Curwood dreamed of being an author from early childhood. Though he lacked the writing skills, he improvised a 200,000-word novel by the time he was nine years of age. On October 21st, 1894 his first published story "The Terror of Athabasca" appeared in the local newspaper, the Owosso Evening Argus, known today as the Argus Press, one of the oldest surviving local newspapers in the country. He was expelled from school at sixteen years of age and embarked on a bicycle tour of many of the southern states. At seventeen he travelled in a carriage selling proprietary medicines for a pharmaceutical company. Curwood returned to Michigan in 1898 and passed the entrance exam for the University of Michigan English department to study journalism.