My grandfather Frank Gustaf Severin Erickson left home in 1910 at the age of eighteen and headed west seeking warmer climates, adventure and work.

He left Bismarck by train bound for the West to see the Pacific and California, and lived in Daly City outside of San Francisco for awhile. Over the next seven years between visits back to North Dakota to work on the family farm in Regan, he traveled, worked and lived at an assortment of jobs.

His adventurous spirit took him all over the West, Pacific Northwest and the Great Plains states. The letters and postcards that he wrote home have postmarks from Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Port Huron, Michigan, Polaris and Armstead, Montana (where he wrote this letter in 1915 having just found a job at a farm) and Phoenix.

In the Spring of 1915 he was cutting timber in Nelson, British Columbia, Canada. Over the years he worked as a hunter, logger, a miner and a warehouseman. Frank loved to camp and went deer hunting when he had no work.

By early 1917 Frank and his older brother Ernest Julius Alfred Erickson traveled by train from Wilton to Bismarck to Baker, Oregon. They had their sites on finding some land to buy. Besides working for various lumber mills they became deputies for the Oregon Railroad out of La Grande, Oregon.

Frank and Ernest would join the American Expeditionary Force in the Summer of 1917 and in 1918 would serve in France with the 308th and 361st Infantry respectively.

Frank wrote home regularly to his parents Christine Brita (Olson) and Anders Alfred Erickson and here is his May 21st, 1915 letter when he was working in Armstead, Montana

Translated from Swedish:

May 21, 1915
Armstead, Montana
Dear Parents,
I am writing a few lines to let you know that I am alive and got my health. I wish you the same.

I am now working on a farm close to Armstead. I have been here for three weeks. I stayed in Butte for one week, but was unable to find work there so I went to Spencer, Idaho, but could not find anything there either. Traveled back to Dillon, Montana where I got a job at this place. ?I stayed in Spokane for two days and visited uncle Sundun. He is working at the same place he has been at for years. Uncle has now been there for five years and he wants me to send you his best greetings.

Well, I will now end my short letter
From your son Frank
Armstead, Montana

PS. I wrote to Sebran two weeks ago, but have still not received a letter