CONCORD - There was joyous excitement at Hotel Concord Thursday when residents heard Alaskan gold miner Bill Allman, 83, had been found.
But joy dissipated. It was only a rumor.
The colorful, adventurous Allman, a certified pioneer who wintered at the hotel in recent years, is still missing in the Alaskan tundra.
"I myself have given up hope of finding Bill alive," said Don Hunter, retired postmaster at Marshall, Alaska, 550 miles north of Anchorage and 45 miles from
Allman's small sod hut on the Yukon River.
"We had some hopes through August," said a brother, James Allman of Concord. "But too much time has passed. We have no hope as of now. He's just vanished.
"The family is just in a holding period now. We've just kept hoping."
Allman, a native of Mecklenburg County who grew up in Cabarrus County, left in his teens to roam America and worked as a gold miner, lumberjack, cowboy, and whaling ship hand. He fell in love with Alaska in the 1920s.
He survived blizzards, grizzly bear attacks, plane crashes and awesome cold.
Brain surgery in 1957 caused him to spend winters at Hotel Concord, but each spring he headed for Alaska.
Allman was last seen by a bush pilot who took the wiry miner to a gold claim 45 miles from Marshall on May 30. When the pilot returned on the appointed pickup
day, July 18, Allman wasn't there.
His cabin nearby was found burned by a search party, but salvaged items had been neatly stacked, as Allman would have done it. Another of his cabins was boarded up for the winter.
Alaska State Police searched with aircraft and a National Guard helicopter. Eskimo villagers and other volunteers criss-crossed Allman's known trails.
Hunter said temperatures were down in the teens this week, and winds were strong. "There's no way Bill could survive this," he said.
As for his family, said James Allman, "there's nothing we can do but clear up the few business matters he had."
