Anchorage – historically, a railroad town, now the largest city in Alaska
In 1915 the southern edge of Anchorage was Ninth Avenue – with only undeveloped land beyond. In about 1917, vegetation was trimmed back along a one-block wide by 16-block long strip of land south...
Immediately preceding and during World War II the Civilian Aeronautics Authority (CAA was the predecessor to the FAA) built and upgraded airports across the United States as part of a national defense program. Theresa...
Charles E. Brown and Thomas William “T.W.” Hawkins both came to Alaska in 1898. Brown entered the territory via the route pioneered by the Hudson’s Bay Company – the McKenzie, Rat and Porcupine rivers,...
The Alaska Railroad Depot in Anchorage is located at 411 W. First Ave., on the south side of Ship Creek at the base of the bluff on which downtown Anchorage sits. Early photos, taken...
The U.S. Congress passed The Alaska Railroad Act in March 1914, authorizing construction of a federally-owned railway from an ice-free port on Alaska’s southern coast to Fairbanks in the territory’s Interior. President Woodrow Wilson...
Oscar Frank Anderson was a Swedish immigrant living in Seattle with his wife and three children in 1915. When he heard about the government railroad that would likely be constructed in Alaska from Cook...
Alison Hoagland, in her book Buildings of Alaska, calls the KENI radio transmitter building at 1777 Forest Park Drive in Anchorage an “Art Deco gem.” Anchorage’s KENI radio station was a sister station of...
When the Alaska Engineering Commission (AEC), the federal agency responsible for building the Alaska Railroad, laid out the townsite of Anchorage in the spring 1916, it set aside a “municipal reserve” for city government...
The Student Union Complex on the campus of Alaska Pacific University (formerly Alaska Methodist University), is one of the most impressive buildings in Anchorage. The primary architect for the three-building unit, constructed in 1966,...
The little engine in the drawing is a Davenport 18-ton 0-4-0 ST steam locomotive. (The engine nomenclature refers to 0 leading wheels, 4 drive wheels, and 0 trailing wheels; with the ST indicating that...
