The Chilkat Valley Historical Society is hoping a new and younger cadre of volunteers will help bring its Anway cabin project to completion.

Historical society members have a vision for the 112-year-old structure that includes summer tours, education programs for local students and interpretive displays with the potential to tell much of the town’s history in the early 20th century.

But there’s more work than there are workers.

“It will be a few years before it’s finished. There are so few people to help anymore and it’s one of those local projects that takes a lot of time,” said project coordinator and historical society president C.J. Jones.

The society needs labor in the form of groundskeepers, carpenters and people to take on a permitting issue with the state Department of Transportation for parking at the 2 Mile Haines Highway site. Jones is hoping to attract a new generation of commercial gardeners who’ve put down roots in recent years.

“Charlie (Anway) was a historical and integral part of that. He really did what a lot of people are trying to do now – get community agriculture going,” Jones said.

Anway was a Klondike Gold Rush stampeder who landed in Haines instead. He drove steers for trail-builder Jack Dalton, prospected for gold near the Tsirku River and started a produce company that shipped food around the region, including a locally famous hybrid strawberry he produced.

“He did such a variety of things that you can tell quite a bit of the history of the valley in the first half of the 20th century through his life,” Jones said.

Anway learned surveying and made his homestead one of the first legally surveyed here. He shipped his strawberries as far south as Seattle – where they won horticultural awards, and he succeeded in opening the area south of Main Street to winter cabins for prospectors.

Anway’s 1903 homestead included a dam that piped water into his two-room house from an adjacent stream, and tools he made including a wheelbarrow and sled. Uphill of the cabin were his acres of strawberries.

“He looked for the best garden spot. That’s where he put his homestead. Everything grows there, but that’s also a problem. It’s a lot of work just keeping the weeds down,” Jones said.

The historical society is aiming to restore the interior of the cabin to the 1940s – including to match period wallpaper – so besides carpenters, the effort could use the help of a volunteer familiar with historic renovation.

Since purchase of the homestead about 12 years ago, volunteers have shored up the cabin’s foundation, replaced its roof and some sections of siding and flooring, and restored a historic garden plot. Pending site work includes a bridge over the creek there to Anway’s outbuildings.

Gordon Whitermore, a craftsman and furniture builder who recreated a period door for the cabin based on historic photographs, said Anway’s ability was impressive for a person who probably didn’t have professional carpentry skills.

“Buildings that are poorly built go away. Ones built well are still around, like this one,” Whitermore said.

The highway work includes a plan for pull-in bus parking parallel to the highway, but that’s going to include working intensively with the state.

Historical society president Jim Shook said he has recruited his wife and sister to help him at the site, but more volunteers would speed progress.

“If we had a big enough volunteer corps, it would be a simple matter of calling somebody who wasn’t busy that day, it would be a little easier to get two or three people together,” Shook said this week.

Shook said the cabin tucked in between big trees at the edge of the highway has appeal that earned it a spot on the National Historic Register and also boosted the town’s effort to get the Haines Highway named a National Scenic Byway. “It’s a neat spot.”

For more information, contact Shook at 766-3835.