As he climbed out of steerage class to get some air during the approach to Prince William Sound, he saw Mt. St. Elias and the Wrangell Range towering above him. "From the rail of that steamer, a promise came out of my lips, a promise to this new, great land," Hickel wrote in his latest book, "Crisis in the Commons: The Alaska Solution."

"You take care of me," I pledged. "And I'll take care of you."

It was a promise he kept, from his role in the 1950s to get 103 million acres for the territory struggling to become a state, to his proceeding as an entrepreneur to develop hotels, housing and shopping centers in Anchorage, Fairbanks and Seward. For all this he compensated for a lack of any formal education with a fierce sense of determination.

The adventurous young man also twice served as governor of Alaska, from 1966 to 1969, and from 1990 to 1994, and as U.S. Secretary of the Interior, from 1969 to 1970, during the administration of President Richard Nixon. His tenure as Interior Secretary came to an end after he sharply criticized Nixon's hostility to students demonstrating against the war in Vietnam and he was forced to resign.

Hickel was establishing himself as a businessman in Anchorage -- a town of about 30,000 people -- in the 1950s when the statehood bill finally passed the U.S. House of Representatives. Some statehood advocates saw that as a victory, but Hickel was among those who saw the measure as fatally flawed, because it allowed the federal government to continue to manage Alaska's fisheries and gave the new state only a small share of resource revenues.

Worse yet, only 23 million acres of Alaska's 365 million acres would be owned by the new state, with 20 million acres designated for the University of Alaska and 3 million acres for Southeast Alaska communities surrounded by the Tongass National Forest.

It was obvious, said Hickel, that Alaska needed more land. The first measure never made it out of Congress, and then, in 1957, during the Eisenhower administration, another statehood measure made its way out of the House and headed for the Senate.

Hickel felt this one, too, had virtually nothing in it for Alaska, and off he went to Washington, D.C., where a meeting was arranged with Ohio Sen. Robert A. Taft, son of the former President Taft.

As they talked, Hickel recalled, Taft asked "well, how much land do you need?"

Hickel, who admits he didn't even know then how much land there was in Alaska, blurted out "one hundred million acres."

When he found out later that Alaska had 365 million acres, he laughed. "Oh, my God, I should have asked for at least half," of the state, he said.

These stories, contained in Hickel's book, may be familiar to Alaskans who were here at the time of statehood, but more recent arrivals have little knowledge of the role this senior statesman played in development of Alaska. Even then some prominent businessmen like Robert Atwood, publisher of the Anchorage Times, were critical of his demand for so much land.

Atwood argued in an editorial in the newspaper that "the 23 million acres that would be available for the new state are almost equal to the total area of the great state of Indiana. We have never heard Indiana complain that it does not have enough land to operate a state successfully."

Hickel believed, then as now, that Alaskans needed local control so they could control their own destiny.

"Putting another star on the American flag was not the end in itself, but a way to a new kind of government that no one had yet tried; a resource commons controlled by a local, democratically elected government," he wrote.

When Alaska was granted statehood in 1959, the 103 million acres were part of the deal. "We would become a self-sustaining state, and one with special opportunities and responsibilities rarely given to a people," he wrote.

Another of many Alaska history stories that the governor delights in telling came in 1966, shortly after Hickel began his first term as governor.

Exploration on the North Slope was nearing a standstill. Only Atlantic Richfield and Humble Oil Co. (now ExxonMobil) were still active, as partners. They drilled one well on the North Slope, Susie Unit No. 1, after which just one more was planned. Susie, on federal land 60 miles south of Prudhoe Bay, was abandoned as a dry well. It cost the two companies $4.5 million.

One faction within the companies was ready to give up and not drill again. Adding to their frustration was that they believed the best prospect for oil was on about 38,000 acres of state tidelands, just offshore in the Arctic, that had not been put up for lease.

The companies were interested in a prospect at Prudhoe Bay, but were worried about the unleased nearby acreage if they found oil. "If Atlantic Richfield found oil at Prudhoe Bay, it would not control the nearby acreage and could lose much of the value of its investment," Hickel said.

Alaska's first governor, Bill Egan, had planned to put those tidelands up for lease, but Egan backed off when the Arctic Slope Native Association sued the state in October 1966, claiming title to the North Slope by aboriginal right. Hickel said Egan was on somewhat shaky ground with some of the Native leadership because they were dissatisfied with is position on their land claims.

"With the general election a month away, he decided not to antagonize them by going forward with the lease sale," Hickel said.

"I disagreed. As a speaker at the first convention of the Alaska Federation of Natives that October, I asked 'doesn't it make more sense to go ahead with oil drilling, and settle the question of who the money belongs to later?'"

A few days after Hickel became governor, state minerals manager Pedro Denton came to Hickel's home in Anchorage to explain the leasing situation and told Hickel of the reluctance of Atlantic Richfield and Humble to drill. Hickel said it was clear to him that the lease sale should proceed as soon as possible.

"Otherwise, oil exploration on the North Slope could stop," he concluded. At the same time, Hickel extracted a promise from Atlantic Richfield's district manager, Harry Jamison, that if the state leased the tidelands, they would drill a well.

The state announced the sale late in December 1966. Some Native leaders protested, and Hickel said he met with them, pledging his support for a Native claims settlement. He agreed that the Native leaders should sue the federal government to push for a land claims settlement and directed Attorney General Edgar Paul Boyko to file the papers in court.

The Arctic Slope Native leaders then agreed to let the lease sale go ahead without protest.

Less than eight weeks after Hickel had become governor, the tracts went up for bid, bringing in $1.5 million. "More important," Hickel wrote in his book, "exploration on the North Slope was still alive."

Then Atlantic Richfield and Humble still hesitated, according to Hickel. The companies weren't sure they wanted to spend the money necessary to drill at Prudhoe Bay.

Hickel said he called Jamison in and said "damn it, Harry, you'd better drill up there. If you don't I will."

According to Hickel, Jamison said "You mean the state will?"

"Damn right we will," Hickel said he responded.

In the spring of 1967, Hickel stepped off a plane at Prudhoe Bay into ankle-deep water on the landing strip, with mud everywhere, and went to see the drill site for himself. The drill rig had been moved earlier from the Susie well site to the south.

"As we looked at the rig together I said 'Harry, drill, drill!' Despite the need to stop for spring break up, I was confident that bit would soon reach oil. 'Governor, what makes you so positive there is oil down there?' he asked. I said, 'Harry, if it's not there, I'll think it there. Drill! I want that well in by Christmas,'" Hickel wrote in his latest book "Crisis in the Commons: The Alaska Solution."

On Dec. 27, 1967, Alaska's natural resource history was forever changed.

"Natural gas shot out of Prudhoe Bay state Number One with the sound of racing jet engines," Hickel said.

By March 12, 1968, the rig penetrated the Prudhoe Bay field's oil layer, bringing up crude at the rate of 1,152 barrels a day.

Over the years that followed, Hickel retained his interest in development of Alaska's natural resources, and worked to develop business ties with other nations at the top of the world.

Today Hickel devotes much of his time to the Institute of the North, with offices in Anchorage, talking to all who will listen about the obligations of ownership of the commons, the world's resources, which he says, should be commonly owned.

The Institute of the North works to foster research and spread teaching on issues of regional and national strategy on common ownership of lands and oceans.

At 89, Hickel says he's still guided by "the little guy," the voice within him that inspires him to keep doing what others said could never be done.

While he graduated from high school, Hickel never went to college. In an interview at his office at the Captain Cook Hotel in downtown Anchorage, which he built in the 1960s, Hickel recalled two favorite teachers, two Catholic nuns who read to him for one hour a day. "For a textbook, they used the Old Testament," he said.

Not bad for a guy who opted to sail for Alaska with a few cents in his pocket because he didn't have a passport to get to Australia.

Margaret Bauman is a reporter for the Alaska Journal of Commerce.