The Bay of Kotor, a winding bay of the Adriatic Sea and often called Europe’s southern-most fiord, offered to many a springboard to the world. Overseas freighters would take on water and goods there along with passengers bound for North America, including stowaways. Some of those stowaways were young Balkan men wanting to avoid conscription into the Austrian Army. Others just wanted to start a new life in the New World. In 1892, Marko Stijepovic, at the age of 18, became a stowaway on a ship bound for the United States.
Shortly after he arrived in Baltimore, Maryland, Marko traveled by train to Fresno, California, the center of a Balkan agricultural community. Somewhere along the way, his surname was changed to Stepovich, a practice common to many immigrants from eastern Europe. Building on his experiences growing up in Montenegro, Marko, still just a young man, worked in California agriculture for nearly five years, selling calves to ranchers and harvesting figs. He found Serbian woman to dry the figs and then sold the figs to customers in Colorado.
When news of the Great Klondike gold rush in Yukon, Canada reached the United States in the spring of 1897, Stepovich quit his agriculture business and purchased all-weather clothing, picks, shovels, gold pans, and other working gear in Seattle and boarded a steamer bound for the great north-country Gold Rush. His business plan was to sell gear to the thousands of prospectors traveling to the Klondike Rush. In the fall of 1897, Marko arrived in Dyea at the head of Chatham Straits by boat from Seattle and hired Tlingit packers to haul his considerable freight over Chilkoot Pass. The notorious outlaw Soapy Smith and his gang were patrolling the Chilkoot Trail and demanding toll money for rights to use the trail. Not to be coerced by the bandits, the 23-year old Marko and his hired men broke trail around Soapy Smith’s camp, thus avoiding the outlaws and their toll demands and then continued over Chilkoot Pass. Thereafter, Marko became known as ‘Wise Mike’ Stepovich, which stuck for the rest of his life. A Fairbanks eating establishment, Soapy Smith’s Restaurant, which is owned and operated by Nick Stepovich, one of Wise Mike’s grandsons, commemorates this event.
https://alaskamininghalloffame.org/inductees/stepovich.php
Contributor: island girl (47912076)
The Bay of Kotor, a winding bay of the Adriatic Sea and often called Europe’s southern-most fiord, offered to many a springboard to the world. Overseas freighters would take on water and goods there along with passengers bound for North America, including stowaways. Some of those stowaways were young Balkan men wanting to avoid conscription into the Austrian Army. Others just wanted to start a new life in the New World. In 1892, Marko Stijepovic, at the age of 18, became a stowaway on a ship bound for the United States.
Shortly after he arrived in Baltimore, Maryland, Marko traveled by train to Fresno, California, the center of a Balkan agricultural community. Somewhere along the way, his surname was changed to Stepovich, a practice common to many immigrants from eastern Europe. Building on his experiences growing up in Montenegro, Marko, still just a young man, worked in California agriculture for nearly five years, selling calves to ranchers and harvesting figs. He found Serbian woman to dry the figs and then sold the figs to customers in Colorado.
When news of the Great Klondike gold rush in Yukon, Canada reached the United States in the spring of 1897, Stepovich quit his agriculture business and purchased all-weather clothing, picks, shovels, gold pans, and other working gear in Seattle and boarded a steamer bound for the great north-country Gold Rush. His business plan was to sell gear to the thousands of prospectors traveling to the Klondike Rush. In the fall of 1897, Marko arrived in Dyea at the head of Chatham Straits by boat from Seattle and hired Tlingit packers to haul his considerable freight over Chilkoot Pass. The notorious outlaw Soapy Smith and his gang were patrolling the Chilkoot Trail and demanding toll money for rights to use the trail. Not to be coerced by the bandits, the 23-year old Marko and his hired men broke trail around Soapy Smith’s camp, thus avoiding the outlaws and their toll demands and then continued over Chilkoot Pass. Thereafter, Marko became known as ‘Wise Mike’ Stepovich, which stuck for the rest of his life. A Fairbanks eating establishment, Soapy Smith’s Restaurant, which is owned and operated by Nick Stepovich, one of Wise Mike’s grandsons, commemorates this event.
https://alaskamininghalloffame.org/inductees/stepovich.php
Contributor: island girl (47912076)
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