Walt Larson

I grew up in Oregon. I first came to Alaska in 1957 to visit relatives who lived in Anchorage. I moved to Anchorage in in 1975. At the time I thought it would be a fun place to live for a year or so. To my surprise I spent almost 40 years in Alaska. Now that I'm retired I winter in Arizona and summer in Alaska.

I am a Marine Corp veteran, a pilot (I owned a Cherokee Six airplane for 20 years), a would-be gold miner but I've spent some 45 years hosting a radio show (under another name)until I retired in 2014.

I have flown my plane all over Alaska but one of my favorite destinations is Ruby. I first visited Ruby in 2003 at the invitation of my friend, Don Eller, who's family owned the local phone company there, Yukon Tel. He introduced me to gold miner Barry Clay who is famed for finding Alaska largest gold nugget ever, 294.1 ounces in 1998. Since then every summer I have spent a week or two in the Ruby area looking for gold.

I enjoy reading about Alaska's gold mining history and after developing a fondness for the community of Ruby I focused on it's past. I started including some of Ruby's history on the web site I put together about Barry's gold mine: http://www.swiftcreekmine.com/ and eventually the Ruby history and genealogy pages expanded to a project of their own. I have also started developing an Alaska Gold Rush History web site.

Though there were several Larsons that  lived in Ruby or the surrounding area during the early days I can't find any direct relationship to me. I suspect if I could trace them back far enough to my ancestors in Sweden I may have been a very distant relation to them. I hope my many hours of work compiling information on Ruby's residents will be a benefit to those searching for their family's history.

I continue to search for Ruby's history in the Alaska's library's and any other sources I can find. If you are aware of a source of information or have personal knowledge of Ruby's past residents and the town's history I would like to hear from you. Email me by clicking here.

Go to: {Ruby Alaska}    {Ruby Genealogy}   {Alaska Gold Rush History}