Clarence Rhode

Clarence Rhode (d.1958) traversed the Yukon River by rowboat as a boy, flew the Alaskan outback as a bush pilot during the Second World War, and supervised the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s aircraft division in Alaska following his Army service. In 1948, he rose to become the agency’s regional director in the heady Territorial era, when Alaska was still largely untamed and thinly settled. Rhode acquired a fleet of surplus military planes for the Service, calling the airplane in Alaska “to our people what the horse is to the cowboy;” his enthusiasm for the Alaska bush was unmatched, and Rhode was an eloquent spokesman for the Territory and its wildlife, often chauffeuring guests around Alaska’s vast expanses in his “Grumman Goose.” Rhode’s disappearance in 1958, along with son Jack and Service game management agent Stanley Fredericksen, launched the largest aerial manhunt to date in the history of the Alaska Territory. The mystery was solved in 1979 when hikers discovered wreckage of the twin-engine plane in a steep crag of the remote Brooks Range at 6,000 feet. The plane’s number was still visible on the burned fuselage, yet its logbook was undamaged. In 1960, the Clarence Rhode National Wildlife Refuge was established by Secretary of the Interior Fred Seaton in tribute to the intrepid pilot.