After seeing a film about Alaska, Forrest "Bud" Lockhart and his wife, Ellen, grew curious about life in the Last Frontier. They packed everything that would fit in their car and started north from Pendleton, Oregon. It was July 1951, exactly seven years before President Dwight D. Eisenhower would sign the Alaska Statehood Act. One month after setting out, Bud and Ellen were camped alongside Ship Creek in the tent that had served as their home throughout the trip. Only now they'd added a privacy tarp, which was considered quite an improvement to the structure.

"Oh, it was fine as long as it didn't rain," Ellen remembers now of the rustic accommodations she enjoyed for more than a month as they traveled north, and for a short time after they arrived. "If it rained or if the bugs were real bad, we slept in the car.

"Sometimes I'd hear stones rolling down the hills when we were sleeping. Because I thought there were bears everywhere, the stones would frighten me. Then I would jump up and get in the car as well."

The Lockhart's story, while maybe not unique, is certainly of the type that is becoming rarer as the years pass. It's also of a sort central to the mythology of Alaska-the pioneering spirit of the Last Frontier exhibited by a young couple throwing all their possessions into the back of a 1947 Studebaker and heading north along the muddy, unpaved Alcan, prepared to make a life in a new land.

"We didn't have any money," Ellen says. "We carried few groceries and just fried fish that Bud caught. He tied his own flies and caught whatever was biting. He'd clean them; I'd cook them and we'd eat them for lunch or supper."

After staying in their hastily constructed tent camp near Ship Creek until told to move on, the Lockhart's purchased a cabin "way out of town" on 9th and Juneau. It became home base while Bud explored the fishing and hunting available in his new setting, fishing the salmon runs on Ship Creek during lunch hours and after work, the trout when the salmon weren't in, and venturing farther afield for bear, moose, caribou, sheep and goats in the fall and spring, packing animals for miles long before the advent of four-wheelers and track vehicles.

In 1951, of course, Alaska still wasn't a state. From 1867 to 1884 it was considered a military district of the United States and was under control of the federal government. Then in 1884 Congress passed the Organic Act, which allowed for Alaska to become a judicial district as well as a civil one, appointing judges, clerks, marshals and other government officials. This coincided with a period of great immigration to the state, as more than 30,000 people traveled north into the Yukon and Alaska during the Gold Rush era. Another population boom occurred around the general time of the Lockhart's relocation, as the attention Alaska received during World War II and throughout the Cold War years brought another wave of interest. A third influx of people came north with the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. But whether they came for mineral riches or work or simply to try a new life in the wilderness, a recurring theme is the power of Alaska to draw, and its ability to make people stay once they arrive.

Another tenet of the Alaska mystique-a notion of the pioneer-is also amplified by the story of Bud and Ellen Lockhart, who, like so many who've helped form and forge our Great Land over the preceding fifty years, continued to break new ground. In 1974 Bud and Ellen went to Seattle and purchased a 38-foot power-cruiser built by the Pierson Corporation. With their daughter Linda they brought the boat home through the Inside Passage, enjoying another month-long journey north, this time by sea. At a time when most Alaskan crafts where kept to a strictly utilitarian size, the Lockharts enjoyed three staterooms, a full kitchen with a big refrigerator, a full oven and a chest freezer. There was even a shower in the head. They spent weeks at a time aboard their new purchase, exploring every nook and cranny of Resurrection Bay, Day Harbor, Aialik Bay and points south.

It wasn't until 1996 that the family sold the Allegro, though today Linda reports that many of her best memories revolve around glassy days of incredible water, fabulous fishing and family time during those summers spent on the boat. Linda, of course, is also the art director for Fish Alaska magazine and says that while her father has been gone for quite a few years, he'd be proud to know that she still has an intimate connection with the fishing in the state he adopted and loved so much.

Her mother, Ellen, turns 90 next month, and as the State of Alaska turns 50, I think it's worth remember that along with all the great fishing, the wildlife, the wilderness, the beauty and bounty of the 49th state, it's people, too, that we're commemorating.