Glennallen library in the 1970s. It began in the early 1940s as an Alaska Road Commission office during cosntruction of the Glenn Highway

Glennallen began as World War II era construction camp for Glenn Highway

Glennallen , situated at the junction of the Glenn and Richardson Highways, started as a highway construction camp just prior to the 1941 entry of the United States into World War II. Relations between...

Messhall and Bunkhouse in Chitina among few remaining Copper River and Northwestern Railway buildings

    The CR&NW messhall and bunkhouse in Chitina in the 1980s The two buildings shown in the drawing are in Chitina. They were built as a messhall and bunkhouse for the Copper River...

Ester studio evokes memory of painter, Rusty Heurlin

Rusty Heurlin’s studio in Ester in the early winter of 2017 The cabin in the drawing was the studio for Alaska painter, Magnus Colcord “Rusty” Heurlin. Matthew Reckard, the artist’s neighbor, recently showed me...

College Station and the Toonerville Trolley

  College Station in the mid-1920s. The four miles between the University of Alaska and downtown Fairbanks offers little impediment to modern travelers. However, when the university’s predecessor, the Alaska College of Agriculture and...

Hope is only surviving gold camp from Upper Kenai Peninsula gold rush

Downtown Hope in 2014 According to the 1915 U.S.G.S. report, Geology and Mineral Resources of Kenai Peninsula, Alaska, the only recorded instances of Russian gold exploration in Alaska occurred between 1848 and 1851, when...

Interior Alaska’s once numerous fishwheels dwindle in number

Interior Alaska’s once numerous fishwheels dwindle in number

It may surprise people that the picturesque fishwheels that are so much a part of Interior Alaska life, and so often associated with Athabascan Indian culture, are not indigenous to Alaska or Canada. Athabascans...