a territory of 250,000 square miles, Stuck traveled between the scattered parishes and missions by dogsled and boat as well as foot and snowshoe. In his first year, Stuck established a church, mission and hospital at Fairbanks, the new boomtown filling up with miners and associated hangers on. Some staff came from Klondike, where the gold rush had ended. The small hospital treated epidemics of meningitis and typhoid fever, as well as pneumonia common in the North. In 1905, Rev. Charles E. Betticher, Jr joined Stuck in Alaska as a missionary. They founded numerous missions in the Tanana Valley over the next decade: at Nenana (St. Mark's Mission and Tortella School at Nenana, the school in 1907), St. Barnabas at Chena Native Village, St. Luke's at Salcha, and St. Timothy's at Tanacross (near Tok, formerly known as the Tanana Crossing). All served the Alaska Natives of the region. Tortella School was the only boarding school to serve native children in the Interior of Alaska, and was supported by scholarships and offerings raised by the Episcopal Church. Missionary Anne Cragg Farthing ran the school and was the primary teacher. Her brother was bishop of Toronto, Ontario. Five hundred miles up the Koyukuk River from its confluence with the Yukon, at its junction with its tributary the Alatna River, in 1907 Stuck founded a mission he called Allakaket (Koyukon for "at the mouth of the Alatna") but others called St. John's in the Woods for the several hundred Indians here. For years Episcopal woman missionaries ran the remote station just above the Arctic Circle, including Deaconess Clara M. Carter and Clara Heintz. The mission served both Koyukon and Iñupiat, who were settled on opposite sides of the river. The latter had come up the Kobuk River from lower areas. Thus the missioners had two Native languages to learn. To reach the scattered populations of miners and other frontiersmen, Stuck started the Church Periodical Club. Based in Fairbanks, it collected and distributed periodicals to all the missions and to other settlements where Americans gathered. It did not have only church literature, and in some locations, it provided almost the only reading material around. Stuck traveled each winter more than 1500–2000 miles by dogsled to visit the missions and villages. In 1908, he acquired the launch called The Pelican, a shallow riverboat. He used it on the Yukon River and tributaries to visit the