Heimo Korth has become famous for living his normal everyday life. The only thing is that there is nothing normal about his everyday life – living in the wilderness, in a place where the sun can go down in December and only return in February. He lives with his wife in the extreme conditions of Alaska’s arctic wilderness, something many people have been unable to do.
Also referred to as American Frontiersman, he is an outdoorsman as well as a TV personality who has got famous with his wife and other family members for appearing on Discovery Channel’s TV Series The Last Alaskans.
Heimo Korth – Biography and Age
It was on April 17, 1955, that Heimo Korth was born in the United States to Irene Korth and Erich Korth. Originally from Wisconsin, the godfather of the final frontier has managed to keep everything about his early and past life away from the public. Hence, not much is known about his childhood, education, and family members.
However, it has been indicated that while he was growing up, he had a very terrible relationship with his father who abused him as a child. Because of this, the two are said to have had a toxic and antagonistic relationship which forced Heimo to leave home and everything else to come and settle all on his own.
Before leaving Wisconsin for Alaska and the life of an Outdoorsman, Heimo was a welder in his former home before he called it quits and left. When he left, he was between his late teens and early twenties. Since from the time he took to the life of a mountain man, he has never taken a pause to reconsider going back to his previous career or even going back home as from it, he has built his own life and family.
In 2004, a writer who is also the cousin of Heimo, wrote and published a book known as The Final Frontiersman: Heimo Korth and His Family, Alone in Alaska’s Arctic Wilderness. The book immediately drew attention to one of the very few people living in the extreme conditions of the Arctic Wilderness, and so for the first time, there was an interest in Heimo and his lifestyle.
Living along the Coleen River in the south of the Brooks Range, Heimo and his family are among the only few people that have the permission to be in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as permanent residents. He lives a self-reliant life, hunting, and fishing for sustenance. In summer, he worked at Fort Yukon.
Much later, after the publication of the book by James Campbell in 2009, a documentary was produced by VBS.tv in 2009, capturing the life of Heimo Korth. The documentary, Surviving Alone in Alaska, was not the first that featured him. Back in 1993, he was on the National Geographic documentary, Braving Alaska.
From 2011 to 2012, Korth was on yet another documentary Flying Wild Alaska. Nonetheless, it was until 2015 that he got the fame he has never sought for with the release of the Discovery Channel’s documentary series The Last Alaskans. The series which still runs takes a look at the lives of the different families living in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.
Family – Wife, and Daughters
After leaving home, Heimo Korth later met a woman named Edna Korth in the village of St. Lawrence Island in Alaska where he went to learn to become a hunter. Immediately he saw the Siberian Yupik Eskimo woman, he fell in love with her, and so he went on to marry her.
For more than three decades, the two are still very much together living in the extreme condition that has now become their life.
Their union produced three children, Coleen, Rhonda, and Krin. There is also Millie who was adopted by Heimo. She is the daughter of Edna from a relationship she had before she met her husband.
The story shared between Heimo Korth and Edna Korth has not been all good. In 1984, they witnessed the tragedy of the loss of their first daughter who was then two, Coleen. She died following a canoe accident although her body was never found. As a result of the tragic event, they decided to bring up their other kids away from the wilderness. Now all grown, the daughters do not stay with their parents although they do not fail to visit.
Net Worth
Living a pretty much simple life, the net worth of Heimo Korth is not known, although there are sources indicate they may be worth a decent $150,000 while others take them as high as $1 million.
Also Read: Top 10 Richest People in the world with full biography and details.
