AHS Blog
Date Posted: July 29, 2013
Categories: 49 History
By Anjuli Grantham
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Diamond X Cannery on the Ugashik River in Bristol Bay.
This photo was taken in 1994. The cannery is now totally destroyed.
Image courtesy Bob King.
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Recently, the Alaska Association for Historic Preservation and the National Trust for Historic Preservation listed Alaskan canneries as endangered historic properties. The NTHP listed Kake Cannery as one of the organization’s 11 Most Endangered properties in the nation, and the AAHP listed both Kake Cannery and Alaska’s historic canneries in general on the list of the 10 Most Endangered Historic Properties in Alaska. Clearly there is growing recognition that canneries are historically significant and worthy of our preservation and interpretation efforts.
Kake Cannery is a National Historic Landmark and only one of two canneries listed on the National Register of Historic Places in Alaska. Constructed between 1912 and 1940, the multiethnic labor force ate meals in the mess halls, meandered along the board walks, got too few hours of sleep in the segregated bunk houses, and processed tens of thousands of cans of salmon that were brought in by independent fishermen and from cannery-owned fish traps.
Today, the Kake Cannery is teetering on rotting pilings. It is one of dozens of historic canneries across Alaska that is on the verge of collapse. The Alaska Historical Society is dedicated to advocating for the preservation and documentation of canneries like the one in Kake. Please stay posted to learn more about cannery preservation and documentation efforts, both here and at 49 History’s sister blog, Alaska’s Historic Canneries.
Links:
Date Posted: July 22, 2013
Categories: 49 History
By Anjuli Grantham
“The oil spill’s impact on the psychosocial environment was as significant as its impact on the physical environment.”
—Lawrence Palinkas et al. “Community Patters of Psychiatric Disorders after the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill”
I was just in 2nd grade when the crude oil from the hull of the Exxon Valdez coated the water and coastline from Prince William Sound down to Kodiak. I remember booms used to contain the spread of oil floating in the sea, shouting matches amongst friends and family about clean up contracts, and the years of anxiously, then increasingly despondently, waiting for settlement money.
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Toby Sullivan and his daughter, Jordan,
join other Kodiak community members
in a 1989 protest against Exxon’s clean
up response in Kodiak. Image courtesy
Kodiak Historical Society.
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Nearly 25 years have passed since coastal Alaskan communities were decimated by the oil spill and the environmental and social repercussions left in its wake, yet it is a recent pain for many Alaskans. “It’s still too raw,” a journalist/ fisherman recently told me as we reflected on the event in our community.
Around the state of Alaska, historical societies, government agencies, and individuals have initiated projects to preserve the history of the spill and reflect on its impacts. For example, as previously mentioned in this blog, the Alaska State Archives is completing the monumental task of processing the Exxon Valdez litigation materials. Moreover, in 2011 the Valdez Museum expanded its permanent exhibit about the spill. The exhibit features a piece of the Exxon Valdez oil tanker’s hull and the diverse perspectives of Valdez community members impacted by the event.
“Children of the Spills” is an oral history project conceived of and completed by Katie Aspen of Homer. After the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, she envisioned that the experiences and reflections of those who were children during the Exxon Valdezdisaster could bring healing to the children affected in the Gulf. She also hoped that the oral histories could provide guidance to the parents and support networks of children impacted by oil spills. In “Children of the Spills,” Aspen preserves voices of Alaskans and children from the Gulf of Mexico, recording a perspective often neglected by historians- that of kids.
Recently, the Baranov Museum in Kodiak acquired materials that will help us to preserve the legacy of the spill in our region. The Kodiak Daily Mirror donated their collection of photographs taken during 1989, depicting protests, clean up efforts, and public meetings. Moreover, we received a protest banner that is so large that it could only have been hung from the ceiling or outside of a building.
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A large Exxon Valdez protest banner,
recently donated to the Baranov Museum.
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What other materials related to the Exxon Valdez oil spill are hiding in closets around the state and Outside? Although for many, the oil spill is “still too raw,” it is now time to boost our efforts to collect and preserve this critical event in Alaska’s recent past.
For more information:
Date Posted: July 10, 2013
Categories: 49 History
By Anjuli Grantham
“That’s what I was doing. I was taking a banya.” Sally Carlough related her story of surviving the 1964 earthquake and tsunami in the village of Kaguyak to a class of middle school and high school students last month. The students were enrolled in a two-week history and film intensive, during which they researched, shot, and edited their own mini-films about the history of the Good Friday Earthquake and Tsunami in the Kodiak Archipelago.
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Alutiiq elder Sally Carlough shares her memories of surviving the
destruction of Kaguyak. She is now a proud grandmother and great
grandmother. Image courtesy Kodiak Historical Society.
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Sally turned seventy the day she came to speak to the class. It was nearly fifty years ago that she was in that banya with her one year old daughter, Diane. When the world started shaking, she quickly dressed and ran from the sweat bath. She remembered looking up behind her and seeing a wave towering overhead. As she dashed up the snowy hill behind Kaguyak on the south end of Kodiak Island, she saw as the tide rose higher and higher behind her. Her cousin, Joe Melovedoff, had a radio transmitter and quickly issued a warning to the village of Old Harbor, thirty miles away. This warning certainly saved lives in Old Harbor.
Several tidal waves struck Kaguyak that evening, measuring between thirty and fifty feet high. In between waves, village men attempted to salvage supplies from houses and move skiffs and boats to safety. In the process Nick Zeedar and the village chief, Simmie Alexandroff, drowned. A young couple from Outside happened to be hiking in the vicinity, and the husband (ironically a geologist) also died at Kaguyak that day.
Sally’s father, Walter Melovedoff, was a reader in Kaguyak’s Russian Orthodox church. Candles were salvaged from the church, and the icons that had been hastily grabbed from houses were held up. In the snow, the thirty-or-so villagers held a service, praying for the waves to stop.
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One of the very few photos that exist of Kaguyak, depicting a family
waiting for a flight to Kodiak in the 1950s. Image courtesy Kodiak
Historical Society, P 734-14.
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In the morning, Kaguyak villagers saw that only three houses in the village were left standing. The newly constructed church was completely swept away. Aside from some blankets and clothing, most everyone lost all of their possessions. The village wells were filled with salt water due to the subsidence caused from the earthquake. The Bureau of Indian Affairs transported the villagers from Kodiak to Anchorage. There, it was decided that moving back to Kaguyak would not be possible. Instead, some villagers elected to move to the nearby village of Akhiok.
Today, very few pictures remain of the historic village of Kaguyak. “We lost everything,” Sally emphasized, and this is likely why Kodiak museums only have two photos of the village in their collections, combined. Once an important trading center for the fur trade, now it is a geographic feature on maps of Kodiak and the home village for a handful of Alutiiq elders. Yet, Sally sharing her story with Kodiak youth helps to keep the memory of the abandoned village alive. “You must learn to survive,” Sally told the students, after describing her experience. “Know what plants to eat. Know how to survive in an emergency.”
Date Posted: July 1, 2013
Categories: 49 History
By Anjuli Grantham
Hoop houses have replaced Quonset huts as the most commonly sighted semi-circular structures in Kodiak these days, as gardeners have taken full advantage of USDA tax credits to promote food self-sufficiency. Now, one can eat fresh salad greens throughout the winter that were not shipped in a container van from Seattle. And although Kodiak gardeners are vaguely aware of the fact that people have been gardening in Kodiak for awhile, people are generally surprised to learn that Kodiak has what is likely the longest agricultural history in the state.
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Gardens surround the homes at Afognak Village in this
turn-of-the-century photograph. Image courtesy Kodiak
Historical Society, P-503-10.
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Ok- admittedly it was at the Three Saint Bay settlement on Kodiak Island that the first garden was planted, which was also the first Russian settlement in Alaska. These early fur traders attempted to plant barley, rye, and other crops that solidly failed. Yet, from this inauspicious beginning, Russian Orthodox missionaries carried seeds with them as they travelled and other Russians established gardens in the villages or forts where they were stationed. Further research is required to discover who it was that started using seaweed as a fertilizer in their garden beds, but to this day “beach peat” is the preferred locally available fertilizer in many parts of coastal Alaska. It was likely one of these early Orthodox missionaries.
In 1835, agriculture received an injection in the Russian colonies, and particularly in the Kodiak region, when the czar sanctioned the establishment of the colonial settler class. These were Russian-American Company employees that had started families in Alaska and had no desire, or little financial ability, to return to Russia at the end of their contracts. These individuals were given food, tools, and agricultural implements and sent to retiree villages that had been established on Spruce Island and Afognak Island within the Kodiak Archipelago and Ninilchik. It was hoped that these retirees would establish prosperous farming villages and that they would sell their produce to the RAC, mitigating some of the provisioning problems that forever haunted the colony. It worked to a small degree- families from Afognak Village sold potatoes, turnips, and rutabagas to the neighboring St. Paul (present day Kodiak) and even exported their produce to Sitka. By the end of the Russian era, the Kodiak district supplied more produce to feed the colonies than any other Alaskan district.
In the earliest years of American ownership of Alaska, Afognak was regarded as the agricultural hub of the territory. In 1886, Henry Elliott claimed that Afognak Village had more acreage under cultivation than all the rest of Alaska, noting that potatoes, turnips, cabbages and radishes were under cultivation. He also noted the cows, chickens, and domesticated ducks that roamed the village. Outside visitors to Afognak nearly always commented upon the gardens, noting the use of seaweed as fertilizer. Recently I feasted on a Kodiak specialty, a salmon pie known as pirok, with a family who has roots in Afognak. It is no wonder that their family’s version of the dish includes grated rutabaga, carrots, and cabbage.
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Local gardeners dig their patches out from underneath Novarupta’s
volcanic ash in 1912. Image courtesy Kodiak Historical Society, P-386-41.
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Kodiak continued to be known for its agricultural prowess prior to the 1912 eruption at Katmai, which buried the island with several feet of ash. After the three days of ash fall, residents quickly got out their shovels and spades and excavated their garden plots, attempting to salvage the new potato shoots and rhubarb plants. To this day, gardeners who plant directly in the dirt instead of a raised bed will have plenty of Katmai ash to contend with.
Heirloom varietals of rhubarb, raspberries, and strawberries still take root in Kodiak today, although potatoes and other root crops have proven more elusive to locate for this novice gardener. Yet, I am more than content with my pirok and rhubarb crisp, feasting on locally grown produce and locally grown history at the same time.
Date Posted: June 23, 2013
Categories: 49 History
By Rachel Mason
President Warren G. Harding’s trip to Alaska in the summer of 1923, followed by his sudden death in California, has been well documented in various sources. Patricia Ray Williams, one of very few people if not the only one alive who remembers President Harding’s July 1923 visit to Seward, suggested that an appropriate June entry for the 49 History blog might talk about Harding’s motives and preparations for the trip. Pat’s father, L.V. Ray, was the mayor of Seward when Harding became the first president to visit Alaska.
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President Harding and Mrs. Harding returning to the White
House from Florida in 1923, greeted by pet dog, Laddie Boy.
Photo by Herbert E. French, National Photo Company collection,
Library of Congress.
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In June 1923 Harding started off on his trip across the country to Alaska, which he called the “Voyage of Understanding.” Harding was not a very competent president, and his term in office was marred by scandals and scoundrels. Before his westward journey public confidence in the president was at a low point, and he wanted a chance to make public appearances and presentations across the nation to regain the people’s approval before he started running for a second term.
Harding’s health was also at low ebb. Even though he had recently quit drinking, he continued to be a heavy smoker and was quite overweight. Observers thought he looked tired; one of his doctors thought that a trip away from Washington would relieve some of his stress. Even before he left Washington, the president reported feeling chest pains. Also before he left on the Voyage of Understanding, he sold his newspaper business, the Marion Star, and he made out a new will.
First Lady Florence Harding enthusiastically supported the Voyage of Understanding and accompanied President Harding on his travels. Later, it turned out, Mrs. Harding was suspected of having a hand in his death! Here, reprinted with permission, is June Allen’s article from Stories in the News, Ketchikan (www.sitnews.us), July 23, 2003.
A President’s Ill-Fated Trek to Alaska: What did kill Warren G. Harding?
By June Allen
On Wednesday, August 1, 1924, First Lady Florence Harding locked herself and a very ill President into the bedroom of the posh presidential suite of San Francisco’s historic Palace Hotel and refused to admit anyone into the room—including the president’s five attending physicians. It wasn’t until the next day, August 2, that she opened the door and left the room to announce that the president, her husband of more than 30 years, Warren Gamaliel Harding, was dead. The headstrong first lady refused to allow an autopsy, and the body was prepared for the lengthy trans-continental funeral-train trip back to Washington D.C.
The nation was stunned by the unexpected death! Harding was a comparatively young 58, a former newspaper owner, handsome, charming and popular in those opening years of the roaring 20s. The cause of death was first announced by doctors as a stroke, later modified as a probable heart attack. He had been feeling ill for at least a week before his death, complaining of severe stomach cramps. Then it was thought perhaps he had suffered shellfish poisoning from tainted crabs eaten on the return voyage after a long expedition through the wilds of Alaska. There was even a rumor that the bad shellfish might have been provided by irate Alaskan fishermen. The cause of his demise was simply a mystery.
Was there more than met the eye in this death? There were whispers concerning the fact that a scandal of monumental proportions was about to break in the nation’s capital, exposing the shenanigans of the president’s cabinet officials, beginning with the Teapot Dome disgrace. His Secretary of Interior Albert B. Fall was about to be exposed (and convicted six years later) for taking a $100,000 bribe in return for a lease on the federal oil reserve near Casper, Wyoming, a scandal gone down in history as Teapot Dome. President Harding had been heard to grumble that his enemies didn’t give him any trouble, it was his friends who caused him grief!
And there was something else, the raised eyebrows and exchanges of knowing glances among the First Lady’s acquaintances. The once-divorced Florence Kling Harding—called “The Duchess” behind her back—had learned that her heretofore childless second husband had not one but two mistresses as well as a baby girl by one of them. Florence Harding was an uncomfortable five years older than her attractive husband. She had been the driving force in his ambitious rise from Ohio newspaper editor to senator from Ohio and then to President of the United States.
The expedition to Alaska had been Florence’s idea, the lengthy trip called by one of her biographers “the great dream of the duchess.” The president was apparently happy to go along, willing to enjoy the adventure and do a little politicking along the way in anticipation of the second-term election the following year. For him, the trip would be an eat-drink-and-be-merry excursion all the way. So the Hardings set off on the rail trip to San Francisco, where they would board the U.S. Navy transport the S.S. Henderson. It was smooth sailing en route north, with card games for the men, jerky silent movies enjoyed by everyone, books to read and plenty to eat and drink, in spite of Prohibition.
And the couple was greeted warmly in every stop along the way. The first port of call was Metlakatla where Florence was startled by accomplished Native Alaskan musicians in their bare feet playing for the presidential couple! They visited the grave of the world famous Anglican missionary, Father William Duncan. (Future president) Herbert Hoover, Harding’s Secretary of Commerce, was personally interested in the call at Metlakatla. Hoover’s uncle, the man who had raised him after the death of both his parents, had been an Oregon Indian agent who later traveled to Metlakatla to study Father Duncan’s unique methods with the Tsimshian people. The widower uncle, John Minthorn, had married a Metlakatla woman.
In Ketchikan the beaming president and dignified first lady accepted tributes of gold and ivory jewelry. The president laid the cornerstone of the Masonic Temple, on the site now occupied by the Ketchikan State Building on Main Street. The July 8 call at Ketchikan was described by the sophisticated presidential national press corp as notable for “hillsides of wooden homes decorated with Independence Day bunting and misspelled signs.” At Wrangell, canoes paddled by Native Alaskans in colorful blankets glided out to the ship, welcoming the presidential party. The Hardings and guests spent three hours ashore there, seeing the sights.
At Juneau, the visitors’ sightseeing was guided by Alaska Governor Scott C. Bone, who had earlier joined the party at its arrival in Southeastern. Gov. Bone had been appointed to the Alaska governorship by his friend President Harding three years before. The governor is remembered primarily for delivering the dedication address at the Alaska Agricultural College—now the University of Alaska Fairbanks—at its opening in September of 1922, and of making the decision in 1925 that relay dog teams would be the fastest mode of travel to deliver the diphtheria serum to Nome in 1925, an act memorialized in today’s Iditarod Race.
Gov. Bone formally entertained the Hardings at the governor’s mansion, complete with 500 guests and an outdoor dance. But it was Juneau’s Sunday Capital editor Will Steel who may have zeroed in on the president’s mode of governance as well as his marriage when he wrote, “The president freely expressed himself on matters of state and politics, with frequent observations on the part of the first lady of the land, whose mind is always alert and particularly keen on matters that concern her husband and his administration.” In short, Mrs. Harding was definitely the woman behind the man behind the Presidential Seal.
Privately, and not so privately, the president and his wife argued and battled the whole way north. Harding was a reportedly quite genial man but with Mrs. Harding always on watch. When they arrived in Seward July 13, they boarded the Presidential car. [The Pullman car was recently refurbished and is open to the public at Fairbanks’ Pioneer Park, formerly called Alaskaland]. During the lengthy train trip on the new railroad, the president was happy to engage his cronies in poker games. Mrs. Harding, however, had special-ordered a steel-wheeled Dodge roadster, modified to run on rails, where she sat alone to enjoy the magnificent Alaska scenery as they traveled north! For company, she called on James G. Steese, chairman and president of the federally owned Alaska Railroad. She mentioned to him the President’s heart condition, that he was not well.
From Wasilla to Willow the president himself drove the train while the first lady sat in the fireman’s seat. But after yet another quarrel she retired to the baggage car. These particular miles from Wasilla to Willow were the reason why the railroad had been built in the first place – the rich gold strikes in the mountain chain along the route that needed transport to saltwater. As the train traveled north it entered coal-rich territory, another rich product of Alaska’s mining wealth. At Nenana the President drove the golden spike that ritually connected the two ends of the railroad that reached it northern terminus in Fairbanks, itself a center for a still gold-producing region.
From Fairbanks, where it was reported that Mrs. Harding had suffered a bout of exhaustion, the presidential party headed south for Seward via the era’s automobiles, along the Richardson Highway. It must have been a miserably long trip on a primitive road. It surely appalled the first lady. The travelers boarded the Henderson in Seward July 17. They crossed over for a stop at Cordova, and continued on to Sitka where they stopped on July 23 for a festive celebration. A combined Navy, Alaska Native Brotherhood and Firemen’s Band greeted and tootled a welcome to Sitka by the Sea. The party visited the Sheldon Jackson museum and school, St. Michael’s Cathedral and the agricultural experiment station. That afternoon the visitors reboarded the ship.
It was shortly after that the troubles began. The touring party members had been eating shellfish during the entire sea voyage, going and coming. But it was two days out of Sitka that the president first complained of sharp abdominal pains, but suffered no vomiting. Shellfish was suspected. But in hindsight no one could remember how the crabs had been delivered or by whom. And no one else became ill although many of the party had eaten crab.
When the ship docked at Vancouver B.C., the president managed to address a crowd of some 40,000 well-wishers, but he was still feeling weak and ill. More problems were to arise. The following morning the Handerson’s boiler room flooded and as all hands were called to action, the passengers too ran on just deck in time to see the big transport ram a smaller ship that sank in the fog. The president was said to have lost his good nature and was heard to say, “I hope this boat sinks.” On departing after a stop in Seattle, the ill-fated Henderson rammed another vessel. It was not a pleasant voyage south! By the time the ship reached San Francisco, the president was seriously ill. By that time it was evident that the planned continuation of the voyage through the Panama Canal and on to Puerto Rico would have to be postponed and possibly cancelled. The Hardings retired to the hotel to await the outcome of the president’s illness.
Mrs. Harding accompanied her husband’s body back to Washington D.C. She immediately went into seclusion and died the following year at the age of 64. She had been a faithful wife and she felt great rage and grief over her husband’s infidelities. But she was courageous – the first wife of a president to fly in an airplane. She adored and courted Hollywood celebrities as well as the rich and famous. She loved her position as First Lady. She did not live to see the 1927 publication of the best seller “The President’s Daughter” by Nan Britton, the story of the young woman’s seven-year affair with Harding and the birth of their daughter, a book dedicated to “all unwed mothers.” The love letters of Harding and his other paramour, Carrie Phillips, are sealed by the Library of Congress and by court order may not be opened until the year 2014.
But it is Mrs. Harding, the Duchess, who in death has the satisfaction of lying beside her husband in Harding Memorial Park in Marion, Ohio, the wife of a President of the United States.
