Skagway is located at the foot of White Pass in Southeast Alaska. In 1897 Captain Billy Moore’s homestead encompassed much of the area, and when the Klondike Gold Rush began, his property was...
According to Jane Bryant’s book, Snapshots from the Past, a Roadside History of Denali National Park and Preserve, in 1914 a frontier settlement coalesced near the present-day visitor center (at that time outside the...
The Shrine of St. Therese, located 22 miles north of Juneau at picturesque Pearl Harbor, along Favorite Channel, is a Catholic religious retreat center. It is adjacent to Glacier Highway. Its genesis dates to...
Nellie Neal Lawing was born in 1873 and grew up on a Missouri farm. According to her 1940 autobiography, “Alaska Nellie,” since childhood she had an adventuresome spirit, and her mother called her “half...
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...
The 1980 book “Adventures in Alaska Journalism since 1903” relates that itinerant newspaper man, George M. Hill, freighted a small press from Dawson to Fairbanks in 1903. Once in Fairbanks he established the Weekly...
John Ballaine was the entrepreneur primarily responsible for initiating construction of the Alaska Central Railway (ACR) across the Kenai Peninsula. He is also credited with founding the town on Seward, the southern terminus of...
The Chilkat Pass corridor, crossing the Coast Mountains in Southeast Alaska, connects Lynn Canal with the Kluane Lake area of the Yukon Territory. The 1977 environmental impact statement for the Shakwak Project, a joint...
Suntrana, near Healy, takes its name from an Athabascan word meaning “burning hills,” denoting the smoke rising from smoldering coal seams nearby. Besides Usibelli Coal Mine, the area is best-known for the old Suntrana...
During and right after World War II there was a rapid influx of people into the Fairbanks area as the U.S. military expanded its presence. With the increased demands on the Alaska Railroad during...
