19 May 2015
19 May 2015 If you lived in Concord in the 1970s and early 1980s, you may remember Bill Allman. Each year, he headed south like a snowbird from Alaska to Concord. Here he would rent a small room at the Hotel Concord and spend the winter months visiting family and old friends, sharing stories of
historiccabarrus.com
<<If you lived in Concord in the 1970s and early 1980s, you may remember Bill Allman. Each year, he headed south like a snowbird from Alaska to Concord. Here he would rent a small room at the Hotel Concord and spend the winter months visiting family and old friends, sharing stories of his great adventures in the frozen north. Then each spring, the old gold miner and prospector would return to the life he loved in rural Alaska.
The spring of 1984 was no different. As he had done for half a century, he headed out on May 30, 1984 to prospect for gold in the rough tundra near Marshall, Alaska, about 550 roadless miles north of Anchorage. He was taken by float plane to his claim on Tom Gray Creek, near the Yukon Territory and was to be picked up at a prearranged spot on July 18 for a return trip. But unlike previous excursions, this time he didn’t show up. Bill Allman had disappeared without a trace.>>
Lots more info at the link Bill was a very interesting man, an "Alaskan Pioneer"
<<When he didn’t show up at the designated pick-up spot on July 18, the National Guard, Alaskan state police, family and friends spent weeks combing the wilderness area where Bill should have been. One of his small survival trail cabins had been found burned, but corrugated metal from the roof had been salvaged and stacked at the site, indicating someone had been there after the fire. Another of his trail cabins was boarded up, as if it had been secured for the winter, but there was no sign of Bill. Eventually the search was terminated. >>
June 16, 2025-another great article
An article from The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, North Carolina) of August 4, 1983.
www.explorenorth.com
"We don't think a bear got him because we haven't found any bits of torn clothing," said retired Postmaster Don Hunter of Marshall, Alaska, some 550 roadless miles north of Anchorage. "That's the strange thing, we haven't found anything."
<< Allman has spent the last 60 years chasing adventure in Alaska, spending the winters of his later years in a tiny room at the Concord Hotel. A native of Mecklenburg County, he left Cabarrus County as a teenager to roam the United States, before settling for what he called the wild freedoms of Alaska.
He used to carry the U.S. mail by dogsled. He survived grizzly bears, a brain tumor and snow-blindness and walked away from two airplane crashes. He was attacked by a polar bear and once, while marooned on a broken-off iceberg, survived a blizzard.
When he wasn't working his gold claims, hunting wild game or panning gold, he would mush across the Bering Strait into Russia, or lead wilderness expeditions that included the likes of Walt Disney.
And during the months-long darkness of Alaskan winters, he read encyclopedias in his small antler-strewn sod cabin on the Yukon River,>>
