As he had done for half a century, Bill Allman, 83, headed out May 30 to prospect for gold in Alaska's rough tundra.
But this time, he didn't come back.
The wiry old gold miner, a certified Alaskan pioneer, has vanished.
Gone without a trace, say all connected with the weeks-long air and ground searches by Alaskan villagers and state troopers.
"We don't think a bear got him because we haven't found any bits of torn clothing," said retired Postmaster Don Hunter of Marshall, Alaska, some 550 roadless miles
north of Anchorage. "That's the strange thing, we haven't found anything."
"We all tried to stop Bill from going out again this year, what with his age and condition," Hunter recalled Wednesday. "But nobody could stop old Bill."
Allman has spent the last 60 years chasing adventure in Alaska, spending the winters of his later years in a tiny room at the Concord Hotel. A native of Mecklenburg County, he left Cabarrus County as a teenager to roam the United
States, before settling for what he called the wild freedoms of Alaska.
He used to carry the U.S. mail by dogsled. He survived grizzly bears, a brain tumor and snow-blindness and walked away from two airplane crashes. He was attacked by a polar bear and once, while marooned on a broken-off iceberg, survived a blizzard.
When he wasn't working his gold claims, hunting wild game or panning gold, he would mush across the Bering Strait into Russia, or lead wilderness expeditions that included the likes of Walt Disney.
And during the months-long darkness of Alaskan winters, he read encyclopedias in his small antler-strewn sod cabin on the Yukon River,
The facts of his disappearance are few.
According to Hunter and James Allman, a nephew, bush pilot Stan Hermen flew Allman on May 30 to a lake 45 miles from Marshall. On pickup day, July 18, he wasn't
there.
The next day, search parties found his small survival cabin burned to the ground, but items neatly stacked beside the remains indicated Allman or someone was there after the fire.
A second cabin some distance away was boarded up, as if for the winter.
Heavy rain and wind slowed the air-ground search by Alaskan state police. Aircraft, a National Guard helicopter and village volunteers who knew Allman's usual trails crisscrossed the wild, empty terrain.
The search was ended July 26 and won't be resumed without new information, Alaskan state police Cpl. P.L. Haynes said Wednesday.
The family, though, has hopes.
"He may have become disoriented, and is walking out now," James Allman said. He used to walk 45 miles from the village of Marshall to his claims in three days, he said.
"We tried to get him not to go back this year, by himself at his age," Allman said.
In a letter dated May 28, Allman wrote his niece, Ruby Womack of Charlotte. "This Alaska's a tough place to live... . It's cold at night... ice is going out of the Yukon River now (but) big king salmon fish is running... it's daylight 24 hours a day. "There's still ice on the lake where the float plane lands... water is too high now to mine...."
The prospects of finding Allman are growing slimmer in that bear-infested region, Hunter said. "If he's alive, he should be able to show himself on the tundra. We're sure he wasn't burned. We're still searching. Pilots who fly over are looking."
James Allman is philosophic. "If Uncle Bill just dropped dead up there, the family feels that's the way he'd want it."
It was only after brain surgery in the 1970s that the old man could be persuaded to leave Alaska to live in Concord for the winter months, Allman said.
"He loved Alaska; it was all he wanted, all he talked about, all he lived for.
"We just want to know what happened, Me, I'm not going to give up hope 'til the last of August."
