She had always wanted to write a book, but even in her
imagination, she probably never considered a book of this size.
It
started out to be a simple booklet written in collaboration with two
professors at the Alaska School of Mines, but 712 pages later, Leslie Kot
Noyes, a 1970 Millikin graduate, found she had written her first book:
“Rock Poker to Pay Dirt,” a definitive history of Alaska’s School of
Mines and the state’s mineral history. In recognition of her significant
contribution, she received the Earl H. Beistline award from the University
of Alaska School of Mines last spring.
“Basically
it took 10 years to write and 3 years to publish the book,” Noyes says.
“This book recounts more than 50 years of history and
stories – all of them intriguing, and important, some of them poignant
and some of then hilarious, says the University of Alaska Press.” From
gold rush to oil boom, ‘Rock Poker’ ... describes the history of
Alaska’s most important industry as no other publication has done.”
Noyes
majored in music and a combined major in psychology and religion at
Millikin and was pursuing graduate work in historic preservation at
Sangamon State University in Springfield, Ill., when her then husband
convinced her to move to Alaska. Noyes soon fell in love with the state
and realized she was going to stay in Alaska as a “sourdough.” The
term, according to her neighbor, “Shorty” Philpot, meant “sour on
the land, too short on the dough to leave.”
Noyes
ultimately moved to Fairbanks, where she became a researcher for the state
on federal land issues and a director for the Miners Advocacy Council. She
also began taking magazine writing courses at the University of Alaska at
Fairbanks.
“I
had a great professor who said: You get an ‘A’ if published, a ‘B’
if you get a rejection slip and a ‘C’ if you have a manuscript ready
to mail,” she says.
Today,
Noyes owns Dits’in Yah Arts Ltd., a freelance writing business in
Golden, Colo. where she and her husband, Harold, have lived since 1998.
Read the complete
profile in the Winter 2003-04 issue of Millikin Quarterly magazine.
