Celebration of a Century

Celebration of aCentury 1915

2015

&PAST

PRESENT

Anchorage

IllustratIon/nadya GIlmore/aJoC

Railroad

Military

A special publication by

Oil and Gas

Aviation

CaptAin Cook & the Dena’ina

Page 2 • Celebration of a Century 1915 - 2015

“Proud to be Your Hometown Dealer Since 1963”

— Rod Udd, Owner

One Great Location on East 5th Avenue

QUALITY

276-1331

1-800-770-1330

www.anchoragechryslercenter.com

1915 - 2015 Anchorage: Present & Past

Alaska Journal of Commerce Telephone: 907-561-4772 Fax: 907-563-4744 www.alaskajournal.com Publisher

Rona Johnson (907) 275-2179 rona.johnson@morris.com Managing Editor

Andrew Jensen (907) 275-2165 editor@alaskajournal.com Ad Director

Jada Nowling (907) 275-2154 Circulation

(907) 275-2169 circulation@alaskajournal.com Production Manager

Maree Shogren (907) 275-2162 Graphic Designer

Nadya Gilmore (907) 275-2163 Reporters

Tim Bradner (907) 275-2159 Elwood Brehmer (907) 275-2161 DJ Summers (907) 275-2158

• Page 3

In Celebration of a Century It’s been a heck of a hundred years for Anchorage.

From a humble tent city to a bustling metropolitan area regularly ranked as one of the best places to live in America, Anchorage has seen a lot since it was established on the shores of Ship Creek.

In this special collection of stories produced by the Alaska Journal of Commerce, we examine the events and industries that have shaped Anchorage, the people who have chronicled the century by word and by film for this celebration, and include a look back at the original inhabitants of the region, the Dena’ina, and the English explorer Captain James Cook who was their first contact with Europeans.

While it is far from its fellow states in the Lower 48, Alaska has been an international crossroads since the first peoples began migrating to North America. Down to the reason for Anchorage’s founding as the headquarters of the Alaska Railroad, transportation has always played a major role in the city’s history.

Today, the Alaska Railroad is the only one of its kind in the U.S. — one that still carries cargo and passengers. Hundreds of thousands of visitors every year spend some time on the railroad traveling from Southcentral cruise ports to Denali National Park and the state’s Interior.

More than 80 percent of Alaska communities are not connected to the road system, a fact that hasn’t changed much since statehood in 1959. That means more freight

travels by air and sea; the state has more pilots per capita than anywhere else in the country, and it isn’t uncommon for a teenager to get a pilot’s license before a driver’s license.

The Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport is one of the busiest cargo hubs in the world and adjacent seaport Lake Hood is the busiest in the world with hundreds of operations daily during the hectic summer months.

Times of great stress and turmoil have also made Anchorage what it is today. World War II led to a rapid buildup in the thenterritory, and the state’s strategic importance remains today. It is a little-known fact that the Japanese bombed Dutch Harbor — which most people would more likely associated with the show “Deadliest Catch” — and occupied American territory in the Aleutian Islands in 1942 before being driven out the following year. Today Alaska has more veterans per capita than any other state.

The Great Alaska Earthquake in 1964 was the second-largest ever recorded, leaving a swath of destruction from Prince William Sound to Kodiak and sending deadly tsunamis down the West Coast.

Yet that destruction was followed by two of Alaska’s great leaders, Walter Hickel and Dan H. Cuddy, spearheading reconstruction by announcing they would build anew in Downtown Anchorage. Hickel built the Hotel Captain Cook, and Cuddy added eight stories to the First National Bank Alaska headquarters on

Fourth Avenue.

The quake had another side effect in that Anchorage became the marine hub for Alaska after ports were destroyed in Valdez, Whittier and Seward, with the latter having its northern rail line to Anchorage severed.

Today, nearly 90 percent of all the goods entering Alaska come through the Port of Anchorage.

Certainly what Alaska is best known for is the oil industry, and it isn’t hard to see its imprint around town. After Prudhoe Bay became — and still is — the largest North American oil field ever discovered, the two tallest buildings in town were built. One is now the home to ConocoPhillips, and the other was eventually sold to the State of Alaska and is now the Atwood Building.

When the oil money began flowing, Anchorage began to acquire the attributes and amenities of other major cities, and the companies are regularly the largest contributors to charitable and cultural events around the city.

And, naturally, Anchorage is a “green” city, and it was so long before such things were considered a must in municipal planning. The city’s very first planners recognized the importance of preserving green space, and Anchorage’s hundreds of miles of trails and thousands of acres of parks are a year-round source of recreation for outdoor enthusiasts.

Now home to more than 300,000 people in the metropolitan area, Anchorage is still young enough

Jensen to get excited about events such as a new sporting good retailer opening or the arrival of a long-desired restaurant franchise familiar to the many former residents of the Lower 48 who now call the state home.

It is hard to predict what the next 100 years will hold for Anchorage, but a few things will probably still be true: Moose will still make the radio traffic reports, people will still grumble about whether Anchorage is “really” Alaska and the Knik Arm Bridge still won’t be built.

Until then, we hope you’ll enjoy reading our chronicle of the first 100.

— Andrew Jensen Managing Editor Alaska Journal of Commerce

Table of Contents

Advertising Consultants

Zach Aregood (907) 275-2153 Ryan Estrada (907) 275-2114

Anchorage, railroad have ties that bind PAGE 4

ANCHORAGE & AVIATION: Flying Through Time PAGE 19

EXPORTING DEFENSE POWERED expansion PAGE 6

Building ANCHORAGE with a GREEN VISION PAGE 23

Oil: The business that built Anchorage, and almost broke it PAGE 12

ANCHORAGE’S PORT OF NECESSITY PAGE 27

Filmmaker: ‘Anchorage Is …’ opportunity PAGE 15

A Hundred Years, a Hundred Languages PAGE 29

Bringing 100 years of Anchorage to life PAGE 16

CAPTAIN COOK & THE DENAINA PAGE 31

Ken Hanni (907) 275-2155 Legal Notices

Michelle Ditmore (907) 275-2178 For advertising or general information call: (907) 561-4772 or Fax: (907) 5634744. E-mail: editor @alaskajournal.com.

Copying done for other than personal or internal reference use without the express permission of the Journal is prohibited.

Address requests for specific permission to the editor, Andrew Jensen.

Alaska Journal of Commerce (ISSN 0271-3276) is a statewide business newspaper of record published weekly (52 times a year) by Alaskan Publications, 301 Arctic Slope Avenue, Suite 350, Anchorage AK 99518. Alaskan Publications is owned by Morris Communications Corporation, P.O. Box 2123, Augusta, Georgia 30903-2123. (706) 7226060. Member Associated Press (AP), National Newspaper Association, The Network of City Business Journals and ACCN. Periodicals Mail Postage Paid at Anchorage, Alaska 99502-9986.

Subscriptions are $45 per year in municipality, $52/year rest of Alaska, $70/year out of state and may be ordered by calling (907) 561-4772.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Alaska Journal of Commerce, 301 Arctic Slope Avenue, Suite 350, Anchorage, AK 99518. USPS (413-310)

Page 4 • Celebration of a Century 1915 - 2015

Anchorage, railroad have ties that bind

By Elwood Brehmer Alaska Journal of Commerce

The Alaska Railroad is the tie that binds the state together.

It is the reason for Anchorage.

It exemplifies Alaska.

“To a large degree the railroad has mirrored, or led, depending on your perspective, the ups and downs of the state of Alaska. Everything from the impact of the 1964 earthquake to the tremendous growth when the pipeline came to pass, to even being a big part of the big drivers in Anchorage today,” Alaska Railroad Corp.

CEO Bill O’Leary said. “A lot of the (Anchorage) airport’s growth was, pardon the pun, fueled by

the ability of the railroad to move all that jet fuel down from the refinery in Fairbanks. It’s been a key participant in most of the larger events of the state.”

The Alaska Railroad’s story begins in earnest 101 years ago, a year before the founding of Anchorage.

President Woodrow Wilson signed the Alaska Railroad Act on March 12, 1914, which allowed him to task a group of engineers to investigate the prospect of building a rail line from Southcentral to the Interior. Those engineers mare up the Alaska Engineering Commission.

The act also approved $35 million for construction, a dollar fig-

Photo/Alaska Railroad Collection/Anchorage Museum

Babe White drives the first spike of the Alaska Railroad at Ship Creek in 1915. The City of Anchorage was founded by the decision to headquarter the railroad here.

Photo/Courtesy/Holland America Princess Alaska

Holland America Princess Alaska has 20 glass-domed cars that are pulled each summer by the Alaska Railroad. Ten are the largest of their kind in the world.

ure that ballooned with inflation induced by World War I, according to Alaska Railroad historian Jim Blasingame, but was still 60 percent more than the State of Alaska paid for the railroad seven decades later.

There were two spur lines the commission could’ve chose to build off of in 1914: the Alaska Syndicate railroad in Cordova and Seward’s 71-mile Alaska Northern Railway.

Seward was chosen because of politics and the “other” black gold, Blasingame said.

The Alaska Syndicate was owned by the Guggenheims and J.P. Morgan, who also controlled the nearby Kennecott copper mine. They did not like idea of the government building a railroad in their territory and Wilson didn’t like them, he said.

“It took the federal government — with the U.S. Treasury — to put together the money to build the railroad because the private sector, all of them that were attempting to do it, were doing it to make a profit, which was difficult to do.” Blasingame said.

“Congress was savvy enough to realize they needed to build a rail line to develop the territory. At the time that they decided to act their goal was to go for the black gold, which was coal.”

Blasingame retired from the Alaska Railroad Corp. in 2009 after a career that spanned five decades. He is currently researching a book detailing the complex history of the railroad’s transfer from the feds to the State of Alaska.

Despite the robust copper industry on the other end of Prince William Sound, the Alaska Engineering Commission ultimately recommended a route north from Seward because of the ability to reach coal near Healy and in the Matanuska Valley.

When construction began, so did Anchorage.

The July 10, 1915, Anchorage townsite auction formalized the tent city that formed at the mouth of Ship Creek, the area that remains the headquarters of the Alaska Railroad.

By the end of the year Anchorage had grown to 1,500 people and the rail stretched to Eagle River.

By the time President Warren Harding drove the Golden Spike near Nenana that completed construction on July 15, 1923, nearly $72 million had been spent building the Alaska Railroad, about 10 percent of the annual federal budget at that time.

The first sitting president to visit Alaska, Harding died from food poisoning Aug. 2 during a stop in San Francisco on his trip back from the territory.

After construction the railroad fell under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Interior.

Tourism, war, a great quake and oil A marketing campaign promoting “African safari-like” adventures in Alaska via the railroad was quickly developed to drive business to the fledgling railroad, Blasingame said.

Brochures printed during the depths of the Great Depression touted the territories rugged scenery and untapped hunting and fishing opportunities.

The Alaska Railroad first turned a profit in 1938.

In 1943, two tunnels were blasted through the Chugach Mountains allowing rail access to Whittier, a military port during World War II. For decades, the Downtown Anchorage Railroad Depot not only served as the executive offices for the railroad, but also housed the city’s phone system and morgue.

Competition from the brand new Seward Highway caused the railroad to cancel passenger service to Seward in 1953. The growth of the tourism industry ultimately led to the railroad reestablishing that service.

Barge service began out of Whittier in 1962, which allows the railroad to transport loaded railcars north from Seattle. It constitutes the longest rail line in America stretching from Fairbanks to Florida.

These days, the rail-barge service helps the railroad support North Slope oil and gas work by moving large quantities of pipe and other bulky construction modules as efficiently as possible, by rail.

The 1964 Good Friday Earthquake hit the Alaska Railroad with $30 million of damage, cut passenger service to Fairbanks for two weeks and freight service to Whittier for three.

The discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay four years later was a boon to Alaska and the railroad was not left out.

During construction of the trans-Alaska Pipeline System the railroad’s workforce grew to more than 1,300 in the mid-1970s, according to former employees. It has about 590 full-time employees today.

Blasingame said federal procedures during the time of rapid expansion hinted at the need for a

change of ownership.

“We were going like gangbusters and we couldn’t hire any permanent employees. We could hire temporaries, so we had probably 250 or so temps, but we would have to let them go before the last two weeks of the end of the calendar year and then hire them back after the first of the year,” he said.

“So we had to go through the federal policy exercise of terminating these temporary employees and then in another two weeks go through the federal process of hiring them back. It was all this paperwork; it was just unreal.”

Further, the Alaska Railroad had to keep federally adequate financial books because Congress appropriated its budget every year, while keeping a separate set of financials that met industry standards, according to Blasingame.

“Everything we did took twice as long,” he remarked.

Sale to the State When it came time for the federal government to sell the Alaska Railroad, late Sen. Ted Stevens led they way. Stevens first tried to give the State of Alaska the railroad through legislation in 1980.

At the same time the state was issuing the first Permanent Fund Dividend checks.

The act of philanthropy didn’t sit well with some in Congress.

“It was Sen. Howard Metzenbaum from Ohio that stood up on the floor of the U.S. Senate and said ‘If the State of Alaska can afford to give each of its citizens a $1,000 check then they can afford to pay for the railroad at market rate, whatever that is,’” Blasingame said. “Stevens called him a ‘pain in the ass’ on the Senate floor and its part of the Congressional record.”

A backlog of safety hazards and deferred maintenance cost the feds big time.

According to Blasingame, the fire-sale $22.3 million purchase price arrived at in 1983 came only after assessors deducted work that needed to be done to the railroad’s infrastructure and cut the market value of the Alaska Railroad from an initial estimate in the $250 million range.

Under federal ownership, which in 1967 shifted to the Department of Transportation, the Operational Safety and Health Administration had no jurisdiction over the Alaska Railroad and it showed.

When the State of Alaska officially took ownership on Jan. 5, 1985, it had plenty of work to do to bring its new toy up to code.

“At the time of transfer the federally-owned railroad had over 2,500 OSHA violations. Under the state we had five years to correct all that,” Blasingame said.

Since transitioning to a state corporation, the Alaska Railroad Corp. has operated as a for-profit business, a quasi-government entity that asks for money only when federal regulations require new

1915 - 2015 Anchorage: Present & Past

• Page 5 Photo/File/AJOC

Soon after the Alaska Railroad was completed in 1923, the federal government began marketing “Africanlike” safaris to the Last Frontier to build business for the fledgling company. Today the company carries about 500,000 visitors annually.

and expensive equipment.

As its CEO Bill O’Leary said, the Alaska Railroad helped lay the foundation for business growth at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, another government enterprise that supports 1 in 10 city jobs.

The railroad’s ability to cheaply ship jet fuel from the Flint Hills North Pole refinery to Anchorage helped support the logistical benefits inherent in Anchorage’s location and make the little city’s airport one of the busiest cargo hubs in the world.

Ultimately, the cost to run the refinery, which grew with oil prices, made it cheaper for airlines to buy their fuel elsewhere and have it shipped in to Anchorage and was the demise of the operation.

However, at its peak, the Flint Hills Anchorage fuel terminal received 12,000 railcars per year, according to the company.

Last full-service railroad Providing both freight and rail service under one roof is unique. The Alaska Railroad is the last full-service railroad in

the United States. The railroad’s place in mainland Anchorage’s tourism industry has only grown over the years.

Since rebounding from the Great Recession, which hit the state’s tourist-centric businesses hard from 2009-11, the Alaska Railroad has hauled nearly 500,000 Alaskans and Outsiders annually.

“I don’t believe there is any other railroad in the country that has the same impact on its state as the Alaska Railroad,” O’Leary said. “We’re many things to many people here.”

Visit Anchorage President and CEO Julie Saupe said the railroad

Photo/Alaska Railroad Collection/Anchorage Museum

The late former Alaska U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens speaks at a ceremony on July 12, 1984, marking the transfer of ownership of the Alaska Railroad from the federal government to the state. The State of Alaska acquired the railroad for a fire-sale price of $22.3 million and it remains today as the last full-service railroad in the nation offering passenger and cargo service.

offers a simple, but important alternative to the Southcentral’s limited road system.

“If we didn’t have the railroad I’m not sure we’d be able to manage all the visitors that we currently get,” Saupe said.

It’s estimated each tourist spends more than $900 once they get to Alaska.

Saupe said the shorter itineraries the railroad now offers also give tourists easy options to see Alaska, and stay a night or two longer.

When Saupe talks of the benefit cruise ships have on Anchorage, she talks about ships docking in Seward and Whittier as

well, because the cruisers will almost invariably make it to Anchorage on rail.

“The whole idea of the cruise tour was made more tangible in visitors’ eyes with the option of riding the railroad all the way into the Interior.

For more than 30 years, the railroad has partnered with the Anchorage School District’s King Career Center to train high school juniors and seniors for summer tour jobs.

“They have to learn the history of the railroad; they have to learn the history of Alaska; they have to know the flora, the

fauna,” Blasingame said. “It’s a wildly popular program.”

The program started in the last years of federal ownership and hesitation over hiring additional temporary employees forced the state Legislature to fund it for the first two years, according to Blasingame.

He said “Thank Yous” in the form of baked goods are periodically sent to the railroad’s offices — responses to the experiences passengers have had with their young tour guides.

Holland America Princess is one of the companies that offer cruise tour trips with the railroad.

HAP currently manages 20 cars that are run by the railroad, 10 of which are the largest domed passenger cars in the world, according to the company.

HAP’s rail maintenance superintendent John Crews has worked on the fleet for more than 20 years. He said there have been frustrations stemming from differing operating styles on both sides of the relationship, but open lines of communication have kept the partnership healthy.

Employees regularly change jobs between HAP and the railroad, he said.

While HAP’s passengers book a ticket with the tour company, Crews said it’s understood why they visit Alaska.

“People want to come to Alaska and ride the historic Alaska Railroad,” he said. “They don’t come up here to ride the Holland America railroad or the Princess railroad. People ask us all the time about the Alaska Railroad.”

“We’re just providing the vessel for them to ride on the Alaska Railroad.”

Elwood Brehmer can be reached at elwood.brehmer@alaskajournal.com

Page 6 • Celebration of a Century 1915 - 2015

DEFENSE EXPORTING POWERED

EXPANSION Photo/Michael Dinneen/For the Journal

By DJ Summers Alaska Journal of Commerce

“He who holds Alaska will hold the world,” Brigadier General William Mitchell told the House Military Affairs Committee in 1935.

Eighty years later, that statement has proven true time and again.

Without the military, Anchorage and Alaska would have had a tough time making the transition from the salmon- and gold-based territorial economy of the early 20th century to the oil-based economy of the present. Since 1940, the military has pumped thousands of people, thousands of jobs, and billions of dollars into the Anchorage economy, fueling everything from construction industry growth to the 4th Avenue bar scene.

Nearly one in 10 Alaskans are veterans, the highest per capita of any state in U.S. Institutions like the Anchorage Veterans Museum memorialize Alaska’s often understated importance in the nation’s military affairs, a point that even Alaskans can overlook: war built Anchorage as much as oil and the railroad.

“So much of (the Anchorage economy) depends on what happens elsewhere in the world,” said Neal Fried, a researcher at the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development. “We have such a large military establishment that it influences us in terms of having more impact here, whether it was Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, or the Cold War and WWII, which were the biggest single events that cemented the military presence for us.”

Cpl. Zachary Sisson of the 1st Battalion (Airborne), 501st Infantry Regiment is ready for a training jump on April 14 at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. The railroad started Anchorage and the oil business is sustaining it, but the constant military presence in Anchorage since the 1940s has been a stabilizing influence on the economy even as force levels have waxed and waned.

& NOW

THEN

Right Photo/Justin Connaher/U.S. Air Force photo; Left Photo/Office of History/Alaskan Air Command

COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT THEN AND NOW: Inviting the public on base for special events has long been a military tradition. At right, both at Elmendorf Air Force Base, the biennial Arctic Thunder show is seen in 2012 and at left is Armed Forces Day in 1967.

Buildup and WWII The harbinger of Anchorage’s military command of Alaska first came in 1934, when the AirCorps launched a flight of ten new allmetal Martin B-10 monoplane bombers to Fairbanks under command of Lt. Col. H. H. Arnold.

The Arnold Flight established the feasibility of aerial forces in Alaska, as well as its excellence as an aerial training ground, with vast, uninhabited swaths of varied terrain. Anchorage lobbied for military presence beginning as early as 1936.

“The people of Anchorage did everything they could to attract the military,” wrote Anchorage Times editor and publisher Robert Atwood in 1979. “The campaign was built mostly on facts such as topography, location of land, strategic importance, climate, availability of land, transportation and communication.

Those became a part of the official documents in Washington D.C. When the Army board came to Alaska in 1938 to select military sites, it had only to verify the facts already in hand in order to recognize the feasibility of making Anchorage the headquarters.”

See Expansion, Page 9

Left Photo/Office of History/Alaskan Air Command; Right Photo/US Air Force

DEFENDING ALASKA AIRSPACE THEN AND NOW: Beginning during the Cold War up until today, intercepts of Russian planes by Anchorage-based fighter jets have been a consistent role for the Alaskan Command. At left, an F-15 Eagle intercepts a Soviet TU-95 Bear in 1985 and at right, an F-22 Raptor makes the first intercept (also of a TU-95) of a Russian aircraft shortly after moving to Elmendorf in 2007.

Photos/File/AP

PRESIDENTS THEN AND NOW: President Dwight Eisenhower was the first president to visit Elmendorf, in June 1960. President Barack Obama spoke to soldiers and airmen during a stop while en route to Asia in 2009.

1915 - 2015 Anchorage: Present & Past

Congratulations

to the city of Anchorage on its centennial celebration.

All of us at Anchorage Associates in Radiation Medicine are proud to be a part of the long tradition of excellent cancer care in Alaska.

Yesterday  The state’s first cobalt machine is installed for the treatment of cancer at Providence Cancer Center, 1968.

Today

Provid en

ce Archives, Seattle, Washingt

on

Anchorage Associates in Radiation Medicine treats patients at Providence Cancer Center and across the state, utilizing state of the art treatment options such as Tomotherapy, Image Guided Radiation Therapy, Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy, Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy, and Brachytherapy.

Drs. Jamie Blom, Clare Bertucio, and John Halligan

Tomorrow Opening soon: Alaska Cyberknife, the state’s first Cyberknife center will provide the most advanced alternative to surgery for the treatment of cancerous and non-cancerous tumors. This new technology will allow real time tracking of tumors, and the ability to deliver radiation with sub-millimeter accuracy, minimizing side effects by sparing exposure to healthy tissue.

For more information, call: 907.952.6405

• Page 7

Page 8 • Celebration of a Century 1915 - 2015

1100 E Dimond Blvd Anchorage, AK 99515 907-565-6000 | 866-977-2562 (P) 907-565-6001 | 866-201-8222 (F) www.aknc.com | info@aknc.com

SPECIALIZING IN: WORLD CLASS CARE FOR WALK-IN CLINICS THE ENTIRE FAMILY...

• • • • • • • • • •

General Neurology Sleep Medicine Vascular Neurology Brain Injury Medicine Neurophysiology Neuromuscular Medicine Pain Medicine Neuroelectrodiagnostics Pediatric Neurology Neuropsychology

Migraine/HA

Brain Injury TIA/Stroke

...RIGHT HERE IN ALASKA.

*SAME DAY/Walk-In Appointments

FULL SERVICE NEUROLOGY CENTER AND CARE IN ONE PLACE • • • • •

Neurology Consultations Infusion Center Trigger Point Injections Board Certified Physicians Brain Injury Specialists

• • • • •

Dementia Evaluations Botox Therapy Occipital Nerve Blocks Migraine Clinic TIA/Stroke Clinic

• • • • •

3T GE Scanner BC Neuroradiologists Certified MRI Technologist Orbits/Pituitary Scans Internal Auditory Canal

• • • • •

70cm Wide Bore Open Ended BC MSK Radiologists Brian/Spine Scans Metastaic Spine Survey COW/MRA/MRV

• • • • •

EMG Testing EEG RT/SD Neurocognitive Assessments Dementia Evaluations Decisional Capacity

• • • • •

NCV Studies Evoked Potentials Neuropsych Testing Cognitive Baselines Mood Disorders

• • • • •

AASM Certified Sleep Lab BC Sleep Specialists Actigraphy MSLT/MWT CPAP Sales/Maintenace On-Site

• • • • •

Home Sleep Testing Registered PSG Techs PSG/CPAP Studies AASM Certified DME Center Private Rooms/Bathrooms

907-565-6000 (P) • www.aknc.com | info@aknc.com • 907-565-6001 (F)

PROVIDING CARE FOR: • Headaches & Migraines • Multiple Sclerosis • Epilepsy & Seizure Disorders • Sleep Disorders • Muscle Weakness • Numbness & Tingling • Traumatic Brain Injuries • TIA/Stroke after care

• Brain/Spine Tumors • ALS (Lou Gehrig Disease) • Aneurysm • Concussion • Vertigo & Dizziness • Facial Nerve Disorders • Lupus • Guillain-Barre Syndrome

• • • • • • • •

Huntington Disease Myasthenia Gravis Nerve Pain Parkinsons Disease Alzheimer's Restless Leg Syndrome Tremors Trigeminal Neuralgia... and more

1915 - 2015 Anchorage: Present & Past

Expansion:

• Page 9

Continued from Page 6

On Jan. 2, 1936, the Anchorage Times detailed a study, completed by the Aeronautics Commission of the City Council, listing 22 reasons why the U.S. military should put an air base in Anchorage instead of other possible Alaska locations, among them the geographic and physical points that still make Anchorage the hub of Alaska commerce; proximity to ports and commercial ocean lanes, headquarters of the Alaska Railroad, and absence of the Interior’s climatic and meteorological challenges.

“The military chose Anchorage specifically because it was a transportation hub,” said former Alaska Air Force historian John Cloe.

Cloe is the military version of the ubiquitous Alaskan transient worker who decides not to leave.

In 1966, Cloe stepped off a military transport between the Lower 48 and Vietnam and liked Anchorage enough to come back and stay. He served as the Air Force’s resident historian for 32 years until retirement in 2006.

“Alaska is like big ocean,” he said. “The only way to get anywhere is to fly. You need a central spot for all that.”

Military spending was slow throughout the 1930s, but the dam broke in 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. The U.S. government freed billions of dollars in military expansion, with Alaska as a key strategic holding to be developed and defended.

The importance of Alaska was borne out less than seven months after the attack on Pearl Harbor on June 3, 1942, when Japan bombed Dutch Harbor and eventually occupied U.S. territory in the Aleutian Islands of Attu and Kiska before being driven out in May and August, respectively, of 1943 following a brutal experience for troops ill-equipped for the weather along the 1,000-mile chain.

Congress appropriated more than $10 billion for a defense budget, President Franklin Roosevelt requested a 1.2 million-strong Army, the naval fleet was expanded by 70 percent, and $12.7 million was appropriated for the construction of Army base Fort Richardson and airbase Elmendorf Field. By 1941, $75 million had been slated for Alaska military projects.

From April 1940 to April 1941, the city’s population jumped from 4,000 to 6,000, establishing Anchorage as the largest Alaska city ahead of Fairbanks and Juneau.

By July 1941, the construction and support services related to the military boosted the population to 9,000.

By 1950, Anchorage claimed 32,060 residents, an eight-fold increase from a decade earlier.

That influx brought in some of the chaff typical of the population booms. The strip clubs and booze halls of the 1980s oil expansion had their equivalent during WWII. “Camp followers,” said Cloe with a slight smile. “People don’t talk about it much, but in those days Anchorage had a pretty sizable red light district.”

The entertainment wasn’t all seedy. The United Services Or-

&

THEN

NOW

Left Photo/Office of History/ Alaskan Air Command; Right Photo/Google Maps

THEN AND NOW: Elmendorf Air Force Base has swelled in size since 1940, and the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson now covers some 80,000 acres in Anchorage.

Left Photo/Office of History/Alaskan Air Command; Right Photo/File/AP

RUNWAYS THEN AND NOW: Elmendorf, originally at Merrill Field, became home to a squadron of 40 F-22 Raptors in 2007. After the original deployment of Raptors in 2007, Alaska’s global strategic importance was emphasized as the home to more than a fifth of the U.S. F-22 fleet.

Left Photo/Office of History/Alaskan Air Command; Right Photo/U.S. Air Force

HOUSING THEN AND NOW: Base housing has improved considerably since tent barracks were first placed at Elmendorf in 1940.

Since 2005, the base has privatized most of its housing, which has created economic impact for both the companies that manage the properties and the contractors who build and renovate them.

Left Photo/Office of History/Alaskan Air Command; Right Photo/Senior Airman Kristin High/U.S. Air Force

TROOP ENTERTAINMENT THEN AND NOW: What eventually became USO Shows began in 1942 with a pair of celebrity visits to Alaska.

At left, comedians Bob Hope, his sidekick Jerry Colonna and jazz artist Tony Romano are seen in a foxhole at Elmendorf in 1942. At right, the rapper Ludacris performs in 2011 at Sullivan Arena for a crowd that included 2,000 members of the U.S. Air Force Reserve 477th Fighter Group.

ganization, or USO, has long claimed Anchorage as the first stop on overseas tours. The first celebrity to ever tour front-line bases was actor Joe Brown, who traveled throughout Alaska and the Aleutian Islands in 1942.

Bob Hope also visited Elemendorf in summer 1942, after a former staffer who’d been drafted

and stationed in Alaska wrote him urging Hope to visit. Hope also visited Nome, Fairbanks and Cordova while in the state.

The military’s Alaska expansion brought nearly $1 billion in construction projects, including critical parts the modern Anchorage commercial infrastructure.

The Anton Anderson Memo-

rial Tunnel was completed in 1943 as a link between Whittier’s deep-water port, used for troop and military supply ingress, and the railroad’s main line at Portage. The tunnel, and the $11 million port project that went with it, established Whittier as the military port while Seward handled commercial freight.

The new tunnel and port saved 50 miles of mountainous travel from the railway to Seward and allowed 75 percent more freight onto the Alaska Railroad.

The Alaska Highway, or Alcan, which runs 1,422 miles from Dawson Creek, British Columbia, See Expansion, Page 10

Page 10 • Celebration of a Century 1915 - 2015

Expansion:

Continued from Page9

to Delta Junction, had its roots in war as well. The $138 million project was completed in 1942 to help speed supplies northward to droves of incoming Alaskastationed soldiers and opened to commercial traffic in 1948.

Alaska’s aviation infrastructure depended largely on military development. Merrill Field, the only general use airfield in Alaska since 1930, was shared by military and civilians but could not handle the new capacity of commercial airliners following WWII. The military pressed to have another airfield built to handle commercial flights, leading to the construction of the Anchorage International Airport in 1951, now one of the busiest cargo hubs in the world.

Cold War and oil If WWII established Alaska’s military presence, the Cold War cemented it.

By 1947, the post-war tension between the U.S. and the Soviet Union spilled into the open and brought changes with it. Warfare had shifted from ground troops to aerial bomb assaults and the threat of nuclear conflict.

Aviation and population centers became more significant to military operations. Alaska’s close proximity to the Asian continent, so pertinent to the Pacific Theater against the Japanese, would prove just as important in the lengthy ri-

valry with the Soviet Union.

The U.S. government established the Alaskan Command Jan. 1, 1947, the same year of the Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, and formation of the Department of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and tasked it with developing infrastructure. The Department of the Air Force was also created that year when President Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947.

All told, the military spent $1.2 billion on Alaska military construction between 1947 and 1957. This included an entirely new Fort Richardson and a sophisticated air defense network, which required extensive command based in Anchorage.

“The current Fort Richardson was built during the early 1950s and the Air Force assumed complete responsibility for Elmendorf,” said Cloe. “The important point, however, was the economic and cultural impact of building a large base next to a small civilian population center.

It propelled Anchorage to the forefront as the economic and political center of the state.”

The military population of Anchorage went from 25,000 in 1947 to 48,000 in 1957. The civilian population grew from 83,000 to 180,000.

Also in 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, and the prominence of aerial bombers waned in the face of missiles

and nuclear warheads. Though military presence around Alaska would be scaled back to accommodate new developments, Alaska’s role in combating Soviet aggression remained.

“The modernization resulted in a dramatic increase in Soviet bomber intercepts off the coast of Alaska,” wrote Cloe. “The first one had occurred in 1961. The intercepts between that year and 1988 averaged from 1 to 18 per year. In 1987, the number of intercepts climbed to 33, and then began declining with the approach of the end of the Cold War, dropping to 15 in 1991.”

By the time oil was discovered at Prudhoe Bay in 1968, Anchorage had begun moving away from military as its largest economic force a decade after the Cook Inlet oil discoveries in 1957. By 1980, the percent of military-related Anchorage population had fallen to 15 percent from 33 percent in 1967.

After the Cold War ended with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Alaska lost nearly a quarter of its active military. Fort Richardson lost half its strength by 1995, and the Anchorage military population hit its lowest point in 2002, with 8,503 total troops and the military-related population percentage down to 8 percent.

In 2005, the Defense Base Closure Realignment Commission, or BRAC, report merged the Army’s Fort Richardson with Air

Force’s Elmendorf along with 11 other U.S. joint bases. The creation of Joint Base ElmendorfRichardson, or JBER, became official in 2010.

Cementing community ties Beyond bridging the economic gap between the mining days and the oil days, Anchorage’s armed forces in the mid-20th century were integral in helping the city through the Alaska Good Friday Earthquake.

On March 27, 1964, the fourminute earthquake claimed 115 Alaskan lives in the Southcentral area and shredded the state landscape from Anchorage to Prince William Sound and south to Seward and Kodiak.

Anchorage had no disaster plan or disaster funding at the time. Lt. Gen. Raymond Reeves, Commander-in-Chief of the Alaskan Command, relayed the situation to Washington, D.C., and President Lyndon Johnson declared Alaska a major disaster.

More than 1,350 Alaska National Guard were deployed to conduct search and rescue and set up emergency services for Anchorage; 1,365 Anchorageites ended up in the Army’s emergency shelter.

During the response, the Military Air Transport Service set an all-time cargo airlift record with a 3.7-million pound delivery of relief supplies from McChord Air Force Base in Washington.

“The relationships (between civilians and military) have always been good,” Cloe said.

“Both depend on each other. The military has always been there in time of need, especially during the 1964 earthquake.”

Here and now After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon and the ensuing military buildup, Anchorage’s military saw a revival. From the 2002 low of 8,503, Anchorage military personnel grew to 10,889 in 2005 as Fort Richardson’s roster swelled from 2,116 in 2002 to 4,066 in 2005.

With the Arctic ice warming to trade possibilities and resource development, as well a unease over Russia’s military actions in the Arctic Circle and elsewhere, Alaska has regained some of its Cold War-level strategic importance.

“In the 21st century,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, “Alaska is prime military real estate: we have the skies, we have the community support and we reside on the frontlines of the Asia-Pacific region, overlooking the emerging threats from the West.”

Russian bomber intercepts are also increasing. Between April 2014 and May 2015, fighter jets from Elmendorf have intercepted Russian jets nearing U.S. airspace off the Alaska or Canada coast on several occasions.

Service, Value, and Convenience

Proud sponsor of the Anchorage Centennial Celebration Federally insured by NCUA

Alaska USA circa 1967

1915 - 2015 Anchorage: Present & Past

The strategic relevance has given the Alaska Congressional delegation ammunition to fight possible cuts.

The Army is working to reduce its troop strength under the Army 2020 Force Structure Realignment plan, a result of the 2011 Budget Control Act, also known as sequestration. If the cuts are fully executed as proposed, the Army’s total force would shrink from 570,000 soldiers to 450,000 by 2017.

Force reductions at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson are focused on the Army’s airborne 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, a potential loss of 5,000 troops and their 9,000 family members. If 14,000 people left Anchorage, the city’s population would shrink by 4.5 percent, according to Anchorage Economic Development Corp. President and CEO Bill Popp.

Scott Goldsmith and Pamela Cravez of the Institute of Social and Economic Research, or ISER, at the University of Alaska Anchorage estimated that $435 million of the $2.97 billion publically funded construction budget in Alaska this year will be for national defense spending, up 10 percent from 2014.

According to Goldsmith and Cravez, military construction spending in Alaska peaked at $760 million in 2006. During fiscal year 2014, JBER employed or housed 34,723 people, 3,562 of whom were

&

THEN

• Page 11

NOW

Left Photo/Office of History/Alaskan Air Command; Right Photo/Michael Dinneen/For the Journal

TROOP LEVELS THEN AND NOW: The first major transport of military equipment to Alaska came in 1934 with the “Arnold Flight” led by Lt. Col. H. H. Arnold of 10 brand new B-10 bombers. At right, 90 troops from the 1st Battalion (Airborne), 501st Infantry Regiment, prepare for a training jump out of a C-17 Globemaster on April 14. Active military, civilian employees and their families related to JBER now amount to nearly 35,000, or about 10 percent of the area population.

Left Photo/Percy Jones/JBER Public Affairs; Right Photo/Office of History/Alaskan Air Command

DOWNTOWN PARADES THEN AND NOW: Downtown troop parades are still an annual fixture in Anchorage. At right, the 4th Infantry Regiment marches down Fourth Avenue in 1940. At left, soldiers from B Company, 425th Brigade Special Troops Battalion, 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, march down Sixth Avenue during the 2011 Fur Rendezvous Festival parade.

civilians, with a total payroll of $975 million, and the military ranks as

the top employer in Anchorage.

“Basically,” Fried said, “there

wouldn’t be an Anchorage without the military.”

DJ Summers can be reached at daniel. summers@alaskajournal.com.

SERVING ANCHORAGE FOR 70+ YEARS

With locations in Fairbanks and Anchorage, Kenworth Alaska has been providing award winning customer service, parts and truck sales to Alaskans for over 40 years.

Fairbanks: 2262 Van Horn Rd., 907.455.9900 Anchorage: 2838 Porcupine Dr., 907.279.0602 Toll Free: 800.478.0602

www.kenworthalaska.com

Like Us on Facebook!

Page 12 • Celebration of a Century 1915 - 2015

Oil: The business that built Anchorage, and almost broke it

By Tim Bradner Alaska Journal of Commerce

Oil has made Anchorage what it is today, but it has been a wild and rocky ride at times.

In the 1950s, before statehood, Anchorage’s city limits ended at 15th Street. Oil was discovered on the Kenai Peninsula in 1958, an event that helped usher in statehood and injected a huge shot of confidence into the small city.

State lease sales leading to development of the Cook Inlet oilfields and later the big North Slope discoveries.

Anchorage expanded steadily, riding the construction boom of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System along with Fairbanks and Valdez. The population of the Anchorage Borough swelled by more than 50,000 people between 1970 and 1980, according to U.S. Census figures.

The city became a service center and regional headquarters community for oil and gas companies working in the state.

Oil firms first leased office space and then built large buildings that still mark the city’s skyline.

ARCO Alaska built its downtown office building in 1983 standing 22 stories and holding more than 677,000 square feet, now occupied by ConocoPhillips.

BP first built on C Street in the city’s Midtown, what is now Northrim Bank’s headquarters, and then constructed a larger building, its current location, also in Midtown at the intersection of Benson Boulevard and the Seward Highway.

Downtown, the Hunt brothers, also in the oil business, built the 20-story Hunt Building on Seventh Avenue and later sold it to the State of Alaska. It has been renamed the Atwood Building and houses state offices.

ConocoPhillips sold its building in 2013 for $104 million to JL Properties and Cook Inlet Region Inc., the Alaska Native regional corporation for Southcentral Alaska.

Another Alaska Native regional corporation, NANA Development Corp., now occupies the six-story building constructed by Unocal in 1969 on Ninth Avenue.

The Alaska Native regional and village corporations were created under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act that passed in 1971. The act paved the way for the TAPS construction and created Alaska-owned companies that have since become major players and employers in the state oil and gas business.

First oil, then money pipeline flows The most exciting ride began in 1980, however, when the other oil pipeline — the money one from Juneau — began to pump dollars. State legislators had concluded the 1979 session with a modest state budget and when they returned a few months later there was an unexpected billion dollars in the treasury.

Oil was now flowing through TAPS and the Iran Revolution had sent oil prices skyrocketing.

Photo/File/AP

Crews on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System install pairs of vertical supports north of the Yukon River in this October 1975 photo. Construction of the pipeline created a population boom in Anchorage, growing the population by some 50,000 people between 1970 and 1980.

A spending spree was set off and it didn’t stop until 1986 when oil prices collapsed and Anchorage’s construction-fueled economy bottomed with a big thud. It was a wild time.

“People were building houses for the people building houses,” former Gov. Bill Sheffield said of the times.

Legislature was on infrastructure, recalls Bob Poe, a University of Alaska Anchorage business professor who was a state and local official during those years.

There was a lot of pent-up demand fueling the push for spending, as Alaskans felt they had waiting too long to taste the oil bonanza.

age alone and 10,000 new residential unit permits issued in one year, a rate not seen since. There are now about 8,000 workers in construction in Anchorage.

Some legislators, along with Gov. Bill Sheffield, who had just been elected, worked to put on the brakes. The Alaska Permanent Fund was created in 1977 to save some of the oil bonanza and the Fund’s conservative management structure was established in 1979 by lawmakers.

That was a close vote, however, as there was substantial support for using the Fund as an Alaska development bank, which would have only added to the infrastructure spending.

Sheffield meanwhile cancelled the big Susitna hydro project — financial advisors said it couldn’t be built without committing the Permanent Fund — as well as a poorly-planned project to export barley from a big state agricultural project at Delta.

Bubble bursts

Photo/Courtesy/Alaska Oil and Gas Association

The Swanson River field discovery in Cook Inlet in 1957 was the start of Alaska’s oil economy, which ramped up just more than a decade later with the discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay. Prudhoe remains the largest oil reservoir ever discovered in North America.

Banks were happy to lend, too happy it turned out. New banks were formed and new homes, buildings and condominiums sprouted across the city.

Downtown, the Performing Arts Center and Egan Convention Center were built along with Sullivan Arena and a new, larger Loussac Library building in the city’s Midtown.

Although most remember all the new housing being built at the time, the big emphasis in the

“The state has no experience in handling something like this, so the money was being spent as fast as legislators could find places to spend,” Poe recalls.

Lawmakers were calling their constituents, asking for ideas for spending money.

Bill Popp, now president of the Anchorage Economic Development Corp., was living in Anchorage and Kenai during those years and recalled there were 20,000 construction workers in Anchor-

It all crashed to a close in 1986 when oil prices dropped to less than $10 a barrel.

“Oil companies reined in their spending and the state had no rainy day fund, no reserves,” Poe said.

Sheffield slashed state spending sharply which, in Poe’s view, precipitated the sharp regional recession which followed. Suddenly, a billion dollars in state construction spending vanished.

“We had a small economy at the time, and the effect was devastating,” Poe said.

In the next year and a half, estimates were that 40,000 people turned in the keys to their condos and homes and left town as values collapsed.

Neal Fried, an economist with the state Dept. of Labor and Workforce Development,

said Anchorage’s population dropped from 232,683 in 1986 to 221,480 in 1988.

“I had just bought a house on the hillside, at the peak of the market, paying $180,000. The value dropped to $145,000,” Poe said. “I was under water on that mortgage for 13 years. In my neighborhood every seventh house was empty.”

Condominium and townhouse values dropped by 50 percent, or more. Condo units at the lower end of the spectrum suffered more. Units priced at $70,000 in 1985 sold at $10,000 two years later, if they sold at all.

Bill Popp was lucky. He and his wife bought a condo for $20,000 in 1981 and sold it for $80,000 in 1983 when Popp and his family moved to Kenai, Popp said. He later heard the unit plunged back to $20,000 in value and was foreclosed on.

Poe said, “For many people this was a rude awakening to the downside of financial leveraging. I had friends who were living for free because they had bought six-plexes and had five units rented out. But then those units went empty.

“Resources were quickly drained, and people got into real financial trouble.”

In the next two years, a third of the city’s population left town, Poe recalled.

Oil prices started edging up, giving people hope, but then dropped again. BP and ARCO Alaska, the flagship oil operators, laid off several hundred employees, which deepened the community’s despair.

During this dark time, Federal Express decided to locate a global cargo-sorting center at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, which prompted United Parcel Service to also locate a cargo hub. The new cargo hubs

1915 - 2015 Anchorage: Present & Past created several hundred new jobs and also made Anchorage homebase for FedEx and UPS flight crews, which helped the housing situation.

These moves began to restore confidence, Poe said.

Out of the crashing of banks a stronger financial sector also emerged.

National Bank of Alaska, now Wells Fargo, and Poe First National Bank of Anchorage, now First National Bank Alaska, the city’s major banks before the boom, emerged in good shape, even stronger in fact, because they had followed conservative lending practices.

Then-FNBA President Dan H. Cuddy, who passed away May 12, had made calculated decisions to start pulling back speculative lending several years before the recession hit.

“We were accused of being unfair to peo- Popp ple, not doing the right thing,” Cuddy said in an interview with the Journal in 2012. “We took a beating. We lost deposits.

But on the other hand, we came out of the ‘80s still here.”

Chris Clifford, a Wells Fargo vice president who had just joined National Bank of Alaska in 1986, recalls that National Bank had started pulling back on its real estate lending in 1984, seeing that the market was be-

coming overheated.

The two banks moved quickly to scoop up low-priced assets of the failed banks.

“We saw the oversupply building in real estate, and how artificial it was. Our bank has been in business since 1916 and we’ve ridden these kind of things before. Because we had conservative principles we were in a much better position, and we were able to buy assets of four of the failed banks,” Clifford said.

Clifford said the local economy is more mature now.

“For one thing we have a lot of individuals with a lot of equity in their homes. That wasn’t true in the 1980s when people could get in with low down payments,” he said.

A new bank, Northrim Bank, was started in 1990, and continues today celebrating its 25th year in business.

The three banks that emerged from the 1980s recession — Wells Fargo, FNBA and Northrim — today hold about 72 percent of all state deposits, or about $8.7 billion as of June 2014 Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. market share reports.

Valdez tragedy leads to recovery The recession really ended, Poe said, when the Exxon Val-

dez tanker hit Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound in March 1989, spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil. Money poured into Southcentral Alaska as cleanup crews went to work. Well over a billion dollars hit the street. “It was cash on the street and was paid very quickly,” Poe recalled.

It was visible too, because hundreds of people were working with good wages on cleanup and a lot of equipment and supplies were being ordered fast and paid for. It was a huge economic stimulus.

“People were just looking for hope, and that they could see people working and making good money boosted morale,” Poe said.

The turning point was 1990 with a gradual, steady growth of jobs and a diversification of the economy that has made the city more resilient to periodic oil price shocks.

There were four strategic developments. One was an unexpected, hugely positive effect of the large layoffs by ARCO and BP in the early 1990s, Poe said.

Highly skilled managers and engineers departed the companies with large severance packages. Many stayed in Anchorage and started their own technical service firms, going back to work in the industry.

There was a jump in Alaska business formation and a gain in professional services employment that closely matched the decline in oil jobs.

“These guys knew the industry would continue working but that a lot of the work would be contractSee Oil, Page 14

• Page 13

Photo/Courtesy/BP

The Prudhoe Bay field startup was June 20, 1977, and it is still the largest field ever discovered in North America 38 years later. On March 13, 1969, the Prudhoe Bay confirmation operator BP announced a major strike about seven miles from the ARCO Prudhoe Bay discovery well, at the site seen here.

Photo/Courtesy/BP

The construction of Prudhoe Bay included a barge armada transporting the facilities to the North Slope. Nearly all the major oil field equipment were constructed as huge modules (as large as 2,6000 tons) on the coasts of California and Washington and transported to Prudhoe Bay by barge.

Cheers for 100 years!

Anchorage Centennial 1915 - 2015

They Said It Couldnʼt Be Done...

We Did The Impossible.

Participating in Anchorageʼs success for over 30 years!

July 2001

July 1988 Aug. 1984 Microcom installs first 24 hr. live TV broadcast reception system for KIMO ABC 13

First KU satellite teleport in Alaska

Nov. 1988 Microcom completes first commercial satellite system in Alaska.

Microcom installs first cable modem system in rural Alaska.

126 W International Airport Rd. 264-3474

July 2015 Microcom celebrates 31 years of service!

In business since 1984.

Page 14 • Celebration of a Century 1915 - 2015

Oil:

Continued from Page 13

ed out,” Poe said.

That was the foundation of the strong Alaska-based oil services industry that exists today, he said.

‘Big Box’ retailers arrive The emergence of Anchorage out of its recession led to two other strategic developments. First, major U.S. retail chains who were not in Alaska saw opportunities, and that led to the sharp growth of “big box” retail stores, which also helped strengthen the retail sector and anchor shopping malls.

Gradually the empty strip malls filled up, too.Second, the regional heath care industry took off.

“A lot of physicians saw opportunities here once they realized the local economy was sustainable, and they began investing in local practices and specialized services,” Poe said.

This reduced the need for Alaskans to travel out of state for medical care and led to a sustained growth in health care employment, he said.

Finally, Alaska Native corporations became major investors and employers in Anchorage in the 1990s, locating the headquarters for subsidiary businesses, and sometimes the corporate headquarters, in the city.

The economic growth of Native-owned corporations was a new paradigm for Alaska because while these firms own Alaska businesses and became major employers in the state, they also invested out-of-state including doing business worldwide through 8(a) minority contracting with federal agencies.

Profits earned outside Alaska are being brought home by Alaskan-owed firms and reinvested in

Photo/File/AP

Former Alaska Gov. Bill Sheffield, seen here with former President Ronald Reagan in Fairbanks in 1984. When oil prices collapsed in 1986, Sheffield was forced to cut about a billion dollars out of the state budget, which along with sinking housing values pushed Anchorage into a recession in the mid-1980s.

the state, much of that in Southcentral Alaska, Poe said.

“About 75 percent of the Native corporations’ Alaska employees live in Anchorage and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough,” Poe said.

The combined effect of this diversification, plus the accumulation of more savings by the state government, to cushion oil-revenue shocks, meant that the next time oil prices plunged, in 1998 and 1999, again to about $8 per barrel, the economy felt almost no impact, Poe said.

Oil companies cut spending along with state, although critical state programs were sheltered by money taken from “rainy day” savings, but other industries like air cargo, tourism, fisheries and mining continued unabated. The psychological hit of the 1986 oil

price crash was absent, as the economy was now bigger and Alaskans were more confident.

In 2009, when the national recession hit, Alaskans escaped largely unaffected. Oil prices again plunged, although very briefly, and it was hardly noticed.

Price slump not a recession rerun Today Anchorage faces another test of confidence. Oil prices have again dropped sharply, creating big deficits for the state, and while there will be cuts in state spending they are not as drastic as might have been the case because of large state cash reserves.

Bill Popp, of AEDC, feels the regional economy will ride through this oil price drop just like it did in 1998 and 2009.

“Right now Anchorage is doing

quite well. This is not 1986. There will be a pinch but it’s not a calamity,” Popp said. “Anchorage’s economy is still at record highs, with record low unemployment.

Even the petroleum industry is still at record high employment.”

Neal Fried, at the state Labor Department, agrees with Popp but said the oil industry layoffs may yet appear and that the impacts of state spending reductions will be felt, but it will take time.

“The numbers for now look fine. Real estate looks okay. New housing starts are normal. We’re not seeing any effects yet, no big layoffs,” Fried said.

There are psychological effects, he said, but the impact on consumer and business confidence, will be difficult to predict.

However, while there are few negative impacts so far it is also important to realize that Anchorage has stopped growing, Fried said. Local jobs and population numbers are about the same as they were last year. That slowdown, however, happened before the current oil price slump.

There is another aspect to low oil prices, however, Popp said.

Lower prices will impair state spending but low fuel prices are boosting some industries like fisheries, tourism and air cargo, which is now seeing new growth at Anchorage’s airport.

“We know that about one out of 10 jobs depends on the airport, which is largely cargo-driven, and also that one of 10 jobs here depend on tourism, so this means one of five jobs in Anchorage are in industries that are benefitting from low oil prices,” Popp said.

“It seems counter-intuitive. Oil accounts for about a third of our

Photos/Andrew Jensen/AJOC

The 1980s saw a construction boom in Anchorage tied to oil production as ARCO Alaska built the tallest building in the state at 22 stories in 1983, now the home to ConocoPhillips. The Hunt Brothers built what is now the Atwood Building, standing 20 stories, which also opened in 1983. State money from oil production also funded the Loussac Library in Midtown, and the Performing Arts Center and Egan Convention Center lining the city Town Square. Although oil prices have fallen again, the city is better positioned and diversified to endure the slump than it was in the 1980s.

economy and with a 50 percent drop in oil prices one would expect to see huge ripple effects by now.”

To be sure, the petroleum industry’s momentum is still riding on a rapid pace of new investment that happened after 2013, when the state Legislature modified the state petroleum tax.

The companies are still investing, in new fields and drilling rigs that were planned, and there have been no big layoffs.

Whether the pace of industry investment continues will depend on whether oil prices gradually recover. That is expected but the timing is uncertain.

Meanwhile, work on the big North Slope gas project, the Alaska LNG project, continues as scheduled, another sign of the industry’s confidence. However, important decisions on Alaska LNG are due to be made next year, which will be an important signal.

Popp worries that there could be damage to the economy from the current oil price slump, and that it will be mainly self-inflicted. Every economic sign is to the contrary, but “it seems like Alaskans are trying hard to talk themselves into the belief that there will indeed be a recession, and if they do that hard enough there just might be one.”

He cites business confidence survey data from Anchorage employers that show most business leaders feel their own firms will do fine in 2015 but that other businesses might not. This worry, which is contrary to the economic data, mainly reflects perceptions from the media and the extensive news coverage of the state budget problem and the clash between legislators over spending priorities.

“This is a perception. It’s knowing what you know about your own business, but then hearing a lot about the state budget situation,” Popp said. “That is a political problem, not an economic problem. Our state has large financial reserves.”

However, extensive news coverage of the clash between legislators may be undercutting local confidence, he worries.

“It’s good to have a robust debate in the Legislature over spending, but we need to be concerned about any ripple effects this can have on the economy,” he said.

Popp thinks the state budget problem will eventually sort itself out. The petroleum industry will continue to produce oil and the natural gas pipeline, if it is built, may become a significant source of new state revenue, in the long term.

In the short term, Alaskans are beginning to accept that is too risky to depend on one revenue source from a cyclical commodity like oil, and that other revenue sources should be developed.

For example, the investment earnings of the state’s large cash reserves, such as the Permanent Fund, might be fashioned into a revenue tool, and without disturbing the popular dividend paid by the Fund. The Permanent Fund is the accumulated savings from oil royalties and investment income, and it was created in 1976 to help sustain the state when oil revenues wind down.

1915 - 2015 Anchorage: Present & Past

• Page 15

Photos/Courtesy/Todd Hardesty

Filmmaker: ‘Anchorage Is …’ opportunity Photo/Michael Dinneen/For the Journal

“Anchorage Is …” director Todd Hardesty launched Alaska Video Postcards Inc. in 1987 when his wife helped convinced the late former Gov. Wally Hickel to invest in his business. Some 26 years later he and fellow filmmaker John Larson were awarded the contract to produce the official film for the Anchorage Centennial.

Rather than attempt to chronicle 100 years of history in just an hour, Hardesty said he wanted the film to showcase the character of the city’s residents.

By DJ Summers Alaska Journal of Commerce

Todd Hardesty sweats the small stuff. That, he argues, is what really shows a city’s character.

Hardesty’s film “Anchorage Is…” recounts the city’s history from the days of tented pool halls and imposing mustaches up to the present, through countless archived photos, video clips, and interviews with historians, school teachers, photographers, and assorted Anchorageites.

Hardesty and fellow filmmaker and narrator John Larson, an Emmy-winning television journalist, pitched their idea to the Alaska Humanities Forum in June 2013 for the contract to make the official centennial film. Like excited prospectors on a promising claim, they began filming their interviews before the contract was awarded to them in November 2013.

The film suggests Alaskans are made, not born, and Hardesty fits the bill. Hardesty grew up in Northern California and went to college in Tacoma, Wash., then moved to Juneau in 1978 to work

as a news director at KJNO radio.

In 1981, he moved to Anchorage to work as a reporter and news director at KTUU, where he built the skills he would later use for his own company.

In 1987, Hardesty banded together with friends to begin his

company, Alaska Video Postcards Inc., which specializes in Alaska portraiture and business promotion videos.

He said he’d applied and been rejected by a half-dozen banks for the quarter-million dollar startup cost. Bankers, he said, recom-

mended he get a high-profile business partner to co-sign the loan. Hardesty thought first of former Gov. Wally Hickel, a stranger, and approached him with the company idea.

“Wally first said ‘no’ because one of his sons said, ‘Don’t do it,’” Photos/Courtesy/Todd Hardesty

Filmmaker Todd Hardesty spent countless hours scouring state historical archives and even eBay for many of the photos seen throughout his documentary “Anchorage Is …”

Hardesty recalled. “But my wife at the time went back and talked to him and said, ‘You’re the guy who’s always talking about how you believe in the young people, how you believe in opportunity.’”

Hickel agreed enough to sign as a business partner, reinforcing Hardesty’s vision of what built Anchorage: adventurous people seeking a stroke of good luck.

“Opportunity is always knocking here,” Hardesty said. “It is always here. Just like those people hammering tents in these photos.

It’s the same opportunity for the railroad conductor at the end of ‘Anchorage Is...’ And opportunity, for me, was knocking in 1987. It resonates here. It bounces off the Chugach Mountains.”

“Opportunity” is how Hardesty himself finishes the sentence “Anchorage Is…” and he said the film reflects that sentiment.

“Anchorage Is…” could easily have been a history lesson about the role of the federal government and military in the city’s growth, and incorporates an array of footSee Filmmaker, Page 18

Page 16 • Celebration of a Century 1915 - 2015 Photo/Michael Dinneen/For the Journal

Anchorage author Charles Wohlforth stands on the shores of Ship Creek, where Anchorage was founded as a tent city in 1915. Wohlforth has chronicled the city’s history in a just-released book, “From the Shores of Ship Creek” now available around town.

Bringing 100 years of Anchorage to life

By Elwood Brehmer Alaska Journal of Commerce

The task: tell the century-long story of Anchorage in 124 pages. The man to do it: 50-year Anchorage resident Charles Wohlforth.

“From the Shores of Ship Creek” recounts Anchorage’s first 100 years through the stories of its residents. Each of the 14 chapters is a time capsule of the city’s history.

“I really wanted it to be a character-based book because characters are the fundamental building blocks of stories, and stories are what make history interesting and meaningful,” Wohlforth said during an interview at an Anchorage café.

However, it is not simply a compilation of recycled tales from best-known names. The final characters were chosen only after Anchorage itself gave thorough input.

Wohlforth chose the periods based on his extensive historical knowledge of the city — he’s authored several books on Alaska and told the stories of some of the state’s most influential people — and held public forums

to get ideas for the characters.

He had never heard of Nellie Brown (chapter four) until a participant of one such meeting suggested the early Anchorageite. “(Brown) turned out to be the most interesting person in the entire book,” he said.

Writing the piece was a “big honor and quite a challenge,” he said, particularly because it could’ve easily turned into an oppressive, academic history. It’s not.

Abundant photos tell the story of the city without reading a line of copy.

Flip Todd, the Anchorage publisher who worked with Wohlforth on “From the Shores of Ship Creek” said the book illuminates early Anchorage while still detailing its transition to a modern, multicultural city.

Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan said the book should be enjoyable for both those new to the city and lifelong residents such as himself. “’From the Shores of Ship Creek’ captures so many details about Anchorage’s history in a truly personal and unique way,” Sullivan said.

Wohlforth said he understood from the be-

Photo/Alberta Pyatt/Anchorage Museum

The tent city in Ship Creek seen in the summer 1915. The exhibit “City Limits” centennial exhibition at the Anchorage Museum explains how Anchortown has changed, highlighting major events in the city’s history including the 1964 Good Friday Earthquake, the introduction of army and air force bases, and the state’s oil boom. The exhibit is currently on display now through October.

ginning that if it was going to be inviting read there would be substantial amounts of worthy history that just wouldn’t make the cut.

An Alaskan since the age of three, Wohlforth’s family moved from New York City to Anchorage’s Turnagain neighborhood in 1966. His father is an attorney specializing in government finance and helped Alaska’s state and local governments rebuild after the 1964 earthquake.

“Of course, like everybody, they said they were only going to be here for three years; (they) didn’t sell their house back east for many years,” Wohlforth remarked.

Because the chapters in the book are distinct stories, they read as well on their own as they do as part of the larger work. He said that achieved one of the goals he had when he began the project: the standalone essays can be pulled out and used in classrooms as part of a unit lesson on the given time period.

For that reason and others, “From the Shores of Ship Creek” is an attractive history lesson, but not an advertisement.

“Part of my pitch was that I was going to write a serious book that took on the issues having to do with Anchorage development, address them head-on and not sugarcoat things,” Wohlforth said.

Going in, he attempted to examine three themes of the Anchorage’s life: the role of the federal government; the struggle to become a permanent city; and whether Alaska’s largest city is a true representation of the state.

As much as Alaskans take pride in their contempt for Washington, D.C., the epicenter of their state is completely a creation of the federal government, Wohlforth said. The tent city that became Anchorage was 100 percent a railroad town at its inception; it was a construction and maintenance camp, first and foremost. Its economy was based completely on the Alaska Railroad’s payroll.

The headquarters of the railroad moved from Seward to Anchorage as the makeshift city first formed along Ship Creek in 1915.

That was after the feds agreed to spend $35 million in 1914 to extend the short rail line out of Seward all the way to Fairbanks.

Wohlforth said the early residents refused to form a city until the federal government threatened to shut down the fire station.

“Maybe we’re still teenagers, because who’s more hostile towards their parents than teenagers, right?” he quipped.

For more than 60 years, Anchorage remained an incredibly young and transient city, always dependent on its maternal government. In the 1960s, the average age of an Anchorage resident was 23, Wohlforth said.

When the railroad was complete the military moved in to fight World War II, and then the Cold War. The boom and bust theme spurred for years by shifting military forces only magnified as oil took over the scene.

It all came to a crashing halt in 1985 when declining oil prices killed state budgets and sent nearly a third of Anchorage residents packing. The economic collapse forced more than a dozen banks to close, ruined the real estate market, and “flushed out” the transient portion of the population, Wohlforth said.

“Anybody who stayed after that really wanted to be here and that’s what we’ve built on from there to the present,” he said.

In a sudden and remarkable shift over the last third of its history, Anchorage’s steady and reliable growth since would be envy of any city in the country.

“Now we’re really a stable, middle-American city,” Wohlforth said.

The battle over the identity of Anchorage began almost immediately in 1915 and has flared long into the city’s history, according to Wohlforth.

Early residents of the city proper wanted it to be an outpost of the Lower 48, while those living on the periphery of the Bowl saw their home as Alaska first, U.S. second.

“It’s a very interesting lens that fits every era and every set of controversies,” he said.

It’s most recognizable today in the areas of the municipality that are plumbed for city sewer, a direct result of the unification of the Greater Anchorage Area Borough and the City of Anchorage in 1975.

The old Alaska adage, “Anchorage isn’t Alaska but you can see Alaska from there,” may be cliché, but it holds water, Wohlforth said.

Anchorage is a classic American economic center with box stores and too many chain restaurants to count.

1915 - 2015 Anchorage: Present & Past

• Page 17

is available at Title Wave Books, Barnes and Noble, Once In a Blue Moose, Mosquito Books (at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport), the Alaska Native Heritage Center, Anchorage Museum, Cabin Fever, and other Downtown Anchorage gift shops.

The paper retails for $20 and the hardcover is $30.

A second run will be available in June after the limited initial release in stores now.

He described it as a dichotomy that can’t be defined.

“In what other city in the country do you run into moose all the time? Or where can you go cross-country skiing from your house — or half an hour from a five-star restaurant be on the top of a mountain? These are really unique things and you have to be here a really long time to forget how unique this place is,” Wohlforth said.

These days the tug-of-war has subsided and even sworn political adversaries have found common ground.

“If you talk with (Anchorage Mayor) Dan Sullivan and (former Mayor) Mark Begich — in the last chapter of the book — their visions for the city are almost indistinguishable,” he said.

The multicultural feel Anchorage enjoys today is a direct result of the boom-bust and distinct lack of organized development of yesterday, Wohlforth said.

Also, the fact that 10 percent of the city’s population “turns over” every year means fresh faces with varying backgrounds are still common, even in the more stable version of Anchorage.

“The sort of silver lining to poor community planning is — in a lot of community planning there was a sub-layer of racism — it didn’t work here,” he said.

“Here, largely because of terrible community planning and rapid growth, we don’t have any of that. So you go near West High School and you have some of the most affluent people in town living across the street from some of the poorest people in town. You end up with one of the most

diverse high schools in the country.”

Depending on which study is cited, Anchorage’s Mountain View, East, West and Bartlett high schools are all

among the most integrated in the nation. The Anchorage School District notes on its website that its students speak 93 different languages at home.

The lack of social tiers among a collection of transients that built the city is now part of its culture, Wohlforth believes.

Anchorage’s tomorrow will likely be more challenging, at least economically, than the last 25 years have been, he predicts.

The city’s business base is often touted as being more ready to handle a downturn in oil prices, but the volatile commodity still rules many of its employers as well as state government.

Wohlforth said he hopes residents will “be more mature about the ‘build it and they will come’” mentality that has dominated the city from the start.

And like it or not, decisions made in D.C. are still felt in Anchorage.

“We’re kind of at the mercy of the Pentagon. As an economy we can’t give up oil and military at the same time,” he said. “That would really turn out the lights.”

Elwood Brehmer can be reached at elwood.brehmer@ alaskajournal.com.

Photo/Michael Dinneen/For the Journal

Anchorage author Charles Wohlforth seen in front of cabins on the Pioneer Schoolhouse grounds. Wohlforth notes that the lack of planning during Anchorage’s growth is one of the factors in its schools being among the most integrated in the nation.

Page 18 • Celebration of a Century 1915 - 2015

Filmmaker:

Continued from Page 15

“Anchorage Is…” was first released in September 2014 at the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts.

A revised version played to sold-out crowds between March and April at the Bear Tooth Theatrepub every weekend for four weekends.

The DVD is at retail locations across Anchorage, and is available at the Anchorage centennial website: anchoragecentennial.org.

The price is $15 for DVD, $20 for Blu-ray and $2 for shipping. age and pictures from the early settlement of 1915, the rapid postwar expansion, and the oil boom. Hardesty spent long hours researching and interviewing to learn the historical context.

The film, however, devotes far more reel to historical images and video clips that attempt fill the gaps between textbook history. The earthquake, oil booms, and wars explain Anchorageites’ history, but for him it’s the minutiae of daily life in the Last Frontier’s largest city that describe their disposition.

“What we presented in this legacy was not a detailed blow-byblow of the history,” said Hardesty.

“It tried to capture the essence of our character. How the location has shaped the people, and how the people have shaped the location. It was never meant to be every disaster, every economic event.”

The catalysts for growth only serve as a backdrop, in Hardesty’s mind, to the snapshots of 4th Avenue dog races and ski champions from Tent City days that need only color and updated clothing to look natural in 2015. The wars and the Good Friday Earthquake in 1964 explain how Anchorage got its spirit, but it’s the trivia that actually displays it.

“In a one-hour documentary, you cannot include 100 years of history,” Hardesty said. “This

Photo/Michael Dinneen/For the Journal

“Anchorage Is …” director Todd Hardesty presents his film to the Daughters of the American Revolution in Anchorage on April 24. The film played to sold-out audiences through March and April at the Bear Tooth Theatrepub in Anchorage.

was meant to be a legacy. And I interpret that legacy as though if someone were to watch this 100

later, they would get a sense of who we were in 2015, and who we were in 1915. What does our

DNA look like?”

The biggest problem, Hardesty said, was overcoming his own interest in the material. Not only did he have to make the tough decisions about what to leave on the chopping block, but he struggled to explain to his collaborators why a picture of 1915 baseball field, now covered by the Rasmuson Center, is more important than the number of troops needed for World War II. “The fact that on July 5, 1916, Captain Lathrop brought the movie Peggy to his Empress Theater for the opening night performance,” Hardesty said. “I had a whole section in the documentary about that, but you won’t see it. In the scheme of things, that’s not as important.”

Hardesty’s background in journalism proves handy for the long hours scouring archives for historical photos and footage from every available source. Sometimes Hardesty would search for footage according to the script’s demands and call up the University of Alaska Fairbanks archivists to ask for copies. Other times, he’d stumble across something from a private party, Alaska Moving Images, or the State of Alaska digital archives too visually engaging to leave out and the team would write it in. He

said about half the film’s images were found on eBay. “I have basically been a passionate cycle of consumption about the history of Anchorage,” said Hardesty. “I became really interested in some of the fine details, like who won the women’s ski race in 1918. But as we got more into things, when I’d present to them the idea, they’d say, that’s too small, that takes away the momentum.”

In his office, Hardesty looks at two photos from the same year, both displaying a downtown Anchorage scene from the mid-1910s.

He knows the first is on the intersection of 4th Avenue and H Street.

The second, he matches by time, then by street, then by the similarity a gutter downspout consistent in both pictures’ background.

The 1918 women’s ski race winner picture he mentioned, he pieces together, happened on 4th Avenue somewhere between C Street and G Street.

“That was their Fur Rondy,” he said, referring to the annual Anchorage winter festival that celebrated its 80th anniversary this year. “Same then as now.”

DJ Summers can be reached atdaniel. summers@alaskajournal.com

1915 - 2015 Anchorage: Present & Past

• Page 19 Photo/File/AP

Merrill Wien, 69, and his brother Richard take off in a World War II Boeing Stearman biplane from the Delaney Park Strip in Anchorage on July 6, 1999, to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the first flight from Anchorage to Fairbanks by their father, aviation pioneer, Noel Wien, who is credited as an aviation pioneer for flying to Alaska wilderness villages to become the first true bush pilot. The Park Strip on Ninth Avenue was the city’s first airport.

ANCHORAGE & AVIATION: Flying Through Time

By Elwood Brehmer Alaska Journal of Commerce

“Owning a Widgeon, living in Anchorage and flying in Alaska, there’s just nothing left. You just can’t get any better than that,” said George Pappas in his deliberate cadence, with the hint of a grin showing through.

The 86-year-old Pappas has lived the history of aviation in Anchorage for more than 60 years. For nearly 30 of those years he used the versatility of his Grumman Widgeon, an amphibious twin-engine aircraft, to enjoy the fruits of Southcentral Alaska and run a rare breed of business.

A farm kid from Western Nebraska, Pappas came to Anchorage by way of California in 1953 with a new airframe and engine mechanic’s license (known today as an airframe and powerplant, or A&P, license).

Growing up on the Great Plains, Pappas knew right away as youngster that raising sugar beets, the family profession, was not for him.

“There was nothing I wanted more than to get involved in aviation,” he recalled. “Being a dirt farmer just wasn’t my way, wasn’t something I had any interest in.”

His traditional education ended in the eighth grade, at age 12, when a bone infection pulled him out of school and put him in the hospital.

At the time, Nebraska had a vocational program for kids in his situation. However, without an aeronautical program to fit his desire near home, Pappas headed to The Golden State to learn about the insides of airplanes. He graduated in 1948 at age 19.

“That was very young for someone to have that license and frankly I didn’t know a damn thing,” Pappas said.

His training timeline was backwards compared to most aircraft mechanics of the day; he got his education first and then began gaining experience with airplanes.

When he arrived in the Territory of Alaska in the spring of 1953, he knew instantly he didn’t want to leave.

“It was a glorious summer, just like we’ve had these past few weeks,” Pappas said June 1 from his Anchorage home. “I just knew that I had died and gone to heaven.

Here I was in this beautiful place with beautiful weather and I was up to my armpits in airplanes.”

He had landed a job as a mechanic with Alaska Aeronautical Industries, a maintenance shop at Merrill Field.

An aircraft mechanic without a pilot’s license, it didn’t take long for his new acquaintances around Merrill to get Pappas into the cockpit of a Cessna 140, the plane he learned to fly in, he said.

In 1956, with a new job at a local Cessna dealership, Pappas really began putting his pilot’s license to use. He started running “ferry trips,” flying commercially to the Cessna factory in Wichita, Kan., and returning in a new Cessna back to the dealership in Anchorage.

“In the spring I would go to Wichita and pick up an airplane — first stop out of Wichita is West Nebraska so I could visit my folks,” he said.

Pappas first flew a four-seat Cessna 170 north from Kansas, and eventually flew nearly every small plane the company made over the years up to a Cessna 206.

He made the convenient trip off and on for nearly 30 years, he said, sometimes multiple times a year and often with his wife, Ruby, also a pilot.

Pappas followed the Alaska

Highway through Canada, a method of navigation that astounded Outside pilots, who said they would worry about getting lost above the wilderness. He said it was actually harder to stay on course farther south.

“You take off out of Wichita and there’s just roads and railroads everywhere — pretty hard to navigate following a map,” Pappas recalled.

“But once you get out of Great Falls, (Mont.,) and head north there

builders in 1959 after being tasked with recovering a ditched Grumman Goose near Redoubt Bay along West Cook Inlet.

“The snow was about eight feet deep. The airplane was sitting out there and you could walk right over the top of it,” Pappas described. “It was the damndest thing you ever saw, but I managed to get down under it and I could see what was damaged and what it took to be repaired.”

nearby crane it was lifted out, repaired, and flown home by an outof-work Goose pilot Pappas paid $100 for the trip.

“He took off (on the snow) on the hull just like water with the gear up and then when he got back to Merrill he could put the gear down and land on Merrill,” he said. “He beat me back to town by quite a bit and when I landed there was my repair job parked right in front of the hangar and I was in business.”

Photo/Courtesy/Alaska Air Museum

George Pappas, 85, moved to Alaska in 1953 as an airplane mechanic and eventually worked for a local Cessna dealership flying new models to Alaska from Wichita, Kan., before starting his own repair and recovery business. He was honored as an Aviation Legend in 2013 by the Alaska Air Carriers Association.

was one road to follow.”

The advent and popularity of the Cessna 180, a larger, more powerful four- or six-seat plane than the 170 series, helped Pappas launch the business he ran for 50 years, he said.

Pappas formed Aircraft Re-

So, he flew back to Anchorage in a borrowed Cessna 170 and returned with new landing gear, parts to patch the fuselage and a piece of plywood to replace a window, he said.

The plane was on an oil exploration site, so with the aide of a

Alaska Air Carriers Association Executive Director Jane Dale described Pappas as a “sheet metal wizard,” able to repair nearly anything that was remotely salvageable.

See Aviation, Page 20

Page 20 • Celebration of a Century 1915 - 2015

Aviation:

Continued from Page 19

Left Photo/Courtesy/Alaska Airlines; Right Photo/Ted S. Warren/AP

The state’s largest air carrier, Alaska Airlines, traces its roots to Anchorage in 1932 when Mac McGee and his team were flying a three-seater between the city and Bristol Bay. In the 1960s, the airline harkened back to Alaska’s gold rush days with its “Golden Nugget” jet service featuring Boeing 727s decked out with wild wallpaper, decorative tassels and plush seats in shades of red and gold. Flight attendants wore long velvet skirts, wide-brimmed hats and puffed-sleeve shirts. The airline, now one of the most profitable in the country still has fun with its aircraft, painting Alaska salmon, local sports teams and even a Hawaiian lai around its trademark Eskimo tailfin logo.

Pappas credited the Cessna 180s for the duration of his recovery and repair business. The newer, expensive planes were “heavily financed and heavily insured,” he said, meaning there was great interest in getting damaged ones back in the air.

“Whoever had an accident — you’d hardly stop sliding and there’d be an insurance adjuster there wanting to get that airplane back to get repaired,” Pappas said.

With his Grumman Widgeon, Pappas could not only get to the best fishing spots on land or sea, but he could also land alongside nearly any downed plane that needed saving.

When the repair business dried up in the 1980s as the major fleet of 180-series Cessnas aged, he moved Aircraft Rebuilders off of Merrill Field and transformed the business to primarily a custom parts shop.

Pappas was honored by the Air Carriers Association as an Alaskan Aviation Legend in 2013, one of more than 40 individuals the association has recognized for their contributions to Alaska aviation culture since 2012.

Dale said the acknowledgments were started the association board and former director Joy Journeay. “(Pappas) is quite a brilliant man and we’re just honored to be able to recognize him and share his story and get to know him,” Dale said.

By the following summer of 1924 the Delany Park Strip was open for business. On July 4, having been in

Alaska less than two months, Noel Wien performed aerial stunts in Hisso Standard biplane he named

Wein, Merrill and McGee Thirty-one years before Pappas moved north, an Anchorage machinist named C.O. Hammertree changed Anchorage forever.

His Boeing seaplane arrived on April 24, 1922, and introduced the infant city to aviation for the first time. The first flight in the state took place in nine years earlier on July 3, 1913, in Fairbanks.

The first Anchorage flight was short-lived.

Roy Troxell took off in the plane over Cook Inlet and began to turn back to the city once he gained a few hundred feet of altitude, according to an account of the flight by the municipality. Troxell quickly crashed in the mud flats and survived the accident, but the Boeing did not.

In 1923, a year after Troxell’s ill-fated first flight, a strip of land at the edge of the Anchorage was cleared for a nine-hole golf course and a small runway.

Photos/Courtesy/Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport

From top to bottom: In 1940, the site was bare for the eventual home for Anchorage International Airport. A channel between Lakes Hood and Spenard seen here was dredged in 1938, creating the home of the Lake Hood seaplane base, now the busiest on the planet. Once a king of international passenger traffic during the Cold War, the Anchorage airport it is now one of the busiest cargo hubs in the world.

“Anchorage” to commemorate the opening of the park.

A pioneering Alaska bush pilot, Wien also made the first flight between Anchorage and Fairbanks that same July. With his brothers Ralph, Sig and Fritz, he founded Wien Air Alaska in 1927, the first airline in the state. According to the National Aviation Hall of Fame, the quartet made $4,000 in the first two months of the airline.

The state’s largest airline — Alaska Airlines — also traces its roots to this period. According to its official history, the airline dates to 1932 when Mac McGee began flying a three-seat Stinson between Anchorage and Bristol Bay; later McGee Airways merged with Star Air Service to become the state’s biggest in 1934.

Alaska Airlines cemented its statewide reach in the late 1960s when it merged with Alaska Coastal-Ellis and Cordova airlines, and then acquired Horizon Air in 1987.

Growth in the early industry spurred the development of Aviation Field in August 1929, Anchorage’s first dedicated airport. The city had crept beyond Ninth Street and the park strip couldn’t handle the flight activity.

It had two runways and was almost instantly one of the busiest airports in the world.

On April 2, 1930, the Anchorage Woman’s Club successfully pushed through a resolution to change the name of airport from Aviation Field to Merrill Field, in honor of Russel Hyde Merrill, another Alaska aviation pioneer, according to the municipality.

Among other accomplishments, Merrill is known for being the second pilot to fly from the Lower 48 to Alaska. He also mistakenly found the most advantageous route through the Alaska Range from Anchorage to Bethel in November 1927, when he flew farther south than intended and went through what is now Merrill Pass.

Less than two years later, Merrill had become a busy commercial pilot. During his third flight of Sept.

16, 1929, bound for Bethel, Merrill disappeared. A month later part of the tail of his plane was discovered on a beach along Cook Inlet. The cause of the crash is still unclear.

A year after it officially became Merrill Field, the Woman’s Club got the city council to approve a tower and signal beacon at the air-

port. Also in 1931, the park strip was closed to aircraft and Merrill Field was it for Anchorage — on land anyway.

All good in Lake Hood Once sporadic but consistently growing seaplane activity forced development the Lake Hood seaplane base in 1938. That year a channel was dug between lakes Hood and Spenard, thus creating what is today the busiest seaplane base on Earth.

The Lake Hood Seaplane Base served 67,000 flight operations in 2012, according to a McDowell Group economic report. In June alone that year, there were 13,159 operations, an average of 439 per day.

Lake Hood in total contributed 230 jobs and $42 million to the Anchorage economy in 2012, the study estimates.

The floatplane hub — surrounded by wilderness when the channel was dug — also got a 2,200-foot gravel runway.

World War II provided the state, particularly Southwest Alaska, with runways and airports. Infrastructure the military built during the early 1940s to support the war effort quickly turned civilian in the late ‘40s and ‘50s, PenAir founder Orin Seybert said.

When Seybert founded Peninsula Airways Inc. in 1955 he was “just a kid out of high school and one airplane,” he said.

That airplane was a two-seat Taylorcraft and Seybert was 19 years old.

Peninsula Airways was shortened to its current “official nickname” of PenAir by passengers who refused to say the whole name, he said.

Today, Seybert has logged more than 30,000 hours in a cockpit and serves on the Board of Directors of the Alaska Aviation Heritage Museum on the south shore of Lake Hood. He is also a former president of the museum.

Seybert is eager to show off the restored aircraft and artifacts the museum has collected.

“It’s so important to preserve this aviation history because it’s so unique in the whole United States,” he said.

Anchorage goes International It wasn’t until 1948 that Anchorage’s flagship airport was born.

In May, Congress authorized

1915 - 2015 Anchorage: Present & Past

• Page 21

Photo/Jeff Schultz/AlaskaStock

Lake Hood Seaplane Base is seen alongside the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport. Lake Hood had some 67,000 flight operations in 2012; and in June alone that year, there were 13,159 operations, or an average of 439 per day.

site selection for the airport and approved $12 million for its construction, which began the following spring.

The site adjacent to Lake Hood was selected because it was away

from the city and there was already a road from Anchorage to Lake Hood.

It was open for business in January 1952 with two runways, a main 8,400-foot east-west runway and a

5,000-foot crosswind strip.

A wooden control tower shipped in from Yakutat was used until the terminal was finished the following year, when the wooden tower was moved to Lake Hood.

The Anchorage International Airport was transferred to the State of Alaska, its current owner, as a part of statehood in 1959. It was assessed at $11.65 million just prior to the transfer.

The main runway grew to longer than 10,000 feet in 1961 and parking aprons were enhanced to handle growing commercial jet traffic.

See Aviation, Page 22

Page 22 • Celebration of a Century 1915 - 2015

Aviation:

Continued from Page 21

There was one fatality at Anchorage International during the March 27, 1964, earthquake.

Tower controller Bill Taylor was killed when falling debris struck and killed him as he came down the tower stairs.

Lighting and electrical systems were damaged at Lake Hood and the International Airport, but daylight operations resumed at the airport the following day.

In the 51 years since the earthquake, the Anchorage International Airport, now named after the late Alaska U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, has gone through a couple business transformations.

In the 1970s, international passenger traffic was king in Anchorage, according to airport manager John Parrott. Before the Soviet

Union opened its airspace, planes flying between Europe and Asia made a technical stop in Anchorage to refuel while on the circumpolar route.

As Boeing’s 747 became the de facto choice for trans-ocean travel later in the decade, it was believed the stop in Anchorage would become obsolete, Parrott said, but that didn’t happen. Rather, the passenger business in Anchorage collapsed with the Berlin Wall and the opening of Russia’s skies.

Fortuitously, Asia’s manufacturing industry and FedEx were growing rapidly at about the same time, Parrott said, and Anchorage International Airport quickly transitioned from a passenger stop to one of the world’s busiest cargo hubs — a title it retains today.

AP Photo/Michael Dinneen

Matt Heskew of Alaska Sausage loads cases of salmon aboard a FedEx truck in 2010 in Anchorage. FedEx selected Anchorage for its international hub in 1988, and now employs 1,500 people in Anchorage.

Photo/Elwood Brehmer/AJOC

A truck waits for a plane to cross the road at Merrill Field in Anchorage. Originally Aviation Field, it was built in 1929 after traffic outgrew the what is now the downtown park strip. It was named after aviation pioneer Russel Hyde Merrill, the second person to fly from the Lower 48 to Alaska, after his plane went down in 1929 headed for Bethel.

Anchorage was the fifth-busiest cargo airport in the world in 2013, according to the Airports Council International. Nearly 2.5 million metric tons of freight landed at the airport two years ago. Domestically, Anchorage was second behind Memphis International, FedEx’s homeport.

Even with most major cargo airlines flying the latest and long range capable 747-8s, it makes economic sense for the jumbo jets to carry more cargo and less fuel — thus making a technical stop in Anchorage — on their way from Asia to the Lower 48, rather than sacrifice carrying capacity to fly direct.

Parrott said the latest 747s can make a trans-Pacific flight if about 100,000 pounds of cargo capacity is sacrificed. “At a dollar a pound, that’s $100,000 for stopping here,” per flight, he said.

Aviation an economic force The impact aviation has had on Anchorage is visible everywhere.

Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport supports one of every 10 jobs in the city, either through direct jobs in the terminals and hangars or a myriad of related offsite positions, according to the Anchorage Economic Development Corp.

Merrill Field and Lake Hood are still the centers of general aviation and small air-taxi services, many of which cater to the ever-growing tourist industry.

Pappas and Seybert said the busy skies above Anchorage haven’t changed much over the years and the pilots familiar with the airspace know where to go and generally stay out of trouble without issue.

However, Pappas said pilots he’s flown with from Outside are astounded at the number of planes in the sky.

The one difference Pappas noted is that fewer flights out of Merrill Field are simply pilots flying for fun, mainly because of the cost

A beautiful destination

of planes and fuel, he said.

Yet, “there’s no place that has traffic like Merrill Field does on a sunny day,” Pappas said.

And Anchorage’s airports — the five controlled airports among the 20-some uncontrolled lakes and airstrips within the municipal limits — still help support the 82 percent of Alaska communities that are reached only by boat or plane.

Dale, of the Alaska Air Carrier Association, said during a recent meeting with Federal Aviation Administration leadership she was approached by an astounded FAA official.

“He said, ‘Jane, what’s that number you just said, 82 percent of the communities?’” Dale recalled.

“Not everybody is aware of that but it’s still incredibly relevant. All of the industries (in Alaska) rely on commercial aviation.”

Its biggest city is no different.

Elwood Brehmer can be reached at elwood.brehmer@alaskajournal.com.

Creekside Lodge 977 S Kenlar, Houston

far enough from Anchorage for

Productive Business Retreats / Teambuilding

t e V s i n e u w S R a k e s s o a l rt A Close enough to HOME it won’t break the COMPANY BUDGET!

alaskasunsetviewresort.com 5322 South Big Lake Road • Big Lake, AK • 907-892-8885

1915 - 2015 Anchorage: Present & Past

• Page 23

Building

ANCHORAGE with a

GREEN VISION

By Tim Bradner Alaska Journal of Commerce

Anchorage was a dusty little town that essentially ended at 15th street when Vic Fischer arrived in 1950.

Spenard existed as a collection of honky-tonk bars and cabins.

The Seward Highway was partly built and was still in construction along Turnagain Arm. Mountain View existed, but essentially as a tent camp for seasonal workers on the nearby military bases.

“People were living in tents and packing crates,” Fischer recalled in an interview.

There was no Anchorage international airport; Elmendorf Air Force Base was made available for people on long-distance flights.

Looking back at those times, what’s remarkable, Fischer said, was the vision for the city’s future held by community leaders of the time. That included a drive to plan intelligently and for green space and recreation areas. Community leaders could foresee a city that would someday fill the entire Anchorage bowl and spill over into Eagle River.

Nine years before statehood, there was an air of optimism in the air about Alaska’s, and Anchorage’s future, Fischer said, and a confidence that the city would grow.

The extensive green belts, hiking trails and parks now in Anchorage resulted directly from that vision. Bicycle trails, Russian Jack and other city parks, now Bicentennial Park and the preservation of the Ninth Avenue parkstrip for

public use all stemmed from that.

Anchorage has more than 120 miles of paved trails and nearly 11,000 acres of park space.

Fischer initially worked for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management when he first came to Alaska but he soon became Anchorage’s first city planner, talked into that by the chair of the then-small city’s planning commission, Elmer Rasmuson.

Those early years are described in Fischer’s book about his life, “To Russia with Love,” co-authored with Anchorage writer Charles Wohlforth.

Fischer downplays his own role in the early planning.

“I was just part of the team,” he said, focused mostly on nuts-andbolts work like street and sewer and water extensions.

The credit for the big picture should go to Rasmuson, who headed National Bank of Alaska (now Wells Fargo) at the time, Robert Atwood, publisher and owner of the former Anchorage Times, and other community leaders, Fischer said.

In those days Anchorage had only 11,000 people. The economy was brisk, but it was mostly seasonal.

“The post-war boom was on because the Cold War had started, with its military buildup. There was a lot of construction work but it was seasonal; there was little coldweather construction at the time,” Fischer recalls.

“Labor came in, and then out.

As soon as snow hit the Chugach Mountains —people called it ‘termination dust’ — people left.

But more and more people stayed

Photo/Michael Dinneen/For the Journal

Jane Angvik and husband Vic Fischer are seen on the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail near Elderberry Park, which was once a dumping ground for old railroad junk and equipment. Fischer joined the Anchorage planning department shortly after moving to the state in 1950, and played a key role in preserving and creating Anchorage’s vast green spaces. Angvik carried on that work when she joined the borough planning department in 1973 and helped write the first comprehensive land use plan.

on through the winter, and the town grew.”

The city limits were at 16th Street to the south and Gambell to the east, and Fourth Avenue was the only major street; it was also the only paved street.

“In summer a big cloud of dust hung over the city,” Fischer said.

There was vibrant community and social life, however.

“We had a symphony, all volunteer, and our conductor was a

Photo/Dan Joling/AP

A pair of unicyclists ride under fall leaves along a bike trail by Minnesota Drive in Anchorage. Anchorage has more than 120 miles of paved trails and nearly 11,000 acres of park space.

bulldozer operator. There were enthusiastic turnouts of people at concerts,” he said.

Fischer thought he would have plenty of time to read when he first arrived working for BLM, but found himself busy with community events.

He met Elmer Rasmuson, who passed away in 2000 at age 91, on his first day in town.

“Elmer was chair of the planning commission but he was frustrated because the small city was growing and had no plan or professional planner,” Fischer said.

Streets, water and sewer were the main concerns, and Rasmuson and others didn’t want disorganized, haphazard growth.

Fischer had just graduated from college with an advanced degree in planning and Rasmuson offered him a job right off the bat, but he had to turn it down because he had already committed to work for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Later, after more persuading by Rasmuson and then-city manager Robert Sharp and city engineer Charles Tryck, Fischer took the city job.

Anchorage was facing the practical problems of a small but growing city.

“We were dealing with immediate issues of extending streets and utilities outside city limits mainly because fire insurance was hugely costly unless a neighborhood was connected to water

service,” he said.

There was a lot of pressure to extend utilities.

“Public utility ‘districts’ had been formed in neighborhoods outside the city like Rogers Park, Mountain View, Eastchester (now Fairview), but there wasn’t a lot of actual work being done to expand the utilities. That led to requests for annexations, in bits and pieces,” Fischer said.

There was opposition to that, too, from people wary of government intrusion. Fights over annexations and public services were to continue for years and would eventually lead to the formation of the Municipality of Anchorage Borough for areas outside the city in 1975.

Plan emerges A big problem in those early years was downtown parking, Fischer recalled, something that hasn’t changed 40 years later.

“One of the first projects we did was a survey of the available parking space,” he said. A traffic analysis was part of that.

“We enlisted the Boy Scouts to help with that, to count traffic at intersections and survey the available space,” Fischer said. By pieces, a city plan was emerging.

“These were mostly sector plans that had to do with utilities, street standards and a preliminary highSee Green, Page 24

Page 24 • Celebration of a Century 1915 - 2015

Green:

Continued from Page 23

Photo/University of Alaska Fairbanks

Mayor Elmer Rasmuson presides over an Anchorage City Council meeting in 1964. Rasmuson helped turn his vision for Anchorage into reality as the president of National Bank of Alaska (now Wells Fargo), chair of the city planning commission, mayor and as the city’s greatest philanthropist through the Rasmuson Foundation.

way plan, and much of the work was done by citizen committees of people living both inside and outside of the city,” he recalled.

Elmer Rasmuson, still planning commission chairman, played a major role during all this. When the first subdivision regulations and major rezoning were developed there was fierce resistance from some residents and strong support from others who wanted protection from haphazard development, and who also desired fire and police protection.

Housing developers resisted the plans too, and their practice was to focus their lobbying on the city council, which had to

approve proposals from the planning commission.

“The city council didn’t like controversy,” and became an obstacle, Fischer said. “The city manager and I proposed a joint meeting of the city council and planning commission on the subdivision plans.

As planning commission chair, Elmer made a presentation, and it was brilliant.

“He explained the value of planning and why it is important to orderly development and protection of property values. He presented it in conceptual and philosophic terms but also in a very practical way,” that city council members could relate to. Rasmuson’s argu-

ments carried the day.

“He was able to look beyond the city limits, and take the long view,” Fischer said.

Another effort, however, was for a park and recreation space plan, which involved a volunteer committee of 50 people.

“It was clear to everyone that Anchorage was going to grow. People just sensed it, because there were no economic or population projections although we tried to do some,” Fischer said.

A major concern was to reserve land for public use before the development would occur.

The committee of 50 worked on the park and recreation plan,

which was just conceptual because the city didn’t own or even include the land involved. The committee consisted of a wide cross section of the community.

“The Chamber of Commerce, military, school districts, business leaders,” were engaged, and while many in the group had limited interests like setting aside areas for baseball, there were also concerns for setting aside future school sites,” Fischer said.

“We tried to study the experiences of other jurisdictions (in the Lower 48) and developed criteria for regional and neighborhood parks and school locations,” he said.

One local site Fischer recalls is a downtown area near the railroad and the Inlet used as a storage site for old cable spools and discarded equipment–junk.

“There were elderberry bushes there,” Fischer remembers, and it became Elderberry Park at the toe of Fifth Avenue and is now popular view of Cook Inlet sunsets during summer.

“We saw opportunities all along the creeks for walkways and small parks, and we wanted to plan for all this,” he said.

Green space The military and federal agencies cooperated with the early planning. A 320-acre area of military land was set aside, and eventually became, Russian Jack Springs park. There was a separate 1,000-acre federally-owned site that was identified the plan for “in-

stitutional” use, although for what use wasn’t yet certain.

Eventually it would become the Alaska Pacific University campus as well as the site for present-day Providence Hospital, McLaughlin Youth Center, Alaska Psychiratic Instiute and the University of Alaska Anchorage.

Westchester Lagoon didn’t exist at the time, at least as it is today, but it went on the plan as a concept, Fischer said.

“Ed Fortier (a long-time resident) first visualized the idea of a freshwater lagoon as a place to store boats. Later, because it was on the plan, it was actually implemented when embankments were created for construction of Minnesota Highway and a relocation of the Alaska Railroad,” he recalled.

Protecting the downtown parkstrip from development became a priority because there was big pressure for land for housing. The strip had been used as a wartime alternative landing strip for aircraft and was kept as an open buffer in the 1950s as a firebreak, in the event of a forest fire, Fischer said.

People were using the strip for casual recreation, but to keep it available as the city grew “we had to demonstrate that we needed it, all of it,” for recreation, Fischer said. “There were a lot of proposals to use it for housing.”

Courting colleges One of the most exciting early initiatives was the effort to attract a college to Anchorage. The 1,000acre “institutional” land parcel in

Mon-Sun 7am-12am , 131 S. Bragaw St

907- 279-2367

Red Apple M A R K E T S

Your grocery store providing your produce, meat, seafood and deli items with the largest selection of ethnic foods for your convenience.

www.smokefreeanchorage.org www.smokefreeanchorage.org

1915 - 2015 Anchorage: Present & Past what is now Midtown Anchorage was the incentive the volunteer “Anchorage College Committee” was hoping to use as bait.

It was offered first to the University of Alaska, Fischer said, but at the time the university was too preoccupied developing the main campus in Fairbanks and couldn’t take on a satellite campus in Anchorage.

“We decided to approach the (religious) missions,” Fischer said.

Catholics, Baptists, Methodist and Presbyterians were all courted. Fischer recalls hosting receptions for visiting church dignitaries, and flexibility was the order of the day: “The Methodists couldn’t drink, so we had juice; the Catholic Archbishop had to have his scotch, so we had that.”

The Methodist Church finally made the commitment and the college committee immediately launched fund-raising to help develop a college. The result was Alaska Methodist University which later became Alaska Pacific University.

The state university eventually developed an Anchorage campus, now University of Alaska Anchorage, but had to make do with a small smaller parcel of land.

Anchorage’s international airport was developed, with Anchorage Times publisher Atwood a prime booster. The first runway was east-west, and when the long north-south runway was built the airport as it is today began to take shape.

The community plans that were developed were mainly expressions of hope, Fischer said.

“We had no idea what the future of Anchorage would be. North Slope oil, the scale of it, was inconceivable then,” he said.

There was a lot of community spirit.

“There was a sense of opportunity, of optimism. Statehood was just around the corner, we knew (it happened in 1959).

Everyone knew everyone,” Fischer said.

Political parties were active but the partisan gridlock that exists today would have dumbfounded people.

• Page 25

Photo/Clark James Mishler/Alaska Stock

A girl rides the “Wild Salmon” during a Fourth of July celebration at the Delaney Park Strip in Anchorage. Preserving the area for public use won out over other plans to use the area for housing.

“In 1952, when Eisenhower was elected president, the Territorial Legislature went 90 percent Republican. Two years later it went 90 percent Democrat,” Fischer recalled.

“People just didn’t care that much.”

Fischer left his job as Anchorage city planner in 1955 to run for election as a delegate to the new Constitutional Convention (an election he won) so as to play a role in the development of the new state government that would take shape after 1959.

The can-do spirit of the times was echoed in the experience of Mike Gravel, Alaska’s former U.S. Senator, who arrived in 1956 from Massachusetts with a fresh college degree and an ambition to make his mark on the soon-to-be-state.

“I drove into Anchorage late in the afternoon and stopped at a gas station to buy guy.

I also asked where I could get a job, and the next morning I was selling real estate,” Gravel recalled. He soon had his own real estate

• The perfect gift for that someone special

firm and soon after, with partners, moved into property development.

Gravel, who now lives in San Francisco, set his sights on politics, ran for the Legislature of the new state of Alaska in 1962, became Speaker of the House in 1965 and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1968. In Alaska, at the time, anything seemed possible for a person with gumption, he said in an interview.

Boom town Fast-forward to the early 1970s. As a state, Alaska was just more than a decade old, barely a teenager. The 1964 earthquake damage had been repaired and Anchorage is growing fast. Construction was about to start on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, which would change Alaska, and Anchorage, forever.

The city of Anchorage existed but the community’s population had grown and resi-

dential areas had leaped far beyond the city limits. To provide basic services to those areas, most important utilities and schools, the Greater Anchorage Area Borough was formed in January 1964 under the state’s Mandatory Borough Act. John Asplund, a longtime local businessman, was elected the first borough mayor in 1964 with a platform to build out the sewer and water system, which he largely did in his two terms as mayor, said Jack Roderick, who was the borough’s second mayor, following Asplund.

By the time Roderick took office in 1972 Anchorage was growing fast. Asplund had seen to the basic water and sewer needs but an immediate priority for Roderick was developing a land-use plan to guide growth.

“Land-use planning is what defines a community,” Roderick said, so it was important.

See Green, Page 26

, y a d h t r i B h t 0 0 1 y p p Ha e!

g a r o h Anc

• Eight times warmer than wool

• Exclusive Qiviut garments in Alaskan village patterns

n 5, whe ce 197 in s y it u gc d yo r amazin enjoye is e h t ’v f e o nw art ce the wth. be a p re. Sin d gro ed to r to n s o a n a s k o s res been h first Ala r prog uing We’ve ned his by you e d p e o r contin z r a fo e m y u e a o n M y k bee ome.

Fred e than rage h it and w r o i , h ll p c a s n e e ov s call A uniqu But ab to let u

• Hand-knitted by over 200 Eskimo knitters • Soft and lightweight

• Does not itch and will not shrink

OOMINGMAK Free Parking on H Street Driveway

Open ’til Midnight through September 5.

604 H Street, Dept. ACC, Anchorage, AK 99501 Toll Free 1-888-360-9665 (907) 272-9225 • www.qiviut.com

16-6-1-90723 (DWS,DRC/CXR,IXP)

Oomingmak_ACC_5x7.65_4C_58939.indd 1

5/15/13 2:15 PM

Page 26 • Celebration of a Century 1915 - 2015

Green:

Continued from Page 25

Roderick took office in 1972 and had his hands full administering the fast-growing borough, which had a “strong mayor” form of government, meaning the mayor was CEO. The city, in contrast, used the “weak mayor” model where the executive was the city manager and the mayor was part-time. (The nowunified Municipality of Anchorage adopted the strong-mayor model).

Fischer’s wife Jane Angvik joined the planning staff at the borough in 1973 and worked on the first comprehensive land-use plan.

She remembers the time well: “People were moving in, there were housing shortages and schools were bursting at the seams,” she said in an interview. A major goal in the comprehensive plan was identifying property for future schools, she said.

People were also advocating for recreation access and local bike trails at the time.

“They took the earlier recreation plan that had identified green corridors and trails (developed during Vic Fischer’s tenure as city planner) and those went on the comprehensive plan,” Angvik recalled.

In many cases the borough had to acquire the rights-of-way for the trails and greenbelts and Roderick recalls big fights over the allocation of scarce funds to make land purchases. There was an active and influential group of residents in south Anchorage, he said, who wanted money spent on baseball fields Roderick was worried that the opportunity to buy greenbelt land would be lost if the borough didn’t move fast. “In many cases private property came right to the water’s edge along streams, so I decided that purchasing those corridors was more important, given the money we had,” Roderick said.

Angvik, who had worked on the comprehensive plan, was later elected to the borough assembly and had the pleasure of voting for additional greenbelt property

acquisition later, when state oil money became available.

Getting approval for the comprehensive plan was not easy, Angvik said. About 45 public meetings were held, but it was eventually adopted.

Meanwhile, in terms of green space a major addition to Anchorage’s outdoor recreation assets came when Chugach State Park was created by the state Legislature. This is a 495,000-acre park–virtual wilderness–in the Chugach Mountains at Anchorage’s doorstep.

Borough bumps This was not an easy period for Roderick. When it was formed, the borough assumed its mandatory areawide powers, which were schools, taxation and land-use planning. City officials deeply resented losing those powers to the borough, and the peculiar structure of the 11-member borough assembly, with five members from the city and six elected from outside the city, made for fights and gridlock.

“I had five (city) assembly members automatically against me, five with me and one who swung back and forth,” Roderick recalls.

Bob Atwood, owner of the Anchorage Times, opposed the borough’s formation and kept up a drumbeat of negative news coverage.

“Bob always thought the borough was a bad idea and that the city should have just expanded through annexations,” Roderick said.

Roderick felt caught in the middle between warring sides. “I was just trying to be a good administrator,” he said.

The city-borough feuds erupted into lawsuits at times, but there were actions took that Roderick felt good about. One of his most important accomplishments, he believes,

Picturing Anchorage Now available as an ebook on iBooks®.

Picturing Anchorage is a great reader that highlights Anchorage’s past and present.

It’s also the first social studies textbook in the United States to embed the Common Core State Standards.

The electronic version of the book contains exclusive photos, videos, notes, widgets and a glossary of vocabulary words.

Created by Anchorage School District staff.

Photo/File/AP

A skier practices on the race trail in the subzero weather at Kincaid Park in Anchorage. The city’s world class trail system was home to the 2009 U.S. Cross Country Ski Championships, before frigid weather forced a cancelation.

was establishing Anchorage’s community In the unification election voters had councils, a formal network of neighborhood three choices on what to name the new govcouncils that provides ways for people to ernment, the City of Anchorage, Anchorage keep abreast of things and for officials like Borough or Municipality of Anchorage. Rodhighway construction managers and policy erick believes voters opted for Municipality to discuss local issues. of Anchorage because they were sick of the A second accomplishment was the Peo- city and borough fights. They wanted another ple Mover, Anchorage’s public bus system, name, he said. which Roderick helped get started.

Meanwhile, a patchwork collection of serThere were very specific actions, too. vice areas had grown up in the borough area.

Roderick recalls vetoing a developer’s plan In many parts of the community there was no to build a structure at the intersection where government fire protection and homeowners C Street then ended at Dimond Boulevard. relied on volunteer fire departments. There Roderick knew C Street would eventually be was no police protection except for State extended beyond Dimond, but the building Troopers because the borough did not have would be in the way. The veto kept the right- police power, although the city did. of-way open, and C Street was extended.

Roderick found ways to work around Roderick also talked building developers, this for parts of the borough. For example, including those building the Calais Build- he was able to contract with the city for poings on C Street, into planting lice protection in Spenard, which trees along nearby streets. He could get rowdy at times. also insisted on barriers between Meanwhile, road service areas housing and major expressways had been formed by residents, as to muffle sounds. is provided for in state law, for As for the city-borough property owners to voluntarily squabbling, people eventually fund road maintenance in outlying people got fed up it, Roderick parts of the borough. said, and efforts began to unify As the Municipality of Anthe city and borough. chorage developed into a modBy that time the population Roderick ern city its services became outside the city, in the borough, widely available. was about equal to the city population, so it Its popular green spaces, visualized dewas time for unification, he said. The question cades ago by the city’s leaders as the key was voted down the first and second times it to a good quality of life, are fully protected was presented to voters but it passed in 1975, and widely used. the third time, he said.

The community will have its ups and “There were a lot of new people moving in downs, always, but those spaces will remain with the oil development, people who were — a legacy of vision and foresight that have educated, and they had no patience for this made Anchorage consistently ranked among kind of bickering,” Roderick said. the best places to live in America.

EBRATI NG CEL

100 YEARS

Anchorage of

TheOriginal rande”.

“Home of the G

Available for download in iBooks on iPad®.

http://tinyurl.com/m95gasw

iBooks and iPad are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.

nd Family owned a years!

6 4 r o f d e t a r e p op 8330 King St. 344-6399 www.lamexalaska.com

1915 - 2015 Anchorage: Present & Past

The drive along the lower Kenai Peninsula affords views few places can offer: snow-capped and active volcanoes rise above blue, fishing boat-dotted water like a defensive line collapsing on a third-string quarterback. Some days that water is so smooth it appears one could skate on it.

Looks are deceiving.

The water is constantly moving, and fast. The tidal currents in Cook Inlet regularly exceed five knots. At the upper reaches of “the Inlet” — the home of Alaska’s largest city — the tide can fluctuate 35 feet in little more than six hours. Combine that with shallow channels, which the currents are constantly changing, and you’ve got a mariner’s nightmare.

For these reasons, Alaska maritime historian J. Pennelope Goforth calls the Port of Anchorage “the port that wasn’t supposed to be.”

It abruptly became the port of necessity on March 27, 1964, when the 9.2-magnitude Good Friday Earthquake dismantled every other large dock in Southcentral Alaska. “(Anchorage) was the only one left standing,” Goforth said.

“Seward, Whittier, Valdez, just gone, and I think it was at that point that people started to realize all the things you need a port for.”

Opened for business in April 1961, the single-berth, 600-foot pile dock that withstood the second-largest earthquake known to man is still at the center of operations at the port more than 54 years later.

Before the first big city dock, the port was largely a hodgepodge of development, Goforth said.

There was little more than Ship Creek’s infamous tide mud at the port site when the city formed in 1915.

By 1917, Henry J. Emard had opened the Emard Packing Co. near where the docks stand today, according to records from the Cook Inlet Historical Society.

“It was a nice little dock with a warehouse that employed a lot of

local people processing salmon,” Goforth said.

The salmon cannery primarily processed Susitna River chinooks, Goforth said. One of those locals was eventually Dan H. Cuddy, the longtime president of First National Bank Alaska. Cuddy, who died May 12 at the age of 94, who got his first job from Emard.

In a 2001 interview with the Journal, Cuddy remembered what Emard said when he was promoted to cannery superintendent.

“He said, ‘I hand you this leaky boat,’” Cuddy said. “It flattered me highly.”

Cuddy eventually gave Emard a seat on FNBA’s board of directors.

For years after the founding of Anchorage, most infrastructure was developed organically, Goforth said. The city of today was a scattered collection of small towns — Anchorage, Muldoon and Spenard.

A June 1920 copy of the Alaska Railroad Record reveals that the city was happy with its dock, new in November 1919, at least for its ability to handle freight from the S. S. Admiral Watson.

“From the time the vessel passed the Forelands until the moment she tied up at the dock not a minute of anxiety was experienced by the skipper on account of the floating ice and the only answer made by him to the questions of the skeptical concerning the possibility of the ship’s progress being retarded by the presence of the floating ice was a knowing smile and a pointing finger at the vessel, made fast to the big dock,” the Record reported. “That the construction of the new ocean dock represents a big economy in the matter of unloading of vessels is reflected in the fact that in less than 14 hours actual unloading time, 562 tons of merchandise were taken from the ship’s hold and loaded aboard flat cars standing along side.”

The Admiral Watson also carried 137 first-cabin passengers when it docked on Nov. 15, 1919, according to the Record, the official publication of the Alaska Engineering Commission, the

Photo/University of Alaska Anchorage collection

A fishing boat operating as a cannery tender is tied up at the dock in Anchorage serving Emard Cannery, the first business to operate at the port in 1917. One of the locals who worked there was Dan H. Cuddy, the longtime president of First National Bank Alaska. Cuddy, who died May 12 at the age of 94, got his first job from Emard and eventually named him to the bank’s board of directors.

Photo/John P. Bagoy papers/University of Alaska Anchorage; Photo/Courtesy/Municipality of Anchorage

A view of the Anchorage port in the 1920s. The port as it is known today did not officially open until 1961.

federal group tasked with building the Alaska Railroad.

However, when the Admiral needed a berth for repairs, the dock didn’t fare as well, according to Goforth.

“The city dock was not much wider than (40 feet) and they had the huge Admiral there trying to repair it,” she said. “After that they started to build a little bit more but it was still all individual efforts.”

War boom As was the case with most things in early Anchorage, World War II changed that.

The need for an industrial-size dock was exemplified in the city’s rapid growth during the war. In April 1940, Anchorage had about 4,000 residents. By the middle of 1941, military activity pushed the city’s population beyond 9,000; and by 1950, Anchorage had a population of 32,000 people.

Military construction brought nearly $1 billion into the city, and the materials for that work needed to come through a port.

In 1943, the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel was completed and linked Anchorage by rail to the deep-water Port of Whittier, which served as the military’s primary fuel terminal. Most commercial goods came via rail from Seward.

Still, Anchorage’s freight demand outpaced handling capacity.

Goforth said a cement barge was anchored along the Anchorage dock during the war to serve as an additional loading platform.

After World War II, the country’s appetite for infrastructure and a new method of shipping combined to transform to Port of Anchorage into at least part of what it is today, she said.

The standard method of freight delivery to mainland Alaska was

born on the East Coast, according to the National Museum of American History. Malcom McLean, a trucker and businessman from North Carolina bought a small steamship company in 1955 with the idea of loading ships with full semi-trailers.

The next year, the S.S. IdealX, a converted WWII-era tanker ship, sailed from New Jersey to Texas with 58 trailers aboard.

Sea-Land Services Inc. was born.

“It used to be break bulk cargo, which is you get 10 people in a line and throw boxes to each other from the hold of the ship,” Goforth said.

She likened the change in transport methods to the change in computer code from “command to HTML.”

And a few years later, in 1961, the Port of Anchorage was really open for business with gantry cranes, a 50,000-square foot transit shed and 52 acres primed for industrial development.

Despite having a brand new infrastructure, insured for more than $5.5 million, the Port of Anchorage did not attract the traffic the city hoped for in 1961.

According to the port’s annual report from that year, the city approved a budget that projected handling 130,000 tons of cargo generating $602,500 of revenue and $433,207 of net income. The budget was approved on April 17, 1961, days after the new port See Port, Page 28

BUDGET

2,500,000 OPERATING REVENUES

2,000,000

DOLLARS

By Elwood Brehmer Alaska Journal of Commerce

• Page 27

1,500,000

ESTIMATE

1,000,000

OPERATING EXPENSE

500,000

1961

1965

1970

1975

1980

ANNUAL PORT OPERATING REVENUES AND EXPENSES

PORT OF ANCHORAGE OPERATIONS C hart/C ourtesy/P ort

of

A nchorage

Two major booms in port revenue are seen here: One after the Great Alaska Earthquake in 1964 and the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System in 1975.

Page 28 • Celebration of a Century 1915 - 2015

Port:

Continued from Page 27

Photo/File/AJOC

A U.S. Army Chinook helicopter is unloaded from a military transport ship at the Port of Anchorage in 2007. The port, designated a strategic defense port, saw its first large scale improvements during World War II as a means to unload cargo for the rapid military expansion at what is now Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson.

Photo/Andrew Jensen/AJOC

The bow of the M/V North Star operated by Totem Ocean Trailer Express Inc., or TOTE, is seen approaching the Port of Anchorage.

Once a piecemeal operation without much business, the 1964 earthquake destroyed Southcentral ports in Valdez, Seward and Whittier, leaving Anchorage as the area’s only functional port and making it the state’s cargo hub. The port handles about 90 percent of all goods entering the state.

officially opened.

“The success of the Anchorage Port facilities can only be achieved by handling bulk cargo destined for the Anchorage and Fairbanks areas, which objective requires a diversion of cargo now being handled through the Seward ‘gateway,’” the 1961 report stated. “The City of Anchorage and its port officials should continue their efforts to bring about this diversion.”

After the barge Kevalaska unloaded 330 tons of construction materials and vehicles on April 21 — the first vessel to dock at the new port — the final 1961 tallies were as follows: 38,476 tons of freight generating $189,999 of revenue for a net income of $47,383.

Port records also indicate discussions between the city and Shell Oil Co. in 1961 to move the company’s fuel products over the new pier and steal business from Whittier as well.

“It appears that if the petroleum now being handled over the Ocean Dock and through Whittier can be attracted to Anchorage port facilities, the revenues from this source may be in excess of $100,000

per year,” the annual report states.

Cargo tonnage grew steadily the next several years as the aforementioned petroleum business grew from 208 tons in the first year to 98,900 tons in 1963. However, it didn’t explode until there were no other docking options in 1964.

Quake mostly spared Anchorage port The Good Friday earthquake inflicted more than $500 million of damage to Anchorage and the surrounding area, including rendering the ports of Whittier and Seward unusable for weeks. Rail and road links to Seward were also severed.

At the Port of Anchorage, several hundred feet of railroad track was destroyed and the two of the four gantry cranes lost their counterweights, according to the 1964 report.

In total, the port suffered about $1.5 million of damage, all but $100,000 of which was covered by insurance.

On May 7, less than two months after the earthquake, Sea-Land’s 496-foot S.S. New Orleans containership called on Anchor-

Photo/File/AP

The Port of Seward fuel terminals are seen in flames after taking damage from the 1964 Great Alaska Earthquake. The destruction of the port and the severing of its rail link to the north steered the rebuilding supplies to Anchorage instead.

age with 126 containers filled with food and construction supplies. It was the first containership run in the Pacific Northwest, according to Sea-Land.

The New Orleans made the voyage from Seattle in four days. It averaged 17 knots per hour, a speed traditional barge traffic could not match.

Today, Totem Ocean Trailer Express Inc., or TOTE, provides twice-weekly service to Anchorage with two, 840-foot vessels filled with semi-trailers ready to be rolled off the ship upon arrival.

Matson Inc., formerly Horizon Lines Inc., provides Anchorage with regular containership service.

By 1965, the first full year of operations after the earthquake, the Port of Anchorage handled 940,000 tons of cargo, more than two-thirds of which was petroleum products.

That business grew steadily until 1975, when construction materials for the Prudhoe Bay oil field and the transAlaska pipeline increased the general cargo business by more than 40 percent in a single year.

Since that first dock, the Port of Anchorage has expanded to include three traditional dock terminals and two petroleum terminals, with the small Terminal No. 1 right in the middle.

The five docks handle 90 percent of the goods headed for mainland Alaska.

In 2014, the port handled 3.45 million tons of cargo. Activity peaked in 2005 at just more than 5.1 million tons.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers commissions more than $10 million of dredging every year to keep the Port of Anchorage open. Glacial silt from the rivers at heads of Knik and Turnagain arms would quickly fill shipping channels and cut off the city from large traffic without the annual maintenance.

The now-scaled back Anchorage Port Modernization Project, still a $485 million endeavor — after $300 million was spent during the first expansion that began in 2003 — will replace and grow the dock infrastructure, while going to four main berths equipped for larger vessels.

Elwood Brehmer can be reached at elwood.brehmer@alaskajournal.com.

1915 - 2015 Anchorage: Present & Past

• Page 29

Photo/File/AP

Arleet Del Real, 5, left, giggles as Javier Acuna, 6, tries not to lose his hat as they dance with the Xochiquetzal-Tiqun Mexican dancers during the Anchorage Museum’s “Meet the World” event in 2004. The Hispanic population has grown from about 3 percent in 1980 to nearly 9 percent by 2013, according to the latest census data. Spanish is also the most common non-English language spoken by Anchorage School District students.

A Hundred Years, a Hundred Languages

ASD languages 1993-2015

German

Russian

Chinese

Korean

Japanese

Inupiaq

Inupiaq

Nuer

Lao

Lao

Samoan

Yupik

Yupik

Filipino

Korean

Samoan

Filipino

Hmong

Spanish

Spanish

“English plus 99, so 100 languages.”

That’s not how many languages are spoken in the country, or even Alaska. As of last count there were 100 different languages actively heard in the Anchorage School District, Philip Farson said.

Farson directs the districts English Language Learners program, designed to help students adapt to an English-centric learning environment. More than 1,000 new students enter the program every year, he said.

As a result, he is one of the first people in Anchorage to see the city’s changing population through its new students and their parents.

Currently, about 6,200 students are in the language program, 13 percent of the ASD student body. In all, more than 10,000 students are in, or have graduated from, English Language Learners; that’s one-infive public Anchorage students.

At the beginning of last school year, minority students comprised 57 percent the district, up from 45 percent 10 years prior, according to ASD. Farson said it’s more than just the surface data, however. What sets Anchorage apart from other districts nationwide is the diversity among traditional minority groups, he said.

Often, a district will have a dominant second language, such as Spanish, and very few speakers of other languages, according to Farson.

“There are many districts that have as many or more languages than we do,” he said. “It’s just that

they don’t have them in the same time and how much it continues to Alaska Native-American Indian cent of the U.S. population identikind of mix that we do.” change,” Farson said. population had risen to 8.1 percent fied as white in 2013.

While the number of students Historical census data backs and Hispanics or Latinos were all Much of the growth of minority that primarily speak Spanish at home him up. Nearly 84 percent of An- of a sudden 8.6 percent of the An- groups in Alaska’s largest city has was second to English with 1,344 chorage residents identified as chorage population. happened within the last 15 years. speakers last school year in Anchor- white or Caucasian in 1980. The Also, Pacific Islanders showed Anchorage’s population inage, Hmong, Samoan and Filipino next largest racial group was Afri- up on the list of the largest racial creased 12.1 percent between speakers are not far behind. can Americans at 5.2 percent of the groups in Anchorage at 2.3 per- 2000 and 2010. Its collective Yupik, the language of Western city’s population, followed closely cent, while those identifying as bi- Asian, Native Hawaiian and PacifAlaska Natives, was fifth and spo- by Alaska Natives or American racial were nearly 8 percent of the ic Islander population grew almost ken by 279 students, according to Indians at 5.1 percent. People of city. African Americans were 6.3 40 percent during the decade, and ASD data. The next highest Alaska Hispanic origin were 3 percent of percent of Anchorage in 2013. the Hispanic or Latino population Native language on the list was In- Anchorage in 1980.

Nearly 10 percent of Anchor- increased by 23 percent. upiaq at eighth, spoken by 120 stuBy 2013, Caucasians made up age residents were foreign-born The Alaska Native-American dents. It is the language of Alaska exactly two-thirds of city residents. in 2013, and 17.3 percent did not Indian population kept pace with Natives from the North Slope and Asians, less than 3 percent of An- speak English, according to U.S. overall population growth at about Northwest Alaska regions. chorage’s population in 1980, were Census data.

See Languages, Page 30 At every level, elementary to nearly 9 percent two years ago. The By comparison, about 78 perhigh school, ASD has some of the most diverse schools in the country as a result, according to U.S. Department of Education metrics.

Farson and his staff of 150 1,600 teachers and paraprofessionals try to help each student understand 1,400 English academically, while at the same time encouraging the stu1,200 dents and parents to embrace their home language.

2014-15 He said some parents elimi1,000 nate their primary language from 1993-94 their homes in an effort to im800 merse their children in English, a noble effort that can sometimes stunt a child’s vocabulary and 600 language development.

“We encourage (parents) to 400 speak whatever language they are most fluent in,” Farson said. “We 200 want the students to have models of rich language. The reason for that is, if you’re using a rich vocabulary 0 at home that will transfer over.”

The worldwide immigration to Anchorage is a relatively reSource: Anchorage School District cent phenomenon.

“I don’t think people realize Chart/Nadya Gilmore/AJOC just how diverse Anchorage re- There are now 100 languages spoken in the Anchorage School District. From 1993 to 2015, Spanish remains tops in nonally is, how much it’s changed over English languages spoken, and Lao is still fifth. Hmong-speaking students have jumped up to second place with 1,067.

STUDENTS

By Elwood Brehmer Alaska Journal of Commerce

Page 30 • Celebration of a Century 1915 - 2015

Languages:

Continued from Page 29

12 percent, while the number of Caucasians and African Americans each increased by less than 3 percent.

About 10 percent of all Alaska businesses were owned by immigrants in 2010, according to the Immigration Policy Center, or nearly 3,400 statewide.

The reasons behind the moves obviously vary as much as the people themselves, but a recent influx of Middle Eastern and North African refugees is sadly a result of conflict.

Farson said he is beginning to see more Arabic-speaking individuals in his work, a trend he expects to continue.

“Ten years ago we had no Sudanese; now we have 700 (in Anchorage),” he said.

For many of the city’s residents, particularly refugees relocated by government officials, Alaska is all these newcomers know of the United States, Farson said.

“America is whatever we are making it for them to be, and that’s true even for a lot of those that come here by choice,” he said.

Cook Inlet’s earliest settlers, of course, were the Dena’ina. The Alaska Native people had permanent settlements north of the Anchorage Bowl at Eklutna, across Knik Arm from what is now Anchorage and along the western shore of the Inlet at Tyonek.

Early immigrants to the city of Anchorage were primarily immigrants from Greece, Russia, Norway, Sweden and Denmark, according to a 2002 joint publication by U.S. Army staff at Fort Richardson and Colorado State University. They sought work building and operating the new Alaska Railroad.

Anchorage residents referred to all newcomers as “Swedes” in the early days, Cook Inlet Historical Society President James Barnett said. Even in its early days, Anchorage was a place where immigrants were not marginalized like they were in other parts of the country, he said.

Anchorage passed some of the America’s

first anti-discrimination laws, according to Barnett. Its lack of social classes is partially a result of Anchorage being a young city and traditions that have always favored immigrants, he said.

“We’re all newcomers,” Barnett said. “In every case as we’ve grown we’ve grown because we’ve embraced the newcomer.”

The population explosion during World War II and the early Cold War was because of military expansion in the city, which brought soldiers and airmen with ranging backgrounds from all over the country north.

As still happens today, many of the military personnel stationed in Alaska fell in love with the state and stayed, or came back when their service is complete.

More than 15 percent of Anchorage residents are veterans, compared with an average of less than 10 percent nationwide, according to the state Labor Department.

Alaska has the highest number of veterans per capita of any state in the union.

More than 25 years ago, Anchorage resident and well-known community organizer Mao Tosi was one of the city’s newcomers.

“I’m Samoan — warm everything — but my heart and my soul are rooted here in Anchorage, Alaska,” Tosi said. “So it’s to know that this place becomes home.”

Tosi moved north from San Diego with his family in 1989 with the allure of jobs and a fresh start ahead, he said.

Tosi was 12 years old at the time.

Since, he has witnessed Anchorage become a more colorful community not afraid to discuss racial issues, Tosi said.

“I moved here in 1989 and to see the changes from then to now, it’s what you hope for most cities, to grow in a way where there hasn’t been much in the news about the segregation or the division of our community,” he said. “That says to me that Anchorage, that Alaska, is much different from the rest

Photo/Dan Joling/AP

One-year-old Kenneth Toovak dances with the Tagiugmiut dancers of Barrow at the opening of the 2011 Alaska Federation of Natives annual convention at the Dena’ina Civic and Convention Center in Anchorage. Inupiaq, the Alaska Native language of the North Slope, and Yupik, the Native language of Western Alaska, are among the top 10 non-English languages spoken by Anchorage School District students.

AP Photo/JR Ancheta/Alaska Dispatch News

Wearing traditional African clothing, South Sudanese women demonstrate a dance in between acts at the first ever Miss Africa Alaska Pageant at the Northway Mall in Anchorage in 2012. The pageant brought together a growing African community in Anchorage.

of the country.”

Malcolm Roberts is an advisor to the Bridge Builders of Anchorage board of directors. He helped found the group that focuses on bringing Anchorage’s communities together as a member of former Mayor Rick Mystrom’s staff in 1996.

“It’s still that frontier mentality,” Roberts said, explaining Anchorage’s increasingly diverse population.

His wife, Cindy Roberts, traced the attitude back to the area’s pre-Anchorage, gold rush days.

“We need talent,” she said.

Before transitioning to non-denominational Alaska Pacific University in 1978, Alaska Methodist University worked to bring Pacific Islander students to Alaska, part of the reason for Anchorage’s Tongan

community, Malcolm Roberts said.

People from all over the world continue to come to Anchorage for education, jobs and that welcoming attitude, according to Tosi.

He said Anchorage also benefits from being a small city, in which newcomers can easily become involved and feel as though they are a part of the overall community.

“Nowhere else in the country do I see any city move as quickly as we do when there are issues that we come together on,” Tosi said.

The fact that Anchorage is often ranked among the best cities to call home in America is not lost on those worldwide.

Many newcomers quickly encourage their relatives to think about giving the city a try, according to Tosi.

“It’s spreading like wildfire that this is a good place to live,” he said.

Celebrating 102 years of Aviation in Alaska!

Sunday, July 12, noon-3pm at the Alaska Aviation Museum ic mus e v Li by the t Food rt rha s t and rucks ca other br and!

Gardbeer b en!

Congratulations Anchorage on your

100 th Birthday !

museum open daily 9am-5pm

FLy by’s and more!

Call 248-5325 for more info or check www.alaskaairmuseum.org Serving Alaska Since 1953

907-272-4433

Congratulations, Anchorage!

M a de in A l a sk a b y A l a sk a n s f o r A l a sk a n s

Est. 1971

Est. 1977

Est. 1991

2300 E. 63RD AVE, ANCHORAGE, AK. 99507 | www.capitolglassak.com

1915 - 2015 Anchorage: Present & Past

• Page 31

Dena’ina roots still run deep in Southcentral Alaska

By Tim Bradner Alaska Journal of Commerce

Until recently, few people knew much about Anchorage’s original residents, the Dena’ina.

Settlement of Southcentral Alaska by waves of gold miners, homesteaders, railroad construction workers and, finally, the development of a city at Anchorage, had a steamroller effect in pushing the Dena’ina not only off their lands but out of the consciousness of Alaskans, too.

It was as if they never existed.

Through history the Dena’ina used much of what is now the “Anchorage bowl” area for subsistence hunting and fishing and had a large and well-established village at Eklutna as well as smaller communities at Knik and other locations.

Across Cook Inlet, Tyonek was a long-established Dena’ina community, as well as Kenai and Seldovia on the Kenai Peninsula.

Most Alaskans, however, hardly knew the Dena’ina existed, had lived in and used the Anchorage area, and were numerous and, at times, quite prosperous.

The Dena’ina Civic and Convention Center in Anchorage, the city’s premier meeting and convention center, at least reestablished the name, but it took the Anchorage Museum’s major exhibition, “Dena’inaq’ Huch’ulyeshi, The

Photo/Michael Dinneen/Michael Dinneen Photography

As the Special Exhibits Curator at the Anchorage Museum, Aaron Leggett was instrumental in bringing the first exhibition of the Dena’ina Athabascan people to a major museum. Leggett, who is Dena’ina, has made it his life’s work to preserve and elevate the history of the original people of Southcentral Alaska.

Dena’ina Way of Living,” in 2014 to finally underscore the importance of the people in the history of Southcentral Alaska.

The museum brought together the first exhibition of Dena’ina historical artifacts and exhibits.

Many artifacts were collected from around the world, loaned by museums and individuals for the exhibition. Dena’ina elders and community leaders provided important advice and assistance.

Origins The Dena’ina were in Southcentral Alaska about 1,000 to 1,500 years ago. They are Athabascan,

like Alaska Native people of the Tanana and Yukon River regions of Interior Alaska and the Ahtna people of the Copper River basin.

Aaron Leggett, the Anchorage Museum’s special exhibits curator who is Dena’ina himself, said the Dena’ina appear to have migrated in two waves, one through Rainy Pass and the Copper River area to Talkeetna and upper Cook Inlet, and a second through the upper Kuskokwim River valley to Stony River, Lake Clark and Illiamna, and then to the Kenai Peninsula.

When people migrate there are usually reasons for it, but Leggett said there is no evidence that peo-

ple were being pushed out of territory in the Interior.

“It’s more likely they were attracted by the favorable climate and abundant resources in Southcentral. It’s not as cold as in the Interior, and the big salmon runs of the Kenai and Russian Rivers, and at that time the Susitna, were big attractions just like they are today for us,” Leggett said.

There were a caribou in the area at that time too, and the ocean offered a lot of beluga, clams and some seals. The Dena’ina were the only Athabascans who were able to exploit marine resources. In the Interior, in contrast, there were only

land animals.

Those resources supported a larger population in the region; the Dena’ina were then estimated at about 5,000, but diseases, brought

by Europeans, would later reduce the number sharply.

Eklutna, one of the longestestablished villages, had a population of about 800. Diseases were to have major impacts over time but the village was repopulated several times.

Early life appeared to be quite good for the Dena’ina. There were larger settlements than in the Interior although people typically moved out to summer fish camps, including across what is now Anchorage.

There were summer camps at Ship Creek and Campbell Creek, and fall hunting on the upper drainages of those creeks and the mountains, what is now Chugach State Park.

The area populated by Dena’ina extended west to the Kuskokwim and to Chickaloon in the northwest, Matanuska-Susitna Borough, the border with the Ahtna region (there was a lot of movement back and forth, and intermarriages with Athna people).

The northern boundary was approximately the upper Susitna River area, about where the Watana hydro dam is now planned, although this area seemed to have See Dena’ina, Page 34

Cook ’s exploration left lasting impression on Alaska

By Tim Bradner Alaska Journal of Commerce

For Alaskans, the story of Captain James Cook’s exploration of Cook Inlet in search of the Northwest Passage is deeply woven into the history and identity of Anchorage.

However, the descendents of the Dena’ina who lived in the area are decidedly ambivalent about the celebration of Cook — after all, they were the original discoverers, a thousand years or more earlier.

But Cook and his crew were the first European visitors and their arrival, on Cook’s third voyage to the Pacific, was to have huge significance in the long run, says Jim Bar-

Photo/Michael Dinneen/For the Journal

Anchorage attorney Jim Barnett became the area’s expert on Captain Cook after becoming fascinated with the little-told history of his third voyage.

nett, an Anchorage attorney who has become a Cook scholar.

At the time the Spanish were exploring Southeast Alaska but had not ventured west of Yakutat, Barnett said. The Russians, meanwhile, were still in the Aleutians.

Cook’s two ships, the Discovery and Resolution, had worked their way northwest from what is now Oregon and Puget Sound, along the British Columbia and Alaska coast, hoping to find the long-sought Northwest Passage.

They were in Cook Inlet by late May and early June 1778, hoping it would lead to the imagined passageway to Europe. It didn’t, once again, but Cook sent his crew exploring in small boats, which led to the naming

of Turnagain Arm, so named because it was a disappointing “turn again” for Cook’s crew (Cook originally called it “River Turnagain”.

William Bligh, later of Bounty fame, was a master’s mate in Cook’s crew and led the boat crew exploring what is now Knik Arm, reporting the discovery of a large river at its head (either the Matanuska or Knik Rivers) as well as beautiful mountain scenery to the north, possibly the Alaska Range and even Denali, known to the Lower 48 as Mt. McKinley.

Cook’s ships were in the Inlet for just over a week, long enough to establish that this wasn’t the Northwest Passage. While here, though, Cook took time to land at what is now Point Possession on the Kenai Peninsula to proclaim the region for English. That happened on June 1, 1778, where his crew claimed possession of the area in front of dozens of puzzled local residents, the Dena’ina.

It was the first significant encounter between Europeans and Dena’ina.

The visit to Cook Inlet was part of Cook’s longer exploration of the Alaska coast from which included a stop in Prince William Sound, which Cook named, along with Bligh Reef in the Sound, which was to become famous in 1989 when the tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on it and spilled millions of gallons of crude oil.

Prince William Sound, interestingly, was almost named “Sandwich Sound” by Cook after the Earl of Sandwich in England (and who invented the sandwich as a food item).

The Sound was renamed by Cook after Prince William, a scion of the royal family when his journal was published.

Leaving Prince William Sound, Cook ventured west along the Alaska coast in subsequent exploration, and after leaving Cook Inlet, he named Bristol Bay and Norton Sound

and other features after places and people in England, as was the custom at the time.

As he continued his quest for the Northwest Passage Cook entered the Chukchi Sea through the Bering Strait and, amazingly, got as far as Icy Cape, on Alaska’s northwest coast, before being stopped by ice. The two ships were almost trapped by ice off Icy Cape, in fact.

Leaving an impression Cook was in the Inlet that carries his name for only a short period, but he left an impression on the Dena’ina who recorded the visit in their oral history. His visits to Alaska, however, were even more significant to the world because they led directly to more visits by British, and later American, ships for trade, and the development of a strong British and American presence as a counterweight to Russian domination.

One direct result of Cook’s voyages, for example, was the subsequent detailed charting of the Alaska coast, including Cook Inlet and Prince William Sound and down to Puget Sound, that was ordered by the British Admiralty.

The charting expedition was led by George Vancouver, who had been a midshipman on Cook’s crew and was selected to do the coastal charting based in his experience and abilities demonstrated on Cook’s voyages.

Vancouver’s charts were of such high quality that they were used widely until the early 20th century, when the U.S. government finally conducted its own marine surveys along the Alaska coast after a series of devastating shipwrecks in Lynn Canal in Southeast Alaska, Barnett said.

See Captain Cook, Page 33

Page 32 • Celebration of a Century 1915 - 2015

IN SEARCH OF THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE Captain James Cook’s Third Voyage, 1778 ENCOUNTERED August 18, 1778 ICE PACK

A

E IS

CH K U

AITS

CH

BERIN G STR

IRCLE C C I T ARC

St Lawrence Island

Beesboro Island

September 12, 1778

May 12, 1778 Prince William Sound

nlet

St Matthew Island

Mt St Elias

Cook I

Kayak Island May 11, 1778

Mt Fairweather

May 25, 1778

Baranoff Island May 1, 1778

June 20, 1778

Umnak Island N IA T U E AL

October 2, 1778

Unalaska

ISLANDS

I

AI W HA May 1 May 3 May 4 May 6 May 11 May 12

May 18

May 21 May 24 May 25 June 6 June 14 June 15 June 17 June 20 June 26 July 2 July 9 July 14 July 18 July 23 July 29

The last view of Alaska for Cook, as they pass Umnak Island in a storm.

October 30, 1778

The chronology used here has largely been adapted from a work by the late Paul Capper, and originally published in the newsletter of the Captain Cook Society. There are many discrepancies in the various accounts of the voyage, both as to dates and locations; the Alaska section of Cook’s third voyage has received comparatively little study, and Capper’s account is the most detailed.

Off Sitka Sound, Baranof Island, finally in “perfectly serene” weather.

Passes Cross Sound, at the north end of Chicagof Island.

Sights Mt. Fairweather Sights Mt. St. Elias, first reported by Vitus Bering.

The expedition’s first landing in Alaska, at Kayak Island.

Enters Prince William Sound, which Cook named to honour the King’s third son. While the ships anchored near the mouth and traded with a large number of natives who had paddled out with furs, William Bligh took a small boat and explored enough of the Sound to ascertain that this was not the passage that they sought.

Leaves Prince William Sound, heading southwest, the opposite of the desired direction. Following their departure, the journey had few positive experiences, and much danger. High, unpredictable winds made following the shore closely exceptionally dangerous, and when the winds dropped, that danger was replaced by low visibility in mist and fog.

Passes the south end of the Kenai Peninsula. This was the birthday of King George III’s daughter Elizabeth, and Cook named the point in her honour.

Sights Afognak and Kodiak Islands.

Enters a huge inlet that led off to the northeast. Against opposition by Bligh, who stated that it was only a river, the ships spent almost 2 weeks exploring Cook Inlet and Turnagain Arm before giving up.

Passes Shuyak Island, off the north coast of Afognak Island.

Off Trinity Islands. The first Aleuts paddling kayaks are seen.

Stays well offshore, passes Chirikof Island.

Among the Shumagin Islands.

Sights Unimak Island and the Shishaldin Volcano.

Cook narrowly averts disaster while sailing fast with the wind in thick fog. An alert lookout heard breakers ahead, and the ships managed to stop only a few hundred yards from rocks off Unalaska Island (Cook aptly named it Providence Island).

Rounds Umnak Island, sails to the northeast along the Alaska Peninsula.

Enters what is probably now Kvichak Bay - Cook named it the Bristol River.

Passes Hagemeister Island.

In Kuskokwim Bay. Heads northwest into the open Bering Sea. Off Cape Upright, St. Matthew Island

Aug 3 Aug 5 Aug 8 Aug 10 Aug 12 Aug 14 Aug 18

Aug 21

Sept 8 Sept 11 Sept 12 Sept 18 Sept 20 Sept 23 Oct 2 Oct 14 Oct 26 Oct 27 Oct 30

William Anderson, the expedition’s surgeon, dies off St. Lawrence Island. Cook renamed it Anderson Island, but the name given by Bering in 1728 was later officialized.

Lands on Sledge Island, west of the current location of Nome.

Off Cape Prince of Wales, which Cook named to honour the King’s eldest son.

Crosses to Siberia, lands at Zaliv Lavrentija (St. Lawrence Bay) and meets the Chukchi people.

Passes through Bering Strait.

Crosses the Arctic Circle.

Reaches the ice pack at 70° 44’N., north of Icy Cape. Cook reported that in the early afternoon, sailing in a chilly mist, they encountered a wall of ice about 12 feet high, stretching from horizon to horizon. After noting that the pack ice was advancing at the rate of 15 miles in 10 hours, they of course then headed south again. The following night, they encountered a huge herd of walruses on icebergs - although dozens of the animals were killed, the men were unwilling to eat the meat, which they termed “disgustful” and compared to train oil.

Off Cape Lisburne, heads due west in broken ice, with the intention of traversing a Northeast Passage back to England. They reached the Siberian coast near Mys Smidta (Cape Shmidta) on the 29th, but then Cook abandoned his plan, and sailed to the southeast to escape the rapidlyapproaching ice. Back at Zaliv Lavrentija on September 3, they then headed east to Norton Sound.

Passes Cape Darby, entering Norton Bay. Leaves Norton Sound, passing Cape Denbigh.

Lands at Bessborough Island and trades with the natives.

Passes Stuart Island, off the present location of St. Michael. Then sails west.

Returns to Anderson (St. Lawrence) Island.

Off St. Matthew Island again.

Enters Unalaska Bay. Despite orders to avoid contact with other Europeans during this expedition, Cook meets Russian fur traders and Unalaska post factor Gerassim Ismailov. Cook and Clerke were able to benefit from the study of several charts which Ismailov showed them.

Leaves Unalaska, heading for the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands, where they would winter, and then head north again in 1779.

Cook’s birthday. A gale began which lasted 3 days, battering both ships badly. On the Discovery, 3 men were badly hurt, and Captain Clerke’s servant, John Mackintosh, was killed in a fall down the main hatchway.

The last view of Alaska for Cook, as they pass Umnak Island in a storm.

1915 - 2015 Anchorage: Present & Past

Captain Cook:

Image/National Library of Australia/Anchorage Museum

Continued from Page 31

Image/Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

Portrait of Captain James Cook, circa 1780, England, by John Webber, who was Cook’s commissioned artist for his voyage around Alaska in 1778.

This is one of many objects being loaned for the Anchorage Museum’s 2015 Captain Cook exhibition.

“His orders were to chart the coast, not the rocks,” Barnett said of Vancouver.

Still, “Vancouver’s charts were the accepted maps of the Alaska coast for more than a century, until well past the Alaska purchase,” Barnett said.

To their credit, “the British Admiralty published the charts, making them widely available,” even to competitor nations, in the Age of Enlightenment spirit and sense of cultural superiority that shaped British policy at the time, Barnett said.

In contrast, “the Spanish were very secretive about their navigational information, to keep competitors away from their territory,” he said.

The Russians seemed intent only to pillage. In Britain, however, this was the era of influential “armchair” geographers among the aristocracy and members of the rising merchant community who were intensely curious about unknown

• Page 33

regions, particularly the Pacific, Arctic and Antarctic regions.

They pushed the Royal Navy to commission Cook’s voyages, and explore he did, not just the Alaska coast but Australia, New Zealand, Antarctica, and Hawaii, where Cook died when he and his crew were attacked by Native Hawaiians just eight months after he had left Cook Inlet.

Barnett also said the drawings of Native Americans, and places that Cook’s ships visited including Prince William Sound and the Arctic, by artists John Webber and William Ellis who were with Cook, had a major effect of stimulating scientific curiosity about Alaska in Europe.

Native Americans in Prince William Sound, Cook Inlet, the Aleutians and Norton Sound were drawn and painted by Webber.

“Cook was the first explorer to make an accurate record of what he saw,” Barnett said. “Because of that we have a pictorial record of

The “Resolution” beating through the ice, with the “Discovery” in the most eminent danger in the distance. (Hand-colored etching based on John Webber, 1792). In search of the Northwest Passage, Captain James Cook encountered the ice pack in the Chukchi Sea and had to head south on Aug. 18, 1778.

what people looked like and what places looked like at the first point of contact,” between Native Americans in Alaska and Europeans.

Cook was a close observer of people. “He realized that the people of Hawaii were Polynesians and he figured out that people in Prince William Sound were Eskimos, distantly related to the Native people of Greenland,” Barnett said.

This encouraged Cook to believe he was close to Greenland, just wishful thinking as it turned out, because he soon learned there was no nearby passageway to Europe.

Cook himself was “a man of the Enlightenment,” of middleclass origins in England who rose base on his skills to become one of the earliest recruitments in the Royal Navy due to merit, not family connections.

His early experience in surveying made him a close observer of his surroundings, leading to his invitation to Webber to join the voyages as official artist. Ellis, another artist, was also a surgeon’s mate on the voyages.

After Cook’s death his ships and crew returned to Alaska to continue their work, even returning to the Chukchi Sea and Icy Cape in another effort to penetrate the ice and find a Northwest Passage. Cook’s second-in-command, Charles Clerke, also died on the voyage.

Interestingly it was a Virginian, John Gore, one of Cook’s officers who, at the time of the American Revolutionary War, assumed command of the expedition and saw the ships with Cook’s journals and

Webber’s drawings and paintings safely back to England.

Cooking up a passion As an accomplished amateur historian and long-time president of the Cook Inlet Historical Society, Barnett has a keen interest in promoting more public knowledge of the history of the U.S. west coast and Alaska history precisely because there is so little awareness of it.

“When I was growing up in California our sense of history was focused on the east coast,” Barnett said. “We learned about the pilgrims in school but not about why San Francisco had a Spanish name.”

When he subsequently moved to Alaska, Barnett was struck by the fact that Alaskans’ sense of their state’s history seemed to start with the American purchase in 1867.

There seemed little awareness of anything prior to that, including the Russian colonial story and even Captain Cook, and certainly the Dena’ina.

Barnett soon developed a fascination with Cook because his last voyage to Alaska “offered a look into our prehistory, prior to the Russian and American occupation of Alaska.”

But while researching Cook, Barnett discovered that even Cook scholars had written little about his final voyage to Alaska because it was so shortly followed by the tragedy of his death in Hawaii. The accounts of Cook’s voyages to the South Pacific were quite detailed,

“but we would find only a few paragraphs about the North Pacific voyages, and particularly Alaska.”

Barnett’s interest, and the paucity of information about Cook in the North Pacific, inspired him to write, “Captain Cook in Alaska and the North Pacific,” which was published in 2008.

That and other efforts by the Cook Inlet Historical Society has now led to the exhibition “Arctic Ambitions: Captain Cook and the Northwest Passage,” a major exhibit on Cook in Alaska that will be at the Anchorage Museum until Sept. 7, 2015.

The exhibit, which is cosponsored by the Anchorage Museum, Cook Inlet Historical Society and Washington State History Museum, includes artifacts and reproductions of the most famous of Webber’s illustrations and paintings.

An extensive catalogue of “Arctic Ambitions,” on sale at the museum gift shop and online, contains extensive reproductions of photographs and illustrations as well as essays on Cook’s voyages by international scholars and records of contacts with Alaska Natives.

The book was co-edited by Barnett and David Nicandri and published by the University of Washington Press. Barnett’s own book is also at the gift shop.

After the Arctic Ambitions exhibition closes in Anchorage it will travel to the Washington State History Museum in Tacoma, Wash.

Tim Bradner can be reached at tim.bradner@alaskajournal.com.

John Webber, “Woman of Prince William Sound,” watercolor, pencil, paper, 1778. Captain Cook recruited Swiss artist John Webber to make a pictorial record of his voyage to search for the Northwest Passage. When Cook halted the expedition in Alaska’s Prince William Sound to repair to his battered ships, Webber encountered a number of local Chugach Sugpiaq (Alutiiq) people and drew portraits of both a man and a woman.

This is Webber’s initial drawing of the woman, drawn as she stood before him.

Entering Prince William Sound From the journals of Captain Cook

“On the 12th at nine in the morning,” wrote Ledyard (John Ledyard, corporal of marines on the Resolution), “we entered an inlet… at six in the evening perceiving bad weather approaching… both ships anchored… The pinnace of the Resolution with the first lieutenant, some other gentlemen and myself went to the opposite shore to shoot some wild fowl.” The first lieutenant was John Gore.

The inlet was named Sandwich Sound by Cook, after the Earl of Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, but in the published version of his journal the name appeared as Prince William’s Sound, after George III’s third son,

Duke of Clarence, later William IV. The ships had anchored off Cape Hinchinbrook, named after the country seat of the Earl of Sandwich.

Some local inhabitants appeared and came aboard the ships. Clerke gave them a “Glass Bowl, with which they seem’d much delighted, and toss’d me, in spight of all my motions to the contrary, one of their Frocks, which was made of Water fowl Skins, and exceedingly well calculated, to keep out both Wet & Cold; then, both Boats put off and made for the Shore, paddling & singing with all the Jollity imaginable. We either found these good folks on of their Jubilee Days, or they are a very happy Race.”

Page 34 • Celebration of a Century 1915 - 2015

Dena’ina:

Continued from Page 31

been lightly used, Leggett said.

To the south, the Dena’ina had a strong presence on the Kenai Peninsula, and what is now the Girdwood area was a kind of buffer area, lightly populated and used (game was actually scarce) between the Denai’na and the Prince William Sound peoples, who were Eskimo and traditional enemies of the Denai’na.

Cook’s arrival The arrival of the first European, Captain James Cook, in 1778, had little actual effect on the Dena’ina although the forces that Cook’s voyage set in motion were to have immense impacts later.

Cook made an impression on the Denai’na, and they on him, and the arrival of the ships and subsequent meetings, offering opportunities for trading, are noted in Dena’ina oral histories. In fact, there are incidents that are noted both in the oral history and Cook’s journal, “so we know it was Cook that the Dena’ina met,” Leggett said.

Cook was in the area only briefly, however, about six days in total. Cook named Cook Inlet (for himself), Turnagain Arm and a Kenai Peninsula land feature, Point Possession, “but he really didn’t like the area.”

“The weather was lousy, there were strong tidal currents and waves, and his boats kept getting stuck,” Leggett said. Soon it was obvious that Cook Inlet did not lead to a hoped-for Northwest Passage, and Cook pointed his ships south, to the relief of the crews.

Photo/Robin La Vine/Alaska Department of Fish and Game

Nancy Delkittie and Jessica Hay process salmon at a fish camp near Nondalton in 2008. Layering grass on the cutting table is a traditional method to prevent fish from sliding around. Nondalton is one of several Dena’ina communities around Southcentral Alaska.

“They asked, if the dog wasn’t wanted why didn’t Cook’s men just give it back?” Dogs were valuable to the Denai’na as pack animals and for hunting.

Cook’s impact If Cook’s visit had only minor significance for the Dena’ina, other visits by Europeans in the following years. William Vancouver, who was in Cook’s crew, came back several years later to do surveys for the British Admiralty and charted

drove out the Russians.

The Russians maintained a presence in the area after the Russian America Co. under its governor, Alexander Baranof, took control and ended most abuses.

Meanwhile, the Russian Orthodox Church had gained influence and its priests worked to modify the behavior of Russian traders.

By the 1820s things had settled down, Leggett said, and the Dena’ina were prospering with the fur trade, mostly acting as middlemen between the Russian buyers and inland Native people who were doing most of the hunting.

“This was a good time, and people were acquiring a lot of wealth,” he said.

But disease brought by the Europeans hit people hard. A smallpox epidemic that raged between 1836 and 1839 wiped out about half the Dena’ina, but those who survived still prospered on the fur trade.

Alaska purchase

Photo/Courtesy/Anchorage Museum

Dena’ina Chief Stephan wearing dentalium bandolier, headdress and ground squirrel parka in Knik, circa 1907. The construction of the Alaska Railroad about 10 years later began displacing the Dena’ina from their traditional fish camps around the Anchorage bowl.

Before he left, however, Cook sent a crew of men who landed and named Point Possession after planting the British flag and claiming the region for the King of England, although that made no impression on the Dena’ina, who met Cook and his crew there to trade, or to the exploitive Russians who showed up later, and who really took possession.

One story in the Dena’ina oral history, which matches an account in Cook’s journal, is that the Dena’ina made a trade of a dog to Cook and his men, or maybe a gift, Leggett said. For some reason, the British shot the dog.

“It may have been because it bit someone, or some other reason, but it really upset the Denai’na,” he said.

Cook Inlet as well as Prince William Sound and the coast of Alaska and British Columbia down to Puget Sound.

Leggett said the first big impact by Europeans on the Dena’ina came when the Russians showed up in 1787 and 1791, three years after Cook’s voyage. This wasn’t the relatively benign Russian government of the Russian-America Company, but companies of traders and hunters who were violent, exploiting the Dena’ina.

Three Russian trading companies moved into the area competing with each other for furs and exploiting the Denai’na. There were murders and kidnappings, and by 1798 the Denai’na had enough. An uprising at Tyonek

The purchase of Alaska in 1867 by the United States was to bring about a huge shift in the Dena’ina world. Gold prospectors, and American traders, started showing up in the 1880s. There was no law enforcement, and in fact no laws, and some of the traders resented the influence the Russian Orthodox Church had, and some priests were harassed by the new arrivals.

“The priests were trying to provide a moral compasses, scolding the newcomers about drink and abuse of women,” Leggett said.

But by the turn of the 20th century conditions were improving in the territory of Alaska. Wealthy American sports hunters, mountain climbers and explorers started showing up, creating business opportunities for the Dena’ina in guiding and providing support to the visitors.

“People had heard about worldrecord moose on the Kenai,” and it was a big draw in the sports hunting world, Leggett said.

Hope and Sunrise, on Turnagain Arm, had also become small but thriving gold mining communities, and those were soon joined by

Girdwood. Most of upper Turnagain Arm was not used heavily by the Dena’ina because hunting was generally poor, so there were few, if any, conflicts with the miners.

Prospecting had also spread out across Interior and western Alaska and people traveling to mining areas used trails originally established by the Dena’ina from what is now Knik and Tyonek. Relations were generally good with the Dena’ina, who benefitted from providing services to the travelers.

However, there were negative effects from other activity.

Salmon canneries were being established on lower Cook Inlet and streams traditionally used for fishing by the Denai’na were blocked by fish traps.

In 1917, construction crews showed up in Anchorage to build the Alaska Railroad, and the Dena’ina started to lose access to fish camps in the Anchorage bowl.

“They were just told to move by the government,” Leggett said.

At that time the Dena’ina also had the use of what is now Joint Base Elemendorf and Richardson for hunting and fishing, and in fact

a 328,000-acre “Eklutna Education Reserve” had been established by the government for their use.

The reserve began to shrink as military facilities were installed, and by the 1960s only 1,800 acres were left near Eklutna village.

Meanwhile, the Chugach National Forest had been established, which brought another level of government over many areas used by the Dena’ina. However, traditional uses of some areas hung on for years. Fire Island, in Cook Inlet just offshore Ted Stevens International Airport, was a Dena’ina fish camp until the 1980s, Leggett said.

The Anchorage’s Museum’s “Dena’ina Way of Living” was not a one-time event. With funds from the Rasmuson Foundation, smaller units of the exhibition have been travelling in Alaska, to Fairbanks and Homer, Leggett said.

Portions will also permanently reside at the Kenaitze tribe’s wellness center in Kenai.

An illustrated book of the exhibition is still available, however. It can be purchased for $34.95 at the Anchorage Museum’s gift shop.

Map/Courtesy/National Park Service

The Dena’ina people’s historical homelands in Southcentral Alaska extend from the Susitna River at the north to the tip of the Kenai Peninsula and Iliamna Lake on either side of Cook Inlet.

1915 - 2015 Anchorage: Present & Past

59 PP PP PP

69 PP PP PP

TIKAHTNU

1142 N Muldoon Rd 8840 Old Seward Hwy Unit A-1 Tikahtnu Commons Shopping Located in the South TIKAHTNU (907)N331-3800 TIKAHTNU 1142 Muldoon Rd 8840 Old Seward TIKAHTNU Coming Soon! Hwy Unit A-1 TIKAHTNU 1142 N Muldoon Rd 8840 Old Seward HwyUnit Unit A-1 A-1 Tikahtnu Commons Located in the South 1142 NN Muldoon RdRd Shopping 8840 Old Seward Hwy TIKAHTNU SOUTH ANCHORAGE 1142 Muldoon 8840 Old Seward Hwy Unit A-1 Tikahtnu Commons Shopping Located in the South (907) 331-3800 TIKAHTNU Located in the South Tikahtnu Commons Shopping 1142 N Muldoon Rd Shopping 8840 Old Seward Hwy Unit A-1 Located in the South Tikahtnu Commons (907) 331-3800 1142 N Muldoon Rd 8840 Old Seward Hwy Unit A-1 (907) 331-3800 Tikahtnu Commons Shopping South Anchorage Retail Plaza (907) 331-3800 Tikahtnu Commons Shopping Located in the South (907) 331-ENVY (907) 336-ENVY (907) 331-3800

Open 7 Days: M-F 8am-10pm, Sat 8am-10pm, Sun 8am-10pm Open 7 Days: M-F 8am-10pm, Open Days: M-F 8am-10pm, Sat778am-10pm, Sun 8am-10pm Open Days: M-F 8am-10pm, Open 7 Days: M-F 8am-10pm, Sat 8am-10pm, Sun 8am-10pm Sat 8am-10pm, Sun 8am-10pm Sat 8am-10pm, Sun 8am-10pm Open 7 Days: M-F 8am-10pm, Sat 8am-10pm, Sun 8am-10pm

• Page 35

Page 36 • Celebration of a Century 1915 - 2015

14994 x 15.5 4c

Wells Fargo celebrates Anchorage’s 100th birthday

Friends, family, neighbors and local business owners are the backbone of this community. Our vibrant spirit comes alive at events like these.

We’re proud to be a part of the community.

wellsfargo.com © 2015 Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. All rights reserved. Member FDIC. (1253320_14994)