Urban, John D.

John D. (Jack) Urban was born in 1882 in Portage, Wis. and moved to Washington state as a child. During the Klondike Gold Rush in 1897, Urban and a friend stowed away aboard a scow leaving Seattle for Skagway. They did odd jobs on board to pay their way and were given a mule as payment. The two men used the mule and a sled found on the beach to begin their own business hauling freight up the Chilkoot Trail for stampeders. Urban moved to Nome in 1900 and to Fairbanks in 1906, during the gold rushes there. Urban moved to Anchorage in 1922 and began working for the Alaska Railroad as a brakeman. He married Edith Edlund, one of eleven children from a Matanuska Valley homesteading family in 1926. Edlund's family originally came to Knik and constructed a five-mile wagon road to their new homestead in order to bring in the family and their equipment. The Urbans moved in 1931 to their homestead on Loop Road, a one-room log cabin, in order to help defray costs duing the Great Depression. Urban continued his work on the Alaska Railroad, while Edith worked as a telephone operator. Urban retired from the Alaska Railroad as a conductor in 1945 and died on Dec. 13, 1958 in Idlewild, California.