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 dreamed of buying land out along the coast. Leaving Bismarck by train bound for the Western states, he looked forward to seeing the Pacific Ocean.

North Dakota is a land locked state and Frank grew up dead center between the Pacific and the Atlantic. There was no question which direction he would choose. His cowboy instincts pointed west.

Over the next 8 years Frank would visit, live and work in British Columbia, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Utah, Idaho. To my surprise he lived not all that far away from here in the Bay Area, somehow ending up in Daly City, California, just outside of San Francisco. It is still a mystery what he was doing there, yet the photographs taken in that period shows Frank delving into boxing.

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. Frank worked as a railroad deputy, hunter, logger, a miner and a warehouseman. Frank loved to camp and went deer hunting when he had no work.

The letters and postcards that he wrote home have postmarks from towns and cities in Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Port Huron, Michigan, Armstead and Polaris, Montana and Phoenix, Arizona.

In March of 1918, many months after he had joined the American Expeditionary Force in Baker, Oregon (where he wrote this letter), Frank was still awaiting to be called up for service. He had just quit a mining job in Baker at the Harrison Mine and was on his way to visit his brother Ernest Julius who was training at Camp Lewis near Tacoma, Washington.

In early 1917 Frank and his older brother Ernest Julius Alfred Erickson had traveled by train from Wilton to Bismarck to Baker, Oregon. This time both brothers 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 just before the U.S. involvement in the war.

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. On August 19th, 1917 he scribed two postcards from Baker, Oregon. This one was to his mother Christine.

Translated from Swedish:

August 19th, 1917
Baker, Oregon

Mrs. Alfred Erickson
Route 3 - Box 35
Wilton, North Dakota


Dear Mother
We are now in Baker, Oregon and working in a sawmill.
We did not stay in Pendelton too long because the pay
was low for harvest work.

I think we will stay here for some time now.

From your loving son,
Frank


Box 551 - Baker, Oregon