Sun, September 22, 2013
Susannah Dowds, as part of her research for her dissertation, Alaska Sourdough: Bread Beards and Yeast, is gathering sourdough starters from across the state. If you have a starter and a story, bring both to the 2013 Museums Alaska and Alaska Historical Society Conference and become part of the narrative! Photo credit: Sheldon Museum & Cultural CenterSourdough starter is easily transported when dehydrated; here are instructions on how to dry your yeast:1. Feed your starter a few hours beforehand, so...
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Fri, September 20, 2013
The great Denali, as you may have heard, is eighty-three feet shorter than previously thought. As a result of a federal-state radar mapping project, surveyors now put the mountain’s height at 20,237 feet, still 686 feet higher than Canada’s Mount Logan, the second-tallest peak on the continent. We’re a little behind the Alaska media in announcing this story, but AHS’s own Katie Ringsmuth was at the Map Collectors conference in Fairbanks earlier this month where Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell made...
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Wed, September 11, 2013
If you’ve ever found yourself thinking, ‘Hmmm, I wonder if there is a photograph somewhere of Hall of Fame pitcher Satchel Paige and Alaska territorial governor Mike Stepovich’…Well, wonder no more: Leroy "Satchel" Paige and Mike Stepovch, June (?) 1958 (Stepovich FamilyPapers, Box 3, Folder 39, Alaska and Polar Regions, UAF Rasmuson Library)This photo, archived with the rest of Stepovich’s papers at the UAF Rasmuson Library, was taken in summer 1958 when Stepovich and his wife Matilda took in a Miami Marlins...
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Mon, September 09, 2013
In 1934, Herbert Dominici built a one-line cannery on Kodiak Island, across from Amook Island in Uyak Bay. His was the newest cannery in a neighborhood relatively flush with canning operations. In fact, he was formerly the superintendent at one such cannery, that owned by Northwestern Fisheries, located at the Uyak Anchorage. Dominici mostly canned salmon taken from Ottar Hofstad's two fish traps, located on the Shelikof Straits on the west side of Kodiak Island. These fish traps intercepted salmon...
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Fri, August 16, 2013
By Pennelope GoforthThe history of Alaska is the history of the Alaska Commercial Company. Both entered the Great Land in 1867. Both are still here today.In a dim musty basement of a home in the foothills of Washington’s Cascade Mountains, I came across a cache of six ledger books detailing the everyday business of the company in the far-flung Aleutian Islands. They proved to be a treasure trove of economic, ethnographic, and historic information about the early years of the...
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