AHS Blog
Date Posted: April 27, 2014
Categories: 49 History
“The language of maps is integral to our lives. We have achieved something if we have put ourselves (our town) on the map.”
~Simon Garfield, On the Map
In January 2014, my team and I received an Anchorage Centennial Community grant from the Alaska Humanities Forum and the Anchorage Centennial Commission to produce Tents to Towers: A Century of Maps of Alaska’s Largest City. The final project, targeted for completion in 2015, will tell the story of how Anchorage emerged from a railroad camp to Alaska’s urban center over the course of ten decades. The project intersects geography, art, and history by depicting the city’s development and expansion through historical maps and photographs. The team includes project director Katherine Ringsmuth, editor and senior historian Terrence Cole, GIS expert Barbra Bundy, layout designer Francis Broderick, and student researcher, Abdoulie Lowe.
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| Anchorage street map, circa 1940 |
Currently, the ongoing collection of digital maps includes approximately 300 maps of Anchorage and the Upper Cook Inlet area. The maps span a broad spectrum of Anchorage history, representing themes such as exploration, military expeditions, railroad construction, community growth, homesteads, canneries, trails and trade, aviation, military sprawl, earthquake and volcano impacts, recreation and the area’s cultural footprint. Maps show an evolution of place names, some of the first archeological sites, townsite withdrawal from the Chugach National Forest, the Iditarod trail, gold and coal claims, ski trail and area development, and Nike missile sites. The digital collection also includes vintage maps, Sanborn insurance maps, town plats, historic maritime charts, maps made to attract tourists, and even three-dimensional objects such as a vintage banner, a table cloth and even a pair of ear rings.
Historically, these maps were designed for practical purposes—used to inform individuals as to where they were going. But viewed today, these maps were also used as paths to the future, documenting the big dreams held by past residents. Whether they were pragmatists or visionaries, the people who built our city and produced these maps represent a society steeped in transformative change. The maps, themselves, provide insight about Anchorage identity, what residents valued at a given moment in time, and where Anchorage was positioned in the map of the mind’s eye.
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| “Carte de la Riviere de Cook” |
The academic, government, and private archives that have contributed to the project so far include: Loussac Library, Anchorage City Hall, JBER History Office, Bureau of Land Management, Alaska Resources Library and Information Services, Alaska and Polar Regions Collections & Archives at University of Alaska Fairbanks, University of Alaska Anchorage Archives and Special Collections, Anchorage Museum, U.S. Geological Survey, National Park Service, The National Archives at Anchorage, Anchorage Visitors Bureau, and Heritage Library and Museum at Wells Fargo. Private individuals have also donated their unique maps for use.
The final product hopes to accomplish the following objectives:
1) Demonstrate that Anchorage began as a 20th century American town that aspired be a modern, planned city primed for commerce. That the frontier boom economy was actually sparked by WWII and continued in the form of big oil, and to be mindful that Anchorage was built not in wilderness, but rather on a cultural landscape in which elements still exists today.
2) Challenge older notions of how people populated the Cook Inlet region, particularly Alaska Native migrants.
3) Serve as an opportunity to both study and celebrate Anchorage’s cultural diversity and to connect Cook Inlet to a global history, far older than the city itself.
4) To utilize the produced maps as an educational tool beyond the pages of a book.
Finally, the aim of From Tents to Towers is to provide historic contexts or themes that both constitute a timeline and interpret events that shaped Anchorage’s growth and development over the last century. The final products will showcase the story of the Cook Inlet landscape, a place visually dominated by mountains and mudflats and shaped by tides and earthquakes, and a cultural landscape, where today 100 languages are spoken. In the end, the final product will endeavor to show how the multifaceted relationship between Cook Inlet residents and their differing relationship with the natural landscape has directly shaped the 100 year history of this region.
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| Tourism promotional map, 1980s |
The final product is not just meant to be informative, for the historically significant maps illustrate the artistry and expertise of past and contemporary cartographers and capture the imagination of Anchorage residents. The final product—which includes an exhibit for the Anchorage centennial, a series of posters meant for public and academic use, and potentially an illustrated atlas—will hopefully spark public discussion, civic interest, and new historic research.
If you have an interesting map of the Anchorage bowl or Upper Cook Inlet region and would like to participate in this project, please contact Katherine Ringsmuth at KatmaiKate@aol.com for more information.
Date Posted: April 10, 2014
Categories: 49 History
by Katherine Ringsmuth
It’s that time of year again, when umpires across the nation cry the long-waited phrase, “Play Ball!” We, far northerners, have gone to great lengths to bring the game of baseball to Alaska and its surrounding Arctic environment. However, few images of the game from the far north capture baseball’s more traditional themes, such as rebirth, pastoralism, and of course, the ‘boys of summer.’
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“Winter at Herschel Island ca. 1984. Note the baseball and soccer fields made
by whalers to pass the time during the long Arctic winter. New
Bedford Whaling Museum, New Bedford, Massachusetts. |
For example, in the late 19th century, a famous painting of icebound whalers at Hershel Island who spread ashes on the sea ice to form a baseball diamond and played the game at 40 below. Nome miners scraped away soggy vegetation from the surface of the tundra, then placed hundreds of burlap bags and dirt atop in order to shape a diamond that overlooked Dry Creek. Other unique stories of Alaska baseball include those of the famous Midnight Sun game played now for over a century in Fairbanks and the Ketchikan teams whose game were called due to high tide rather than nine innings. Besides mining for copper, Kennecott employees fielded baseball teams that played on a glacier. And, when thousands of military personnel came to Alaska during World War II, they played baseball in the remote reaches of the Aleutians Islands.
The postwar years brought one of the game’s greats to Alaska: Satchel Paige. The exhibition game was played in Anchorage in 1965. Paige made his visit to Anchorage one year after the great Alaska earthquake, and rumor had it that legendary pitcher might manage a team named for the natural disaster. Alaska artists such as Sydney Lawrence, Fred Machatanz and Rie Muñoz maintained connections to baseball in their early careers, even Alaska pilot Bob Reeve and his wife Tilly were fans of the game.
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“Metlakatla Baseball Team,” Sir Henry S. Wellcome Collections,
ca 1856-1936, National Archives, Alaska Pacific Region. Anchorage, AK |
Collectively these stories tell us that Americans might have brought the national pastime to Alaska, but we Alaskans made it our game. By looking at Alaska’s ball fields, diverse players and chilly, soggy and often icy playing times, one quickly gets the impression that the northern environment and climate played a significant role in transforming the national sport into something uniquely Alaskan.
In 2015, the Anchorage Museum is planning an exhibit, commemorating Baseball in Alaska. The exhibit will focus on the game’s history, from baseball-like sport played by Alaska Natives to the formation of the Alaska Baseball League. And although the game has been embraced by Alaskans differently than the rest of the nation, the exhibit will convey one universal truth—baseball is about being a kid. Thus, the exhibit will also nostalgically look back at Alaska little leaguers, kids who recall starting their baseball season scrapping spring snows off the fields, the kids at heart, who celebrate Fur Rondy with a game of snowshoe softball, and the kid in us all, who enjoys a good pickup game on the park strip as the summer sun blazes above.
If you would like to contribute to the exhibit by donating photos, memorabilia, old uniforms and equipment, or simply have a good story to tell, please contact Katherine Ringsmuth at KatmaiKate@aol.com.
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| This image of whalers playing baseball appeared in Albert G Spalding’s 1911 book, America’s National Game, in which the sporting goods seller proclaimed, “That Base Ball follows the flag is abundantly proven…It has been played by our soldiers and sailors wherever they have carried the stars and stripes.” Spalding Baseball Collection, New York Public Library. |
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| “Game at Kennicott,” History Files, Wrangell Saint Elias National Park and Preserve, Copper Center, Alaska. |
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| “Kennecott Baseball Team, 1930.” Courtesy of Geoff Bleakley. |
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| Fourth of July Game in Anchorage in 1915. Photograph by Sydney Lawrence. Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center. |
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H.C. Jackson’s article, “Play Ball at Midnight Showing How Fans Are in Evidence in Central
Alaska on the Longest Day of the Year” appeared in Sunset Magazine in June 1913. |
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| Young Fans at the Chinooks baseball game at Chugiak, Alaska, in July 2013. |
Date Posted: April 9, 2014
Categories: Alaska's Historic Canneries
By: James Mackovjak
The late Bob Thorstenson, one of the founders of Icicle Seafoods, once told me his favorite seafood was canned pink salmon. Bob had good taste.
Canned salmon, which has been produced in Alaska since 1878, is the most nutritious and consumer-friendly of all of Alaska’s seafood. While the product is often considered poor cousin to skinless, boneless salmon fillets, canned salmon is by far the more nutritious of the two. Yes, both canned salmon and salmon fillets are very rich in protein, but canned salmon—because it contains salmon flesh, skin, and bones—provides additional nutritional benefits. First, there is fish oil. With fillets, the healthy oil may be cooked out of the product during preparation. With canned salmon, the fish is cooked in the can, so all of the oil is retained. Second, canned salmon includes the fish’s bones, a valuable source of calcium. And then there is the skin, which contains a variety of important nutrients. Add to this the fact that canned salmon is easily digestible.
Regarding consumer friendliness, canned salmon, unlike frozen or fresh salmon fillets, requires no refrigeration and has a shelf life of five years. A meal of canned salmon can be as simple as opening can and eating the fish with a fork. For those who desire something more elaborate, canned salmon can be poured over a salad, or noodles, or rice. The options are endless.
Date Posted: March 29, 2014
Categories: 49 History
by Rachel Mason, adapted from Nancy Yaw Davis’s 1970 article, “The Role of the Russian Orthodox Church in Five Pacific Eskimo Villages as Revealed by the Earthquake,” in the Committee on the Alaska Earthquake report The Great Alaska Earthquake of 1964, Human Ecology Volume, Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, pp. 125-146.
The Great Alaska Earthquake was a terrible disaster for residents of five Alutiiq villages in Prince William Sound and the Kodiak Archipelago. It destroyed the Alaska Native (then known to themselves as Aleut, to the academic community as Pacific Eskimo, and today known as Alutiiq or Sugpiaq) villages of Chenega, Kaguyak, and Afognak, and greatly damaged Old Harbor and Ouzkinkie.
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Pre-earthquake map showing villages of Chenega,
Kaguyak, and Afognak. |
Anthropologist Nancy Yaw Davis lived in Anchorage at the time of the Great Alaska Earthquake in 1964. In the following weeks, she interviewed residents of the destroyed village of Kaguyak and the nearly destroyed village of Old Harbor who had been evacuated to Red Cross-operated shelters in Anchorage. In 1965, she traveled to interview the residents of three additional Alutiiq communities: Afognak (whose residents were relocated to Port Lions), Ouzinkie, and Chenega. From the beginning of her research, it was evident to Davis that the Russian Orthodox Church played an important role in villagers’ explanations of the disaster and their willingness to leave the original village and relocate to another site. The research would result in Davis’s 1971 doctoral dissertation at the University of Washington: “The Effects of the 1964 Earthquake, Tsunami and Resettlement on Two Koniag Eskimo Villages.”
The following excerpts are from Nancy Yaw Davis’s article in the multi-volume report on the earthquake published by the National Academy of Sciences. I have focused on the experiences of the three villages that were completely destroyed and not rebuilt: Chenega, Kaguyak, and Afognak.
The Importance of the Russian Orthodox Church in Alutiiq villages:
One of the most lasting influences of the Russian period in Alaska (1742-1847) was the establishment of the Russian Orthodox Church. (p. 128)
In all five villages, the church is a prominent landmark. Each building is well cared for and often has been constructed on land slightly higher than the rest of the community. Each church has at least 60 icons. Chenega reportedly had more than 100 icons. (p. 128)
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| Chenega before the 1964 earthquake. |
The only village-wide activities are church-related ones. As a woman in Chenega said when asked about social activities, “Church is mostly what we do.” Even in the three villages, Old Harbor, Ouzinkie, and Afognak, where Protestant missions were gaining support before the earthquake, the Russian holidays are shared by all the native community. No other institution touches so many of the people as deeply, consistently, and thoroughly as the Russian church. (p. 129)
Chenega:
The first wave struck Chenega before the ground had stopped shaking. The water caught and carried out 23 of the 76 residents, most of their homes, and their church. (p. 132)
The significance of the church was reflected in the frequent references made to this institution by the villagers. Several survivors who were near the church site in the center of the village mentioned seeing the building crack, bow, and break apart. No other building was mentioned. (p. 132)
Several people said that if the church had stood they would have stayed in Chenega, but since it was gone, they were willing to be evacuated to Cordova. (p. 132)
Kaguyak:
Three hundred miles away on Kodiak Island, most of the adult men of Kaguyak had worked all day on their near church. Immediately after the earthquake, one of their first concerns was the new building. [The men checking on the church] looked out a church window just in time to see the first surge of water coming over the bank. They ran to join the other villagers who were already scrambling for a small hill behind the village. (pp. 133-134)
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Kaguyak in the 1950s. This photo and that of Afognak below were taken
from the boat Evangel during one of the Smith family’s mission trips to
the Kodiak area villages. Photos from Tim Smith’s website:
www.tanignak.com/ouzinkie |
[After the third wave, h]ouses were pulled up and forced into the lake. The first building to go was their new church. This loss, perhaps more than anything up to that point, upset the people:
“When I see that church I was crying all over the place…And the wave took it away from us. Nothing left in that village. Everything all gone.” (pp. 134-135)
Afognak:
[In Afognak, where Protestant missionaries had been working], the movie King of Kings was to be shown on Good Friday morning. (p. 135)
When the earthquake began the immediate response in Afognak was similar in that in each of the other communities: open the doors, turn off the stove, gather the children, get out of the house, and watch the tides. Moderate concern was shown for the church building; the lay reader instructed his eldest son to check on it. When the son reached the church, he was amazed to find that no oil had been spilled from the altar vessels and only one old icon had fallen. Soon other people began to gather by the church, “to watch the tides,” they said. The lay reader’s house became the major center of activity throughout the night (p. 135)
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| Afognak in the 1950s. |
The Russian church building in Afognak, like that in Old Harbor, withstood the tsunami well. Although houses near the church were washed off their foundations and pushed into the trees, the church was not moved. (p. 136)
Relocation:
Like the Chenegans, the people of Kaguyak no longer had a reason for returning to the site of their former village. About 4 weeks after the disaster, the Kaguyak people, with the exception of one family and two unmarried men, had moved to Akhiok…a small village of 90 persons near old Kaguyak, near the southern tip of Kodiak Island. (p. 138)
Kaguyak and Old Harbor residents remained in Anchorage for 5 to 6 weeks before being relocated [the Old Harbor residents back to their village]. In Anchorage, one of the first actions of the villagers was to emphasize to the Red Cross shelter leaders that they were all Russian Orthodox and did not want to be visited by people from other religious groups. (p. 137)
In Afognak the church was still standing, but it did not have the same attraction for the village people that the churches in the other three villages did. More important to Afognak villagers was the fact that their wells had been contaminated and their roads were being washed away by the tides that now came up into the village. The building of a new church was only one of the points raised at the meeting with the Lions International, the 49th District Lions, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs representatives, who helped the village move and rebuild. (pp. 138-139)
Explanations:
Unlike the people of Chenega, Kaguyak, and Old Harbor, the people of Afognak when interviewed did not constantly and spontaneously refer to their church, nor did the blame the missionaries for the disaster. However, one older woman is reported to have said, “The reason we are having the earthquake is because it was Good Friday and they were showing a movie, and God was mad.” (p. 136)
Explanations were seldom spontaneously volunteered by the Chenegans, the people most severely affected. Even when asked specifically, informants usually changed the subject or quietly commented, “I don’t know.” The question probably was too disturbing to answer. There was an aura of fear. One person said, “There was something evil down there or something.” In contrast to the reticent response by Chenegans, Kaguyakans gave frequent, spontaneous, elaborate, and church-oriented explanations of the disaster. (p. 142)
Date Posted: March 26, 2014
Categories: 49 History
by Shana Loshbaugh
For me, the Exxon Valdez oil spill was about sea otters.
Like many Alaskans, I turned on the radio the morning of March 24, 1989, and spent the following hours and days riveted in dismay as the oil and news of it spread. Could I do anything about the ghastly situation unfolding in Prince William Sound? Yes. I volunteered to go to Valdez. On April 5, I reported for work at the Valdez Otter Rescue Center and shampooed my first sea otter. Little did I know that the project would dominate my life for more than a year.
Prior to that, my sea otters had been distant brown spots bobbing in the coastal waters. I knew a few things about them. Biologically, they were big, shellfish-eating sea weasels that lived in groups and were clever enough to use tools. Historically, they were – arguably – responsible for the existence of “Alaska” as a geo-political entity because their luxuriant fur inspired Russian traders to trek to the ends of the known world. Contact with humans always seemed to work out badly for sea otters. The fur trade drove them close to extinction. They had been collateral damage during nuclear bomb tests in the Aleutians. In 1989, they were in history’s crosshairs again, accidental victims of our society’s insatiable lust for fossil fuels.
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Unidentified protesters in Homer expressed
their opinions of Exxon in 1989. Photo
by Doug Loshbaugh . |
Working on the sea otter project was, to paraphrase Charles Dickens, the best of jobs and the worst of jobs. The positive aspects included the amazing sea otters themselves; the fat filthy lucre of oil-spill paychecks; the heady idealism, altruism, and hard work; and the wonderful, inspirational people I met. The negative aspects included being away from my family; the poisonous crude; the corrosive cynicism, corruption, and incompetence; and the horrible, disheartening people I also met. I outlined the checkered history of the sea otter project in a 2009 talk to the Alaska Historical Society annual meeting in Unalaska, and wrote it up for the proceedings of that conference.
The spill’s 25th anniversary is a time to reflect on that bizarre experience and its long-range consequences. Following are my personal impressions.
Alaskans have divergent views of the spill in general and the otter project in particular. The oil spill remains abstract to many who were too young or living elsewhere at the time. It never was very relevant to communities far from the site or those whose lives never touched the sea. Some who live on the coast consider sea otters marine varmints that overrun shellfish beds and compete with people for resources. But many Alaskans, particularly fishermen and subsistence users in the affected areas, consider the Exxon Valdez oil spill a festering environmental and socioeconomic wound, and they feel a kinship with the sea otters’ suffering.
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A mother otter cuddling her pup in a holding pen
at Little Jakalof Bay near Homer. Photo by
Doug Loshbaugh. |
These people also see the otter project as part of the larger spill-response effort and Exxon’s troubled legacy. Few who drew large paychecks from Exxon in 1989 respected or trusted the company. Feeding the alienation was a sense that Exxon thought money was more important to the region’s people than the damaged environment, resources, and the lifestyles they had supported; a sense that Exxon expected checks to satisfy Alaskans’ grievances. A related problem was the role of profiteers, exploiters, and outright criminals who flocked to the oil-spill scene to line their pockets and use more innocent or vulnerable colleagues. The otter center was the first place I ever encountered a professional con artist or “stress-induced psychosis.” Petty theft was rife, and factional disputes went all the way to the top. Co-workers made efforts to report crime and mismanagement, but, other than a case involving fraudulent boat contracts featured in the state news, those in charge seemed uninterested in punishing malfeasance. While some people in the USA claim that government is incompetent and private corporations better suited to manage our resources and economy, I cannot imagine anyone familiar with Exxon’s 1989 and subsequent performance in Alaska asserting that view.
Working on the spill was, I admit, a rare opportunity to hold a managerial post and network with professionals. Circumstances threw together diverse but passionate people for long and stressful hours that led to a rare sense of camaraderie. The sea-otter project led to at least four marriages and one divorce. Its excitement, motivation, and quirkiness made it thrilling if not fun.
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Burt Wood, Leslie McBain, and two others
washing an otter in Valdez, April 1989.
Photo by Shana Loshbaugh. |
But on another level, otter center work was traumatic. We witnessed beautiful animals dying in droves despite our toil. Afterwards, those memories reinforced my concerns about human-caused environmental damage. I became almost obsessed about “reduce, reuse, recycle.” One colleague talked about “post-otter stress syndrome,” and another told me how she pulled her car over to the side of the highway to weep during a radio story on the spill’s first anniversary. Scientists involved found their careers blighted by association with Exxon. Years after the ship hit Bligh Reef, I had a nightmare in which I heard the piercing scream of a distressed sea otter and frantically searched for the beast.
The unique chance to spend time with sea otters opened our eyes to what extraordinary creatures they are and gave us a glimpse of their lives in a complex society alien to our own. Just to touch their fabled fur was a delight. Their pups were the cutest creatures imaginable. But most amazing was their behavior. Alone, they languished; but when placed in groups they perked up and recovered. Again and again, caretakers witnessed otters interacting in affectionate and altruistic ways that implied intelligence, emotion, and empathy. When frightened, otters clutched each other; when content, they held hands (paws) with a friend. Pen mates carried food to a mother otter that would not leave her sleeping pup at feeding time. Most disturbing was an incident in which a healthy otter drowned after a veterinarian sedated it for a routine procedure. The other otters tried to save their friend, holding it up by the armpits on each side and trying to keep its face out of the water. With mixed feelings, we saw the otters grow tame and friendly. As young ones patted my leg, begging for food, my heart ached. On the one hand, I knew that such trust put them at high risk of being shot after release. On the other hand, their touch was a fantasy-come-true of gentle contact with wild creatures. Is it possible to describe such observations without anthropomorphizing?
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Liz Simonis and Kathy Hill, workers at the Little Jakalof sea otter
facility, snapped photos during the release at McCarty Fjord in
Kenai Fjords N.P. in August 1989. Exxon arranged to fly otters
and their caretakers via helicopter to release sites. Photo
by Shana Loshbaugh. |
Did the sea otter rescue effort help the wildlife at all? The answer is complex. For the population, in the short run: no. Recovering since the 1911 international fur seal treaty, the species is no longer endangered. Damage assessment studies estimated that the oil directly killed about 3,000 otters, mostly in Prince William Sound. That contrasted with 436 animals captured for “rescue” of which 187 were released to the wild eventually. Despite people’s helpful intent, additional animals may have died due to the stress of capture, transport, and life in captivity. For individual animals, there is no question that the intervention saved lives, especially for the 36 juvenile and handicapped otters that spent the rest of their lives in captivity. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service only declared the sound’s sea otter populations recovered in February 2014. For the long run, I believe the project did help the wildlife, at least in the hypothetical case of any future oil spills or other events prompting people to put otters into “protective custody.” Fears that the stint of captivity would transfer lethal diseases from domestic animals to wild otters did not materialize. One good side effect of the bad situation was the unprecedented leap in expertise regarding sea-otter capture, medicine, and husbandry. This already has been applied in places such as the Alaska SeaLife Center.
What people learned, on a larger scale, led to revamped spill-response plans that include more sophisticated wildlife response. Alyeska and other entities have pre-fab, modular otter centers in storage. They contract with companies to provide trained responders in the event of future spills. There’s even a book on how to rehabilitate sea otters, written by veterans of the 1989 project.
This year, as people reflect on this anniversary of the oil spill, we do so with knowledge of newer fiascos such as the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and of looming threats such as ocean acidification and climate change. Sea otters remain symbols of wild Alaska and its vulnerability to human error and hubris.
