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Jay P Williams
Jason “Jay” P. Williams (1878-1954) was an American writer and Alaskan native. He worked for the Alaska Boundary Survey before serving in the U.S. Forest Service for 30 years. Following his retirem...view moreJason “Jay” P. Williams (1878-1954) was an American writer and Alaskan native. He worked for the Alaska Boundary Survey before serving in the U.S. Forest Service for 30 years. Following his retirement, he worked as a sportsman’s guide.
Williams was born in the city of Wales, Alaska, and later moved to Wisconsin. He and his future wife, Mae Robinson, also a native of Wales, graduated from the University in Madison. Mae became a teacher and Williams majored in forestry. From Wisconsin, the Williams’ moved to Washington State, where their son Dean was born in 1917. Williams was on the Canadian Boundary Survey, and in 1918 he was sent to Alaska by the U.S. Forest Service; the family settled in Craig. For the next 42 years, Jay Williams cruised timber all over Alaska, but mostly in Southeast. Later in this period, he was also assigned the job of doing extensive research on brown bear. This included the first ever bear census on Admiralty Island, and his research covered both spring and fall periods when the most concentrations of bear take place.
Following his retirement, Williams was appointed by the Governor of Alaska Territory, Ernest Gruening, to the position of Adjutant General of the Territorial Guard during World War II.
During his Forest Service years, Williams used the Ranger boats and climbed mountains in connection with his timber reconnaissance. His biography, “Alaskan Adventure,” which was first published two years before his death in 1954, was translated into several languages used in several European universities as a textbook on Alaskan history.
In 1966, a mountain located 15 miles south-east of Juneau in the Taku Inlet area was named “Williams Mountain” by the U.S. Forest Service in honor of Jason P. Williams.view less