From Hero to Humbug

On October 10, as part of the Archives Week Fair at the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C., a panel discussion was held on the topic of local polar records collections in the Washington metropolitan area. The speakers included Ellen Alers, of the Smithsonian Institution, who discussed the varied collections related to the polar regions to be found in the Institution’s records. Alan Walker from the National Archives and Record Administration, covered highlights of the documents held at the Archives II facility in College Park, Md, especially the papers of Robert E. Peary, who claimed to have reached the North Pole in 1909. Robert M. Bryce, author of Cook and Peary, the Polar Controversy, Resolved, spoke on how he was led to make major documentary discoveries in other collections, including the original diary kept by Frederick Cook on his attempt to reach the North Pole in 1908, through clues found in Cook’s papers at the Library of Congress. Mr. Bryce also showed the film, “The Truth about the North Pole,” made by Cook and shown in Vaudeville performances in 1912, the existence of which he uncovered during research for his book at the National Archives.

This site has changes hosts, and consequently is at a new URL on the web. All the links have been updated and a few points of the content have been corrected. The new host offers greater flexibility for adding to and updating the site and there should be more news postings in the future.

In 2005, Denali State Park erected a prominent 3×4 foot sign about Dr. Cook as part of its renovation of the viewpoint of the southern flank of the Alaska Range. The viewpoint is located in the park on Route 3, the main road that runs between Anchorage and Fairbanks, and is visited by thousands of tourists traveling to Denali National Park. It affords the closest view of the Alaska Range possible from any paved highway. The greatly expanded parking lot and tourist facilities features a panoramic sign identifying each of the main peaks visible about 30 miles distant, and the Cook sign. Entitled “Tall Mountain, Taller Tales,” the sign details Cook’s fraudulent claim to have made the first ascent of the tallest of these, Mount McKinley, in 1906. The sign features the uncropped version of Cook’s fake “summit” picture, discovered by the author of this website in 1991, and shows Belmore Browne’s picture of the same, comparatively tiny, point of rocks, 19 miles from Mount McKinley’s 20,230 foot summit and only 5,100 feet high, where Cook took his fake picture. The panel also features a picture of Ed Barrill, Cook’s climbing companion, who swore an affidavit in 1909 that neither he nor Cook had ever been near the actual summit. The background of the panel shows a picture of the Ruth Glacier apporach to the mountain with a yellow circle around the tiny “Fake Peak” where Cook took the photo.

Site updated and corrected. Links: The Library of Congress exhibit including a display of Cook artifacts can be found here; look for the section marked “At the Pole.” Ohio State Univerisity Archives collection of papers related to Cook can be found here. The Finding Aid to the personal papers of Frederick A. Cook held by the Library of Congress can be found here; look under “C”. A small collection of Cook papers is among the holdings of Dartmouth College.

Several interesting and detailed articles have appeared in this scholarly journal concerning Dr. Cook’s claim to have climbed Mt. Mckinley; they are in volume 7, #2-3. Additional articles on the counterarguments and methods of the Frederick A. Cook Society can also be found in this journal; they are in volume 9, #2-3.
Many interesting links to polar subjects can be found on the website of the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State.

The site is up!