Sunday, June 29, 2008
Review by David A. James
Aunt Phil’s Trunk Volume 3

By Phyllis Downing Carlson and Laurel Downing Bill
344 pages
$19.95

“If you haven’t done so yet, take some time and open Aunt Phil’s Trunk; you’ll find plenty of treasures inside.” — David A. James

Popular histories can be problematic things. They can shed light on certain periods and events and provide a human angle that often goes missing from more academically inclined works. But they also tend to focus on the romantic episodes of history while overlooking the many mundane but more influential happenings that provide the narrative of our past.

Alaska history books offer a good example of this tendency. Countless volumes have been published about the Gold Rush, and anyone who has read much about our state knows how Skagway, Nome and Fairbanks came into being. But what about Anchorage? Alaska’s largest city appears from nowhere in most accounts, because once many authors get past the Gold Rush, they go skipping off to World War II, statehood, and the pipeline, ignoring what came in between.

For this reason alone we can welcome Volume Three in the ongoing and exceptionally well-crafted Aunt Phil’s Trunk series. It covers the years 1912 to 1935 — a generally forgotten period when Alaska changed dramatically — in such an entertaining and informative fashion that readers will wonder why more hasn’t been written about this era.

For good reasons, I’ve been touting these books since the first volume appeared two years ago. They combine clear writing and plenty of details without getting bogged down in minutia. They include both the big stories and many lesser-known incidents. And they are densely illustrated with photographs showing what life was like in Alaska’s earlier days. It’s a great package, and it hasn’t failed yet.

The Aunt Phil who serves as the namesake of the series is the late Phyllis Downing Carlson, a pioneer Alaskan who moved north at the age of five in 1914, and who spent nearly the rest of her life here. A relentless history buff, she wrote stories about Alaska for numerous publications. Widely respected for her exhaustive knowledge, she received the Woman of Achievement Award from the Alaska Press Women in 1988.

After her death in 1993, her niece, Laurel Downing Bill, inherited her extensive files and began organizing them, adding additional details, tracking down photographs, and compiling this series, which began in 2006. This third of a planned four volumes is every bit as good as its predecessors.

The first section of this book tells how Anchorage came into being. While gold or other resource exploitation had driven the emergence of most other Alaska settlements up until 1915, Anchorage originated as a company town. The federal government had decided to build a railroad from Seward to Fairbanks in order to ease the transport of goods to and from the Interior. Ship Creek, which flowed into Cook Inlet, emerged as the logical midpoint for the stationing of supplies and work crews.

The Alaska Engineering Commission’s decision to headquarter the project in the then-undeveloped region caused much chagrin for Seward’s civic boosters, who had assumed their town would have served this purpose. The Ship Creek area, however, offered easy access for ships, a central location, and lots of available land.

Almost overnight a city started emerging as swarms of job seekers came north. Tents and shacks were quickly replaced by permanent structures, and before long lots were auctioned, schools were built, businesses were established, and the town site was growing into a metropolis.

The authors show that even though Anchorage wasn’t founded by prospectors and con men the way, say, Fairbanks was, its story is just as fascinating. Added to this are the numerous pictures. Not many large American cities came into being after the development of photography, but Anchorage did. Hence in these pages we see familiar landmarks like Government Hill and Lake Spenard when they were still wildernesses.

Transportation is the unifying theme of much of this volume. Moving people and goods around Alaska has always been a challenge, and here we read of the many ways this was done early in the 20th century. In addition to the new train, dogsleds, horse carriages, bicycles and cars careen through these pages.

(Not only do we get an account of the serum run to Nome that inspired the Iditarod, we also learn of an earlier life-saving dogsled scramble that influenced the later decision to use this means of getting diphtheria medicine to the beleaguered town on Alaska’s western edge.)

Ultimately, however, it was the arrival of airplanes that solved Alaska’s transportation woes. The authors devote separate chapters to such aviation pioneers as Carl Ben Eielson, Russell Hyde Merrill, and the Wien brothers, Noel and Ralph, who opened up the territory and changed Alaska forever.

Another big event covered nicely in this volume is the Depression-era creation of the Matanuska Colony by the federal government. Hundreds of displaced Midwestern farmers were moved north and settled in the fertile Matanuska Valley in a mostly successful effort at developing Alaska’s agricultural potential.

Other stories found here include profiles of influential Alaskans Z.J. Louscac, Capt. Austin Lathrop, and William Mulcahy; the arrival of a Norwegian dirigible in Teller; the death of Will Rogers in a plane crash; the 1918 flu epidemic, which decimated the Native population; and the emergence of a Native rights movement. Historic photos range from the futile efforts to rescue victims of the Princess Sophia sinking to the first flight over Juneau to a backwoods moonshine distillery near Anchorage.

Each chapter stands as an individual essay, but the interlinking themes pull them together into a cohesive whole. The tales are brought keenly to life by a pair of authors whose love for Alaskan history permeates every page. They show just how fascinating this often-overlooked time was. If you haven’t done so yet, take some time and open Aunt Phil’s Trunk; you’ll find plenty of treasures inside.

David A. James lives in Fairbanks.