AUTHOR’S NOTE: My search for Warren Melville Nutter began as part of a book project with former backcountry ranger Gary Titus. Our as-yet-unpublished book concerns the numerous historic cabins on the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge; two of those cabins were built and used in the 1930s by Nutter. At first, the task of gathering background on a man with such an unusual name seemed fairly straightforward, but it didn’t turn out that way. To begin with, people living on the central Kenai Peninsula at the same time as Nutter often referred to him incorrectly — as Wallace, William and Bill — a problem that Nutter himself almost certainly perpetuated, as will be seen as his story unfolds. Besides the name confusion, it turned out that there were at least four other Nutters on the Kenai in the first half of the 20th century, including one actually named William (nicknamed Bill). These “extra” Nutters threw monkey wrenches into my search, but eventually I achieved a kind of clarity. I was aided by Warren Nutter’s daughter-in-law and by his stepson, who wasn’t really his stepson but was the son of Nutter’s second wife, Muriel, who sometimes — for reasons even her son doesn’t understand — went by Peggy. Anyway, all in good time.
The Other Nutters
There may have been even more men with this surname, but the earliest Nutter on the Kenai Peninsula I was able to find was Charles Moore Nutter, a miner who in 1910 came with his wife, the former Margaret Maud Brown, to Crow Creek, near the current site of Girdwood, to engage in some placer mining.
The Nutters had married just a year earlier in Washington, and a remote Alaskan mining camp was probably not the home that the new Mrs. Nutter had in mind at the time of her nuptials. The union, however, managed to last for nine years, culminating in divorce back in Washington. The year of the divorce was 1918, a bad year overall for Charles Nutter, who in November in a Seattle hotel room succumbed to the ravages of the Spanish Flu. He died just a few weeks shy of his 52nd birthday.
Before this unfortunate ending, Nutter — born in West Virginia in December 1866 — had been a successful prospector. After leaving the mining trade in about 1915, he began living in Roosevelt, near the head of Kenai Lake, and invested in a sawmill with a partner named Roberts.
By 1917, he had changed professions again. Now living in Seward, he purchased from the Seattle Yacht Club a 60-foot vessel with the “punny” name of Kumbak, equipped with a 50-horsepower Atlas engine, and began plying the waters of Cook Inlet and Turnagain Arm with loads of freight and passengers.
When the Seward Gateway learned late in November 1918 of his demise in Seattle, the news was announced on page one in a seven-line article beneath this to-the-point headline: “Charlie Nutter Dead.”
The next non-Warren Nutter to arrive on the Kenai appears to have Van O. (probably for Ora) Nutter, who filed on a parcel of land in the Deep Creek drainage in June 1939 and relinquished the property in August 1946. It has been difficult to accurately determine the Alaska movements of Van Nutter, but his sojourn here seemed brief.
He was born in Pierce County, Washington, probably in 1917, and seems to have returned to Washington after only a year or two.
In 1930, according to that year’s U.S. Census, Van Nutter was a stepson to Clarence R. Jones, Van’s mother having married Clarence after her previous husband, Vandiver Luther Nutter, died in 1922.
In 1940, Van Nutter was living in Homer, lodging with Ollie L. Jones and employed on the cannery side of the commercial salmon-fishing business. Almost certainly, he was back in Washington for good by the following year. It appears that he married Mildred Marie Leach in April 1950 and that he died near the age of 70 in Gig Harbor.
His footprint on the Kenai seemed small and ephemeral.
Finally, there are the two men who caused me the most consternation in my attempt to delineate Warren Melville Nutter. By the time I encountered these brothers, I had already determined that sometimes Warren was also (incorrectly) Wallace and William and Bill, and I thought I had ruled out the existence of any other Nutters of the Kenai Peninsula variety with any of those names.
Then, while digging through Bureau of Land Management records, I discovered the error of my ways. Two brothers, originally from Ohio, had attempted to homestead in Happy Valley in the late 1940s. Their names were James Edward Nutter and William Joseph Nutter.
Wayne Jones, who lived on the southern Kenai for many decades, said in Ella Mae McGann’s book, “The Pioneers of Happy Valley, 1944-1964,” that he had been a mechanic at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage in 1946 when he met the Nutters, whom he called Bill and Jim, and a few other men who were also interested in homesteading.
“We all talked about getting land in Alaska under the G.I. Bill,” Jones told McGann. “We often heard the name of Kenai, so I went down to the land office (in Anchorage) … and asked about homesteading on the Kenai Peninsula.” By 1947, the men had contacted a trio of specialists in land location and acquisition.
Soon, Jones and the Nutters were being flown south to Homer. There, they asked around and checked out property east of town. Not liking what they saw, they were encouraged to look north along the Cook Inlet beaches, and all of them found desirable prospects in the Happy Valley area.
A man named George Welch had filed on a homestead adjoining the land that Jones selected, but Welch decided not to stay and relinquished his place to William Nutter. James Nutter filed on land just south of William’s.
Ultimately, William Nutter, like Welch, decided to move on, and Jones’s brother Gordon took over William’s homestead. James Nutter, too, relinquished his land, selling all his improvements to Wayne Stanbaugh. Most likely, both Nutters had exited Alaska by 1949.
During their brief tenure in Happy Valley, the two brothers had apparently lived together in what Wayne Jones called “their big cabin,” which he had helped to build in exchange for the brothers later helping him. However, they left Alaska before fulfilling their end of the bargain and never returned.
William Nutter returned to Ohio, had a long career with a manufacturer of tubing for industrial boilers, and then moved in 1979 to Kalispell, Montana. His younger brother James spent three decades working in construction in Arizona, California and other states, and then in 1979 he, too, moved to Kalispell. Both remained in Montana for the rest of their lives.
William, a lifelong bachelor, died in 1990 at age 75. James died in 1993 at age 73 and was survived by a wife and three children.
The Nutter I Was Looking for
So, besides those other individuals, how did all the name confusion arise concerning Warren Melville Nutter?
To begin with, old newspapers often referred to Warren as “W.M. Nutter.” In fact, Nutter himself usually signed his name that way. Since “Wm” is a common abbreviation for William, many observers simply assumed that Warren was actually William and referred to him informally as Bill.
Apparently, he seldom, if ever, bothered to correct anyone.
Newspaper articles from all over Alaska reported on his impressive trapping skills, and, more often than not, the papers called him either “W.M” (or sometimes, mistakenly, “W.N.”) Nutter or William Nutter.
Then there was Lois H. Allen, the editor, publisher and primary writer for the Moose Pass Miner, a typewritten, mimeographed newspaper from the late 1930s and early 1940s that focused mainly on social activities in her area.
Allen’s first mention of Warren Nutter was a single sentence in her April 7, 1939, issue: “Howard Brooks is driving Wallace [sic] M. Nutter’s star mail route while Mr. Nutter is trapping.” She referred to “Wallace” three more times that year — on May 12, and in two separate articles on Sept. 9. One of the September stories was especially noteworthy because she was reporting on personally riding with Nutter between Moose Pass and Hope.
Perhaps someone set her straight after that.
In October, she referred to him as “W.M. Nutter,” but it wasn’t until the Dec. 2 issue that she got his full name correct. In an article on that date, she explained that she had been one of the witnesses at Warren Nutter’s recent wedding.
But Lois Allen wasn’t the only public perpetuator of Nutter’s incorrect first name.
Hjalmar “Andy” Anderson, who had homesteaded Caribou Island on Skilak Lake, commemorated his time there by crafting a hand-drawn, annotated map of the area. Clearly labeled on his map is one of Nutter’s two trap-line cabins, and written along the north bank of the Hidden Creek drainage is: “Bill Nutter’s Trapline. Best Coyote Trapper on Kenai Pen.”
At least Nutter’s grave marker in Hope got his name right. His age and birth year were a year off, but his name was correct.
In the Hope Cemetery, the grave marker for Warren Melville Nutter contains errors in his birth year and his age. The illustration, however, captures his adventurous spirit. (Photo courtesy of findagrave.com)
Wayne Jones (left) and William “Bill” Nutter, circa 1948-49, pose in front of the Happy Valley cabin that Nutter shared with his brother James. (Photo courtesy of Katie Matthews)
