law, a book edited by Ebright for Journal of the West, 1988, and from Lo de Mora: A History of the Mora Land Grant on the Eve of Transition by Michael Miller (available on the website of the New Mexico Office of the State Historian). The “hippie-Chicano wars” and the arrival of Dennis Hopper and friends are detailed in Utopian Vistas: The Mabel Dodge Luhan House and the American Counterculture by Lois Palken Rudnick (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998).

  Elishaba Doerksen’s written account of her life was originally prepared for Unshackled, a Christian radio program produced by the Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago, Illinois. I quote from it with her permission. Other stories here and in chapter 8 regarding the Hale family’s time in New Mexico were drawn from interviews with Kurina Rose Hale, Elishaba Doerksen, Joseph Hale, and Joshua Hale, and interviews with neighbors. Editha and John Bartley shared copies of written correspondence between Mora-area residents, the Hales, and Los Angeles agent Bob Colbert, the business manager for John J. (Jack) Nicholson. In an e-mail, Dan Keith provided details of his encounter with Bob Hale and the traveling bus, including their theological discussions and the “Last Days Map” to the Rainbow Cross Ranch.

  7: Hostile Territory

  A detailed narrative of the National Park Service patrol up McCarthy Creek on February 11, 2003, is found in an NPS case incident report for that date. Details were also found in a November 2003 affidavit by Chief Ranger Hunter Sharp given in the Hale/Sunstar access lawsuit against the U.S. Department of the Interior, as well as in coverage by “McCarthy Annie” in the Wrangell St. Elias News. The Park Service files and the FBI complaint form detailing the visit of “Robert Hale aka Pilgrim” was obtained through my 2009 FOIA request to the Department of the Interior.

  Interviews with Hunter Sharp, Marshall Neeck, and former ranger Jim Hannah provided useful perspectives on the patrol that day and on the broader issues of relations between the park and local residents. An oral history by Hannah of the first years of Wrangell–St. Elias National Park is available through the University of Alaska Fairbanks Project Jukebox. Many details about early difficulties in the Wrangells have been gathered in Locked Up! A History of Resistance to the Creation of National Parks in Alaska by Timo C. Allan, a 2010 PhD dissertation for Washington State University, and in Contested Ground, Geoff Bleakley’s administrative history of the park.

  The story of the conservation movement and modern Alaska is told in national context in the later editions of Roderick Nash’s landmark work, Wilderness and the American Mind (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982). The politics of the Alaska conservation act of 1980 are detailed in, among other places, Do Things Right the First Time: Administrative History of the National Park Service and the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980 by G. Frank Williss (Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 1985), http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/williss/adhi.htm; Northern Landscapes: The Struggle for Wilderness Alaska by Daniel Nelson (Washington, D.C.: Resources for the Future, 2004); and Environmental Conflict in Alaska by Ken Ross (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2000). A less glowing interpretation of federal policy is the collection of pieces by the Alaska Miners Association titled d(2) Part 2, Alaska Lands, Promises Broken, edited by J. P. Tangen, 2000. Three other books touching on themes in the Wrangells are Preserving Nature in the National Parks by Richard West Sellars (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997); Crimes Against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves, and the Hidden History of American Conservation by Karl Jacoby (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); and Inhabited Wilderness: Indians, Eskimos, and National Parks in Alaska by Theodore Catton (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997).

  Details of the shootout at the Silver Lake Lodge come from December 1981 stories in the Anchorage Daily News and Anchorage Times. Jennifer Brice recounts the experiences of the Slana homesteaders in The Last Settlers (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1998). A long biography of Harry Yount, written by William R. Supernaugh, is available on the National Park Service history website, http://www.nps.gov.

  8: Holy Bob and the Wild West

  This chapter was based on interviews with members of the Hale family and with their former New Mexico neighbors, including Editha and John Bartley, Karen Brown, Lloyd and Sue Parham, Jacob Pacheco, Carolyn Vail, Joan Maestis, Bill Leonard, Jim Smith, Ana Martinez, John Sanchez with the Mora County Sheriff’s Office, and Michael Francis and Tom Maserve with the New Mexico State Police.

  9: God vs. the Park Service

  This chapter was largely based on interviews with Hale family members and with McCarthy-area residents Stephens Harper, Tamara Egans Harper, Shawn Olson, Rick Kenyon, Bonnie Kenyon, Sally Gibert, Jim Edwards, Gary Green, Kenny Smith, Natalie Bay, Kelly Bay, Jim Miller, Ben Shaine, Gaia Marrs, Danny Rosenkrans, Arlene Rosenkrans, Rich Kirkwood, Neil Darish, and Jeremy Keller. Gary Candelaria, Ray Kreig, Carl Bauman, Marshall Neeck, and Hunter Sharp were also interviewed. I drew heavily on the extensive coverage in the May–June, July–August, and September–October 2003 issues of the Wrangell St. Elias News.

  Martin Radovan’s story is told fully in Tunnel Vision: The Life of a Copper Prospector in the Nizina River Country by Katherine Ringsmuth (Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 2012).

  Documents cited include a string of e-mails in late May and early June 2003 from Rick Kenyon to Ray Kreig, Chuck Cushman, and state officials; a June 4 memorandum from NPS Alaska Region director Rob Arnberger; and a June 6 e-mail from Arnberger to Interior department special assistant Cam Toohey. Details of the misdemeanor cases against Joseph and Joshua Hale were drawn from a Notice of Violations and from legal briefs and rulings in federal court.

  10: The Pilgrim’s Progress

  The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan has been the subject of many volumes of critical analysis. Helpful for my purposes were two recent collections, The Cambridge Companion to Bunyan, edited by Anne Dunan-Page (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), and Trauma and Transformation: The Political Progress of John Bunyan, edited by Vera J. Camden (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008).

  The stories of life at the Rainbow Cross are drawn from interviews with Kurina Rose Hale and her children, testimony given in state criminal court by the family, and name-redacted transcripts of family interviews by investigators with the Alaska State Troopers, which were obtained through a 2011 public information request to the Alaska Department of Public Safety. The quoted passages are from Elishaba Doerksen’s Unshackled memoir.

  Patsy Hale provided details of the later years of her husband, Billy. Details of the Silver City “kidnapping” case were confirmed in an interview with local New Mexico prosecutor Arnold Chavez.
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  11: Hillbilly Heaven

  This chapter is based on my own reporting for the Anchorage Daily News in August 2003.

  12: Flight of the Angels

  This chapter is based on my reporting for the Anchorage Daily News in the fall of 2003 and subsequent interviews with Chuck Cushman, Ray Kreig, and Rick Kenyon. The story about the penguins was related by Natalie Bay and the story about “brainwashing” by Joseph Hale. “An Angel Falls to Heaven” appeared in the November–December 2003 issue of the Wrangell St. Elias News. Some of Kurt Stenehjem’s comments were taken from “The Darkest Place” by Mark Kirby, which appeared in Outside magazine in December 2008. An edited version of the letter from Elishaba about the “feud” in Anchor Point appeared in the Homer Tribune.

  For background on the Wise Use and property-rights movements, I drew on the “NPS and ANILCA Short Course” posted on the website of Kreig’s organization, the Alaska Land Rights Association, landrights.org. A key book for critics of national land acquisition policies is Cades Cove: The Life and Death of a Southern Appalachian Community, 1818–1937, by the historian Durwood Dunn (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1988). A skeptical survey of the Wise Use rebellion is The War Against the Greens by David Helvarg (Boulder: Johnson Books, revised edition 2004). Some of these issues are examined in an Alaska context in A Land Gone Lonesome: An Inland Voyage Along the Yukon River by Dan O’Neill (New York: Counterpoint, 2006). Also useful on origins of the Sagebrush Rebellion and the frontier “creation myth” of white America were The Legacy of Conquest by Patricia Limerick (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987) and “The Current Weirdness in the West” by Richard White, Western Historical Quarterly 28 (Spring 1997). Other perspectives on the movement came in interviews with parks historian Richard Sellars, Jim Stratton with the National Parks Conservation Association, and Destry Jarvis.

  13: The Pilgrim Family Minstrels

  This chapter was drawn from my contemporaneous coverage for the Anchorage Daily News and later interviews with Kurina Rose Hale, Joseph and Joshua Hale, Elishaba Doerksen, Carl Bauman, Chuck Cushman, Ray Kreig, Dallas Massie, Sally Gibert, Walt Wigger, Mark Wacht, Stephen Syren, Neil Darish, Rick Kenyon, Jim Miller, Natalie Bay, Jeremy Keller, Stephens Harper, Mike Loso, and Jim Edwards. I also consulted continuing coverage in the Wrangell St. Elias News in 2003 and 2004.

  Judge Ralph Beistline’s decision was issued in federal case A03-0257 CV, Hale and Sunstar vs. Norton et al., on November 18, 2003. Background information on Cushman was drawn from Helvarg’s War Against the Greens. His 1979 trip to Alaska was recounted in “Beating the Bushes for Park Inholders,” Anchorage Daily News, March 22, 1979. Neil Darish’s piece “Let National Park Residents Thrive” ran in the Anchorage Daily News on May 8, 2004. Freelance correspondent Kendall Beaudry wrote about the Pilgrims’ musical performances in the Pacific Northwest in “Pilgrims’ Music Proves to Be Big Hit Outside,” in the Anchorage Daily News, May 13, 2004. Lyrics quoted are from “Pilgrim’s Daughter” by Butterfly Sunstar Hale on Put My Name Down by the Pilgrim Family Minstrels. Alaska’s low rank in religious piety was measured in a January 28, 2009, Gallup Poll.

  14: A Quiet Year

  Information on the 2005 anniversary conference of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) was mostly drawn from reporting for my article “Lands Act Still Stirs Debate” in the Anchorage Daily News, July 10, 2005.

  15: The Wanigan

  This chapter was drawn from interviews with members of the Hale and Buckingham families, especially Joseph and Lolly Hale, Joshua and Sharia Hale, Jim and Martha Buckingham, Kurina Rose Hale, Jerusalem Hale, and Elishaba and Matthew Doerksen. I also drew on testimony given in state criminal court by the family. Much of the information was cross-checked against and sometimes supplemented by transcripts of interviews that family members gave Alaska State Troopers investigators. Several scenes were also described in Elishaba’s Unshackled memoir.

  16: Exodus

  The story of the daughters’ escape, here and in the prologue, was drawn from interviews with Elishaba Doerksen; Jerusalem, Joseph, Joshua, Israel, and Kurina Rose Hale; Jim and Martha Buckingham; and Neil Darish. The beating of Jonathan was described in court and to investigators by many of the younger Hales. The follow-up to Israel’s 911 call is detailed in Alaska State Trooper investigative reports for September 3, 2005.

  17: Pilgrim’s Last Stand

  The criminal case against Robert Hale was partially spelled out in court files between 2005 and 2007. State trooper investigative files filled in details not in the public court record. The trooper files provided the count of six child protection cases opened against the Pilgrim Family in Alaska. Assistant district attorney Richard Payne was especially helpful in explaining the case and the evolution of his approach, as was Rachel Gernat in providing background about working with abused families. Public defender Lee de Grazia provided certain details of her work with Robert Hale. Ray and Lee Ann Kreig described to me their own parts in the manhunt.

  Though I did not want to burden this chapter with a discussion of post-traumatic stress disorder and its treatment, I wanted to be sure the children’s experiences and coping strategies were consistent with prevailing theories and practices. Helpful in this regard were Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman (New York: Basic Books, 1992); Faith Born of Seduction: Sexual Trauma, Body Image, and Religion by Jennifer L. Manlowe (New York: New York University Press, 1995); 8 Keys to Safe Trauma Recovery by Babette Rothschild (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010); and, from an explicitly Christian perspective, Helping Victims of Sexual Abuse: A Sensitive Biblical Guide for Counselors, Victims, and Families by Lynn Heitritter and Jeanette Vought (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1989). Shelly Thomas of Olive Tree Counseling and Ministries in Wasilla, Alaska, offered helpful insights.

  Parts of this chapter are drawn from my contemporaneous reporting of events in the Anchorage Daily News. Two important court hearings were covered by colleagues at the newspaper: Joe Ditzler, “Pilgrim Appears in Court,” October 7, 2005; and Julia O’Malley, “Final Change of Mind Lets ‘Papa Pilgrim’ Avoid Trial,” September 14, 2007.

  18: The Man in the Iron Cage

  This chapter is based on testimony given in state superior court in Anchorage on November 26 and 27, 2007, and on interviews with family members at the courthouse on those days.

  Epilogue: Peaceful Harbor

  Final disposition of the government’s civil case against the Pilgrims is dealt with in files obtained under the federal Freedom of Information Act. The McCarthy Area Council’s views on preservation plans for the Kennecott ruins are spelled out in formal comments on the revised Interim Operations Plan for Kennecott National Historic Landmark.

  The description of the aftermath for the Hale and Buckingham families is based on my own reporting and interviews with family members. I was present at the wedding of Joseph and Lolly and witnessed the felicitous beam of sunlight for myself.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The Hale and Buckingham families decided early not to participate in a book about their story. While their case was in the public eye, they had been remarkably forthcoming, both in court and in answer to my questions for the Anchorage Daily News, as if to make up for years of public deception. But when it was over, they were eager to leave the stain behind, and a truthful account of their lives, as one of them expressed it, was not a book that could dwell in a good Christian home. Their reluctance was probably a good thing, I decided: No writer could look forward to negotiating a median truth from the traumatized memories of sixteen family members, most of whom had never read a nonfiction book of any kind.

  So I set out on my own, with notes and neighbors and public records. Over time, however, individual family members considered how their story could help others and began sharing more and more about their hidden past, profoundly enriching this unusual project. I am grateful especially to Elishaba and Matthew Doerksen, Kurina Rose Hale, Joseph and Lolly Hale, Joshua and Sharia Hale, Betty Freeman, and Jim
and Martha Buckingham for the many details they ultimately provided about key moments in their lives. Thanks also to Rose for permission to quote from her husband’s letters.

  Among the people in and around McCarthy, I am grateful for guidance through the years from Sally Gibert, Ben Shaine, and Rick Kenyon, and appreciate the help for this book from many friends and neighbors, particularly Mark Vail, Jim Edwards, Gary Green, Kelly and Natalie Bay, Kenny Smith, Marci Thurston, Gaia Marrs, Bonnie Kenyon, Dick Mylius, Tom and Catie Bursch, John Adams, Stephens and Tamara Harper, Mike Loso, and Neil Darish. For the Texas story, I owe thanks to Karen Hale, Lucy Hale, and especially Patsy Hale, who I hope will publish her own account of the Hale family. For the New Mexico chapters, I want to thank the neighbors quoted therein, and especially Carolyn Vail for her hospitality, Editha Bartley for permission to quote from family letters, and my friend Joel Gay, for letting me drive his old pickup truck to the mountains.

  Many people with the National Park Service were helpful, especially John Quinley, Logan Hovis, Katie Ringsmuth, Danny Rosenkrans, Gary Candelaria, and Hunter Sharp. For perspectives on park policies, I am grateful to Ray and Lee Ann Kreig, Chuck Cushman, Chris Allan, Jim Stratton, Destry Jarvis, Richard Sellars, Jim Rearden, Chuck Hawley, Tony Oney, Anne Beaulaurier, and Wally Cole. For help with civil and criminal legal issues, I thank Richard Payne, Rachel Gernat, Lee de Grazia, Carl Bauman, and Jeff Feldman.

  At the Anchorage Daily News, I want to thank my horseback traveling companion, Marc Lester, for his good nature and expert photographic eye, fellow reporters Julia O’Malley, Megan Holland, and Joe Ditzler for their help keeping up with courtroom developments, and my editors, David Hulen and Pat Dougherty. Thanks also to fellow writers Mark Kirby and Jack Douglas, for sharing elements of their own research into Robert Hale’s past, and to Wesley Loy for sharing his CD.