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 hamlet of Cooper Landing, on the banks of the Kenai River just west of Kenai Lake, is one of the Kenai Peninsula’s recreation meccas. The community traces its history back to the 1896-97...
The U.S. Congress passed The Alaska Railroad Act in March 1914, authorizing construction of a federally-owned railway from an ice-free port on Alaska’s southern coast to Fairbanks in the territory’s Interior. President Woodrow Wilson...
Seward’s Jesse Lee Home For Children passed into history at the end of 2020 when its remaining buildings were demolished. The first Jesse Lee Home, an orphanage and boarding school for Aleut children, opened...
Oscar Frank Anderson was a Swedish immigrant living in Seattle with his wife and three children in 1915. When he heard about the government railroad that would likely be constructed in Alaska from Cook...
This article is reprinted from the 1-14-2022 edition of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. Photo and story by Amanda Bohman A 237-foot wooden steam-powered sternwheeler with five decks that was famous for plying Interior Alaska...
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...
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...
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...
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...
