Same nickname, two very different men

Same Nickname, Two Very Different Men—Part One

AUTHOR’S NOTE: A few times each year, someone who knows of my enjoyment of historical research contacts me to see whether I can solve a mystery. Whatever happened to so-and-so? Does such-and-such a business still exist? Who named that lake or that creek? Who was the first to do this or that? And on and on. Sometimes the answers to such questions are relatively easy to find; other times I can find nothing at all.

Same nickname, two very different men

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Two men with the moniker “Beluga Joe” plied the waters of Cook Inlet in the 1900s. Both Joseph Magill and Joseph Schneller became associated with the Beluga River on the inlet’s west side, and both were noted for commercial fishing. Most of the similarities end there.