Prince William Sound – part of Southcentral Alaska – South and east of Chugach Mountains, and west of Copper River
From the 1911 completion of the Copper River and Northwestern Railway (CR&NW) until the mid 1930s, Cordova’s economy was primarily dependent on the railway and the shipment of copper ore from the mines at...
The Spanish explorer Salvadore Fidalgo led a 1790 expedition to the Pacific Northwest and Alaska in an effort to bolster Spanish claims to North America’s west coast. Fidalgo arrived in Prince William Sound at...
The building shown in the drawing, at 500 Third St. in Cordova, was originally the home of Samuel Blum and his family. Blum was a banker and merchant who was active in Southeast and...
Merle “Smitty” Smith, who is now known by his more colorful nickname, “Mudhole,” became enamored of flying at an early age. According to Lone Janson’s 1981 biography of him, Smitty, who was born and...
Numerous routes were considered for a railway to the Kennecott copper mines in the Wrangell Mountains. The most direct route was along the Copper River, but engineers hired by the Alaska Syndicate (which controlled...
During Cordova’s early days (1908-1911), when it was a boisterous railroad boomtown, the religious and social needs of both construction workers and the more genteel town residents were served by an Episcopal social club...
The Lowe River flows through Keystone Canyon east of Valdez. The canyon provides the only practicable land route out of Valdez, leading to Thompson Pass, which provides access to the Copper River Basin to...
In 1904 the U.S. Army’s Washington-Alaska Military Cable and Telegraph System (WAMCATS) was completed. According to George Todd’s undated publication, “Early Radio Communications in the Thirteenth Naval District Washington, Oregon and Alaska,” that same...
Jack Dalton, perhaps best-known for opening Southeast Alaska’s Dalton Trail in 1894-95, was a wanderer. During his 30-plus years in Alaska, his meanderings covered large swaths of Southeast and Southcentral Alaska. Dalton came to...
Cordova’s old Post Office and Courthouse building as it looked in 2019 A 196-mile-long mining railroad, the Copper River and Northwestern Railway, once connected the port of Cordova in Prince William Sound with the...
