| Summary: | In this photograph, Blix is wearing a badge of the Alaska-Yukon Pioneers, Cabin No. 1, Seattle, Wash. Around 1896, Ringwald Blix built the highly regarded Blix Roadhouse in Copper Center, Alaska. Blix also served as U.S. commissioner and postmaster in Copper Center before leaving Alaska for Seattle in 1918. The Alaska-Yukon Pioneers fraternal organization was probably formed in Seattle when the Yukon Order of Pioneers (YOOP) organization refused to allow the Seattle branch to admit pioneers from Alaska. YOOP, formed on December 1, 1894 at Forty Mile, Yukon Territory, strictly limited membership to pioneers who had been in the Yukon Territory on or before 1888; Alaska stampeders were explicitly excluded. In 1912, George T. Snow and Thomas W. O'Brien founded the Yukon Order of Pioneers Seattle Lodge No. 2. Around 1921 Snow requested that the name of the Seattle Lodge be changed to the Yukon Alaska Pioneers. The main lodge refused, and shortly afterward, the Seattle lodge appears to have become the Alaska-Yukon Pioneers. Handwritten on photo: R. Blix, Arrived in Alaska 1898 Signed on lower right corner of photo: Bushnell, Seattle 1 photographic print: b&w; 5 x 7 in.
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