Alaskans to sort Klondike memorabilia

Debra Sanders unlatches a padlock and swings open the door to reveal a room jammed with boxes, steamer trunks, a roulette wheel, wicker furniture, phonographs, mannequins dressed in gold rush garb, a wooden boat, a brass tuba and long rows of shelves crammed with curios.

The objects belong to what is called the Rapuzzi Collection. Amassed by two Skagway old-timers, Martin Itjen and his friend George Rapuzzi, over the better part of the last century, the collection was sold to a private foundation last month for $1 million by Rapuzzi's niece, Phyllis Brown.

Its caretakers often refer to the collection as "stuff" _ not casually, but with a certain awe-struck emphasis that hints at all the sorting ahead. The plan is to distribute the collection's contents among the National Park Service, the city of Skagway and the Alaska Natural History Association.

"This whole dresser is full of photographs and photo albums," said Sanders, museum curator for the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park.

"There's boxes in the corner of ships' manifests from the Gold Rush in 1898. There's things like the metal signs that came off the Chilkoot Trail.

"There's stuff. Just all this stuff," she said.

Itjen, who described himself as an Austrian-born shopkeeper from Florida, was an early promoter of tourism in Skagway. The town 100 miles north of Juneau bills itself as the "Gateway to the Gold Rush of '98" and hosts more than 750,000 visitors a year.

Itjen first arrived as a gold rush stampeder but settled in as the town undertaker, Model-T dealer and a boardinghouse operator, according to various accounts.

When tourists began arriving by steamship in the wake of the first rush, Itjen showed up at the docks offering tours of gold rush sights in a 1906 Packard he customized to resembled a San Francisco streetcar.

Emblazoned with the slogan "Nothing Like It In the World," the car featured a mechanical bear in front signaling turns with a swing of its paws and a mechanical conductor in back ringing a bell and puffing engine exhaust through his cigarette.

Itjen expanded his enterprise with the purchase of Skagway con man Soapy Smith's original saloon, which he converted into a museum and populated with more of his mechanical gear-driven characters.

The streetcar and the old saloon are part of the Rapuzzi Collection, as are boxes of tour pamphlets and phonograph records with Itjens' humorous account of his trip to Hollywood to meet the Mae West.

Itjen cooked up the idea after tourism began dropping off during the depression, said park historian Karl Gurcke.

A photograph in the collection shows Itjen grinning under his luxurious handlebar mustache while the curvaceous actress clutches the gold nuggets on his watch chain. Western newspapers splashed the photo across their pages.

"After that, tourism did start to go up a bit, until World War II broke out," Gurcke said.

Itjen died at the start of the war, leaving the streetcar, historical memorabilia and museum to Rapuzzi, a machinist for the White Pass Railroad who shared Itjen's passion for history and gold rush artifacts.

Rapuzzi added to the collection with more zeal than discrimination, said Juneau photographer and historian Ron Klein.

"George went every day to take his garbage to the dump and without a doubt he came back every day with more than he took because he succeeded in filling up warehouses and warehouses full of stuff," he said.

Though the collection has never been inventoried, Klein started sorting through it several years ago at the invitation of Rapuzzi's niece, who had inherited it.

Klein tossed out old toilet seats, vacuum cleaners, dozens of stove top heating elements and other junk while moving items of interest to the telephone company building where they are now stored, as well as other storage spaces.

The Park Service plans to hire Klein as a consultant. The park and the city are also bringing on additional staff to help identify and catalog thousands of items.

It could take two to three years just to sort through it all and even longer to decide on its final disposition, according to Sanders.

The Park Service is hoping to acquire Soapy Smith's saloon and gold rush artifacts to use in the 15 buildings it already owns, she said.

"We are probably most excited about the photographs and documents because it is a whole wealth of information that is totally new to us," Sanders said.

Skagway Mayor Tim Bourcy said the city's interests are broader. He expects staff will work with the state history association to develop a museum focusing on the World War II era and Skagway's role in the construction of the Alaska Highway.

"We certainly didn't want to allow that type of history to be parted out and disappear because it is a very significant amount of stuff. It would be a shame if it all ended up on e-Bay," Bourcy said.