Digital Bob Archive

In the summer of 1928 Mrs. Eric L. Smith of Los Angeles, accompanied by her nurse, Miss Mary Joyce, began coming to Southeastern Alaska in her newly built yacht, the Stella Maris. Whether Mrs. Smith first visited the Twin Glacier Camp at the mouth of the Taku River that year or not until 1929 is uncertain, but when she did see it she fell in love with it. Mrs. Smith returned in the fall of 1930 and in addition to Miss Joyce she brought her son, Leigh Hackley Smith, who liked to hunt big game. During that northern visit she bought the camp from its founder, Juneau doctor H.C. DeVighne.

Mrs. Smith wanted the camp both as a place to spend time during summer trips to Alaska and as a year-around home for her son who was generally known as Hack. He was about 33 years old and an alcoholic. An article in Stroller's Weekly, a Juneau newspaper, said that Hack had served in the French Foreign Legion, which may or may not be true. At any rate, he apparently had no objection to living in the relative isolation of the Twin Glacier Camp.

When the Stella Maris sailed away that fall, Miss Joyce remained at the camp as housekeeper and Hack hired some men to add conveniences and generally make the place more comfortable. In the next few years several new buildings were added there were fifteen by 1934 - a concrete foundation was put under the main house, and a Delco electric plant was installed to provide lights and also to run a big refrigerator, a water system and a radio communications set.

When the Stella Maris returned in 1931 it carried not only a large stock of groceries but a Guernsey cow and a supply of hay. According to legend, the cow developed a taste for the spawned-out salmon that littered the banks of the Taku each fall, making the milk something less than palatable.

One of Hack Smith's hired hands at the camp was Barney Conrad and in 1933 Conrad was joined by his nephew, Louis DeFlorian, a bricklayer and stone mason by trade who had come to the United States from his native Italy in 1920. DeFlorian built the stone fireplace at the camp, continued to work there for several years, then built his own place upriver near Canyon Island and resided there for many years.

An addition to the equipment of the camp in the spring of 1933 was a 30-foot motor boat. Smith ordered it from the Juneau boatbuilding firm of Woodman & Berntsen - commonly known as Sandy and Andy. The boat, named the Mary J., had a 75-horsepower inboard engine and made its trial trip on April 21. That fall Captain William Strong took the Mary J. to Wrangell, then up the Stikine to Telegraph Creek where Hack Smith and Mary Joyce had gone to hunt sheep. They were caught by an early freeze that closed the river for a time, but they had flown out by the time the Mary J. arrived to pick them up.

Hack Smith's 1934 sheep-hunting trip was aborted by his death of a heart attack at Wrangell on August 13. He was 34. Mrs. Smith and Mary Joyce were at the camp at the time. Early the next year Mrs. Smith deeded the Twin Glacier Camp to Mary.