Blueberry picking trip – 7-27-2014
Betsy and I tromped to our secret blueberry place yesterday. With all the recent rain I expected to find multitudes of berries, but there were no more than usual, perhaps ever a bit fewer....
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Larkspur-leaf monkshood in my front yard
For several years I have thought there were a few larkspur plants lurking among my high-bush cranberries. Those plants actually bloomed this year and I discovered that instead of wild delphinium among my cranberries,...
Mining remnants still visible in Nome Creek Basin
Dredge buckets sinking into muskeg along Nome Creek The footprint left by mining on the Nome Creek Basin north of Fairbanks appears minimal at first glance. It’s obvious that the creek has been worked,...
Tiny Beetle Bulldozer in Fairbanks Golden Days Parade
The smallest bulldozer I have ever seen was in the Golden Days Parade on Saturday. It is a Beetle, built by Western Gear Works of Seattle in the late 1940s. The Beetle was developed...
Birch Hill Cemetery established to honor a wife’s last wish
Minnie Slater’s grave at Birch Hill Cemetery Antone “Tony” Zimmerman was a well-known miner in early Fairbanks. He is perhaps best-known, however, for developing and donating Birch Hill Cemetery to the Fairbanks community in...
Deadwood Cemetery (Central) and Circle Cemetery – 7-11-2014
Drove up to Circle on Friday looking for historic sites. Two of the places I stopped at were Deadwood Cemetery just outside Central, and the Pioneer Cemetery at Circle. Both contain graves dating back...
Clay Street Cemetery helps preserve Fairbanks history
Alexander Barrack’s grave at Clay Street Cemetery The monument shown in the drawing marks the grave of Alexander Barrack at the Clay Street Cemetery in Fairbanks (Barrack died in 1916). The cemetery, located on...
Talkeetna and the Alaska Commercial Company’s Susitna-Valdez Creek freighting gamble
Old freighter’s cabin at Talkeetna in 2005 Gold was discovered at Valdez Creek (near the headwaters of the Susitna River) in 1903. The first pack-horse and winter sled routes that supplied the mining...
Life on the Line in Fairbanks historic red light district
Prostitute’s crib at Pioneer Park Gold Rush Town Economic depression gripped most of the western world during the 1890s, so not surprisingly, thousands of stampeders raced north during the 1897 Klondike gold rush. The...
