Blue Hills, Alaska's Promised Land -- front cover

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Blue Hills, Alaska's Promised Land

Blue Hills, Alaska's Promised Land portrays through a strong woman and her family, a window into old Alaska and the characters that made Alaska a living legend. Today, Alaska is losing both its pioneer elders and the rugged, untamed life that originally defined its mystique. For forty years, Reb and Judy Ferguson have lived Alaska's wilderness life during the transition from  yesterday's politically incorrect trappers to Alaska of today's global village. 

Reb, Judy and kids

Blue Hills tracks both on a woman who decided in the 1960s to make her home in the wilderness, and through the Fergusons' canoe trips, on the major rivers and aboriginal people of Alaska, the Yukon Territory, and the Northwest Territories. 

Blue Hills is the transparent story of Judy Eskridge, a young, Midwestern woman who had a dream in 1968 she could not let go: a dream of a longed-for place where life was visionary, a dream she called "Blue Hills." Judy reached for a life of simplicity beyond the fracturing world of the 1960s. Once a raw frontier, America had evolved into a competitive  superpower, convulsed by deep rifts. Before the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention, the boiling point of the 1960s' revolution, Judy left Oklahoma for Alaska. As she journeyed up the Alcan Highway, Senator Robert Kennedy was shot, a signal to Judy that the world and the life she desired might no longer exist in the Lower 48. 

Gertrude Sheldon, Miss Kobuk
Alaska native family

A secret door opened for her into a fresh country of opportunity, The Great Land: Alaska, the epitome of America's frontier origins. Blue Hills, Alaska's Promised Land portrays the Fergusons' world - the disappearing lifestyle of trapping - of the Native people and the Caucasian hunters and traders. Together the trappers, traders, and Natives were Alaska's grass-roots people who were "Old Alaska."

Judy and Reb met in Alaska six years before the Trans-Alaska Pipeline began its transformation of traditional Alaska. Carrying on the legacy of the old pioneers, Reb and Judy typified the Bush network from the Copper, Tanana, Yukon, and Kobuk Rivers of Alaska to the Porcupine and Mackenzie River Valleys in Canada. It is Alaska's personal story: the evolution from old to new, from the ice box to global neighborhood, the very human story of the woman and her family who lived it. 

Alaskans...

Publisher and Distribution Information for Blue Hills, Alaska's Promised Land

2nd edition, published April 2004, ISBN: 0-9716044-1-X, distributed by Voice of Alaska Publishing and by News Group.

 

Endorsements for Blue Hills:

"Ferguson's strong female voice presents the personalities, a microcosm of the earth's tribes, who were classical Alaska. The global changes of today effect every people, every nation and certainly, impact Alaska, but her beauty, culture, and ethnic variances will sustain her today as they have throughout the centuries." Professor Tamara Lincoln, Arctic Bibliographer and Rare Books Curator, Alaska and Polar Regions, Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks.

"Alaska and the Yukon's destinies have always been intertwined as Judy's life is also inextricably braided with the North's evolution." Lise Schonewille, Mac's Fireweed Books, Whitehorse, Yukon Territory.

"A salute to my mother, Pauline, and the Kobuk's Inupiaq Eskimos!" Lorry Schuerch, Kiana, Kobuk River.


"I salute Judy's presentation of my family, the Yukon River; and the trappers who made the first Iditarod." Emmitt Peters, 1975 Champion and Record Setter Iditarod Trail and Dogsled Race.

"Judy Ferguson describes in text and photos the lives of late twentieth century sourdoughs, making a valuable contribution to the Alaskan record. Through Ferguson's first-hand adventures, these unsung legends are brought alive." Anna Plager, State of Alaska Division of Parks, Fairbanks.

"The story of an Alaskan Interior town, Delta Junction, the new site of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense, commonly referred to as 'Star Wars,' is itself a microcosm of Classical Alaska transitioning into today's Global Village." Sandy Hill, Delta-Greely School Principal.

"A child of the 1960s, Ferguson left Oklahoma for the Great Land to raise a family in the wilderness. Blue Hills is a forty year epic, the transition of Judy and Alaska from Bush to global sophistication. Great photos!" Patricia Watts, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, editor Heartland Magazine.