Fannie Quigley, Naturalist and Nurse: The Kantishna Pioneer's Less-Known Side

Most people who live in or visit Alaska know Fannie Quigley as the legendary pioneer who came to the Kantishna Hills in the gold rush of 1905–06. Less well known is what she gave to science and to her community.

A bird like no other in the north

In 1922, the Cordova Daily Times reported:

"Mrs. Fannie Quigley, who arrived in Nenana recently from the Kantishna mining district, brought the skin of a beautiful bird which she found dead under a tree near her cabin on the divide between Eureka and Friday Creeks. The bird, which is about the size of a robin, possesses the gorgeous plumage of a tropical bird, and Mrs. Quigley says that she has never seen any bird like it anywhere in the north . . . .
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Mrs. Quigley intends sending the specimen to the Smithsonian Institute for classification and to serve as an exhibit. She has sent specimens of many birds and mammals to the institute from time to time."

The bird was a Bohemian waxwing — and it was far from her only contribution. The Smithsonian's records show these specimens from her:

A nurse in the 1920 epidemic

Fannie practised nursing as well as natural history. In 1920, when the influenza that killed tens of millions worldwide reached Alaska, public health officials called for help, and she answered — going to work at the Nenana Hospital. Nenana badly needed nurses; it was one of many Alaska communities devastated by the "Spanish flu" (H1N1).

A legend in her own time

Fannie Quigley died on August 25, 1944, at her home near the end of the Park Road, where her friend Johnnie Busia found her. By then she was already a local legend. Some accounts say her memorial service in Fairbanks drew more people than any other funeral in the history of the Territory — Ruth Carson suggests as much in her 1970 Alaska Magazine article "Joe and Fannie Quigley." She was buried in Birch Hill Cemetery in Fairbanks.

Which raises a question the park's historian leaves open: why was Fannie buried in Fairbanks?

Sources

Based on "Fannie Quigley—Not Just Blueberries and Bluster," by Erik Johnson, Denali historian, one of the Denali History Nuggets series, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The 1922 Cordova Daily Times report is quoted as published. Photographs of Fannie Quigley from the University of Alaska Fairbanks's Fannie Quigley Collection are left out; rewritten in hubnx's own words.