Anchorage’s Old City Hall served the city for over 40 years

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...

Marge Gull painting of Black Rapids Roadhouse

This painting shows Black Rapids Roadhouse, which was one of the most important and longest-operating roadhouses along the Valdez-Fairbanks Trail. The remains of the roadhouse are still visible at Mile 227.5 of the Richardson...

Keystone Canyon tunnel is one of the few remnants of Valdez railroad history

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...

This Dunkel Street cabin is one of the oldest buildings in downtown Fairbanks

The small log cabin shown in the drawing is located at 105 Dunkel Street,  just to the west of the Morris Thompson Cultural and Visitors Center in downtown Fairbanks. It is a unique part...

The Tolovana Tram, early Livengood’s jury-rigged transport system

Jay Livengood and Teddy Hudson discovered gold in the headwaters of the Tolovana River in 1914, leading to a minor gold rush in 1915. The resulting camp (eventually named Livengood) was remote, even though...

Anchorage’s old post office/court house building still a vital part of downtown

Anchorage’s old U.S. Post Office and Court House building is shown in the drawing. It is a poured concrete structure, and was part of an Anchorage building boom that began in 1936 and continued...

Fairbanks – 12-27-2021 – Out my back door after the storm

We had a major storm roll through Interior Alaska over the weekend – almost 2′ of snow, followed by temperatures near 40 degrees F above 0, rain and wind. Everything is now coated with...

Little remains of the once-important Cordova Naval Radio Station in Alaska

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...

The origins of Poker Flat Research Range

Poker Flat Research Range, owned and operated by the University of Alaska’s Geophysical Institute (GI), is a rocket range located at Chatanika, 30 miles north of Fairbanks. Construction on the facility began in 1968,...

Moose Creek near Sutton used to be a busy coal-mining area

The face shovel shown in the drawing is a World War II-era Buckeye “Clipper,” built by the Buckeye Traction Digger Company of Findlay, Ohio. It was used at the Premier coal mine on Moose...