Adventurer Clyde “Slim” Williams moved to Alaska in 1900. According to his biography, “Alaska Sourdough,” Slim lived in the Copper River Basin in the 1930s, and one fall, while buying supplies at Copper Center,...
It is hard to believe that the Iditarod Sled Dog Race is 50 years old. I remember the first Iditarod taking off from the streets of Anchorage. The following is reprinted (with permission) from...
The hamlet of Cooper Landing, on the banks of the Kenai River just west of Kenai Lake, is one of the Kenai Peninsula’s recreation meccas. The community traces its history back to the 1896-97...
The plane in the drawing is a 1928 Stearman C3B, registration number NC5415. It is, along with planes such as Ben Eielson’s World War I-era Curtis Wright JN-4 (on display at Fairbanks International Airport),...
Immediately preceding and during World War II the Civilian Aeronautics Authority (CAA was the predecessor to the FAA) built and upgraded airports across the United States as part of a national defense program. Theresa...
The Glenn Highway, which winds along the Matanuska River before climbing over Tahneta Pass to the Copper River Basin, opened in 1943. In the late 1940s the roughly 145-mile section of narrow, gravel-surfaced road...
Merle “Smitty” Smith, who is now known by his more colorful nickname, “Mudhole,” became enamored of flying at an early age. According to Lone Janson’s 1981 biography of him, Smitty, who was born and...
The Alaska Railroad Depot in Anchorage is located at 411 W. First Ave., on the south side of Ship Creek at the base of the bluff on which downtown Anchorage sits. Early photos, taken...
The U.S. Congress passed The Alaska Railroad Act in March 1914, authorizing construction of a federally-owned railway from an ice-free port on Alaska’s southern coast to Fairbanks in the territory’s Interior. President Woodrow Wilson...
James Casey set up a primitive roadhouse (just a few tents and tarps) along the Delta River, possibly as early as 1901. It was located at what would become Mile 212.5 of the Valdez-Fairbanks...
