Category: 49 History

Fri, September 20, 2013

Denali still great…but 83 feet shorter…

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... (Read More)

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Wed, September 11, 2013

Satchel and Stepovich

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... (Read More)

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Mon, September 09, 2013

Park’s Cannery, Uyak Bay

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... (Read More)

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Fri, August 16, 2013

The ACC Treasure Hunt

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... (Read More)

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Fri, August 09, 2013

One more photo: Aleutian WWII Historic Sites

As a follow-up to John Cloe's recent post about the trip to WWII sites in the Aleutians, here's another photo, this one from Ron Inouye. The war memorial on Engineer Hill. Photo: Ron InouyeAccording to Ron: “Only by boat does one appreciate the Aleutians' vast distances, variable weather, and strong currents. Sea and land birds, porpoises, whales, foxes, caribou mysteriously appear. And patience is learned, snuggled in a bay as the bad weather plays out, hour by hour, day by day. And... (Read More)

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