JHL III went on to become a newspaperman for St Paul Dispatch and Pioneer Press. He was sent in 1936 to Alaska to cover the colonization of the agriculturally rich Matanuska Valley of south-east Alaska. At the time there was an effort to colonize the area, but it was not as successful as expected. During this period JHL III became a champion of the Alaska-Canada (Al-Can) Highway. The civil engineer leading the effort to build this road had originally planned to build the road along the coast, but due to fears of the Japanese, the highway was built further inland.