She was nearly as wide as she wasn’t tall. But one learned not to mistake her slow, ponderous gait (in pink billowing dresses) for a person who didn’t know what she was about. She always knew where she was going, and more often than not would insist you go with her.

A true and heart-breaking story, she literally DID grow up (in Oregon) a "child of the woods". When Jessie’s father was no longer with the family, poverty & hardship caused the county to decide to split the children up and place them in homes.

Jessie’s mother gathered her flock and gave them an extraordinary proposition. The children could "vote" on whether to be split up or run to the woods, hide, and somehow survive, but be together! The children voted "the woods", and from that moment on honed a life of undercover survival. In Jessie’s words, "every bullet and fishhook had to bring home meat". Squirrels at least were plentiful and made up much of their diet.

The children must have been an incredible sight (if you could have found them) toting guns in ragged, out-of-date attire, defying the government, wild but free, and happily banded together.

Fast forward to the spring of 1955 when Jessie moved to Gustavus, Alaska with her husband Tom (and 3 sons, Thomas Jr., Lloyd "Skipper", and Harlan) to purchase Uncle Sam Buoy’s vacated Rink Creek homestead.

It was a major ordeal for the Buoy’s to come and go from their new home (no roads until 1971)—fording streams, building foot bridges and traversing miles in heavy boots. They planted huge gardens (all had big appetites), milked a cow, hunted and ran winter trap lines to make ends meet. Jesse canned EVERYTHING and nothing went to waste! And when their Rink Creek house burned to the ground in 1958, the entire family regrouped and rebuilt their lives.

Jessie founded the 1st "grocer" & gift shop in Gustavus and operated out of a shed with no windows or electricity and an open pad lock in the late 70’s. Later, her "Bear Track Mercantile" (which first consisted of cigarettes, ice cream and bread in her home) was bought out and exists to this day.

She was nearly as wide as she wasn’t tall. But one learned not to mistake her slow, ponderous gait (in pink billowing dresses) for a person who didn’t know what she was about. She always knew where she was going, and more often than not would insist you go with her.

A true and heart-breaking story, she literally DID grow up (in Oregon) a "child of the woods". When Jessie’s father was no longer with the family, poverty & hardship caused the county to decide to split the children up and place them in homes.

Jessie’s mother gathered her flock and gave them an extraordinary proposition. The children could "vote" on whether to be split up or run to the woods, hide, and somehow survive, but be together! The children voted "the woods", and from that moment on honed a life of undercover survival. In Jessie’s words, "every bullet and fishhook had to bring home meat". Squirrels at least were plentiful and made up much of their diet.

The children must have been an incredible sight (if you could have found them) toting guns in ragged, out-of-date attire, defying the government, wild but free, and happily banded together.

Fast forward to the spring of 1955 when Jessie moved to Gustavus, Alaska with her husband Tom (and 3 sons, Thomas Jr., Lloyd "Skipper", and Harlan) to purchase Uncle Sam Buoy’s vacated Rink Creek homestead.

It was a major ordeal for the Buoy’s to come and go from their new home (no roads until 1971)—fording streams, building foot bridges and traversing miles in heavy boots. They planted huge gardens (all had big appetites), milked a cow, hunted and ran winter trap lines to make ends meet. Jesse canned EVERYTHING and nothing went to waste! And when their Rink Creek house burned to the ground in 1958, the entire family regrouped and rebuilt their lives.

Jessie founded the 1st "grocer" & gift shop in Gustavus and operated out of a shed with no windows or electricity and an open pad lock in the late 70’s. Later, her "Bear Track Mercantile" (which first consisted of cigarettes, ice cream and bread in her home) was bought out and exists to this day.