The streets of Anchorage came alive this past week with the 42nd Iditarod Trail race festivities and the 79th Fur Rendezvous. The Fur Rondy is a 10-day celebration, which includes winter sports, cultural activities and lots of fur auctions that delight all ages. Seventy-nine years ago a few fellows got together and decided it would […]
Read MoreAlaska’s 2014 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race unofficially begins on Saturday, March 1, with a ceremonial start in downtown Anchorage. And after weeks of worry that a lack of snow could jeopardize the famous race, about 70 mushers will take off from Willow and begin the dash to Nome in earnest on March 2. The […]
Read MoreThe curtain closed on a chapter in Alaska history last week. Michael Anthony Stepovich, known as “Mike,” died on Friday – Valentine’s Day – at the age of 94. He was the last surviving territorial governor of Alaska. Born at St. Joseph Hospital in Fairbanks on March 12, 1919, Stepovich was the son of a […]
Read MoreAs Cupid flits about flinging arrows into unsuspecting lovers this week, I thought it would be fun to take a look back in Alaska’s history and see what love-struck couples did when their stars crossed and they wanted to marry. Well, it turns out that miners during the Klondike Gold Rush sometimes had to improvise […]
Read MoreMovies about Alaska, mostly based on books by Jack London and Rex Beach, thrilled audiences during the early 1900s. But all motion pictures were filmed outside of Alaska. So when a group of Oregon promoters planning a travelogue and feature film about the territory toured Alaska’s towns in 1922, several Anchorage residents decided to go […]
Read MoreThe wacky weather across the Continental United States this winter is really crazy. While those who live in the Midwest and East Coast dig out from the 2014 Snowcropolis, Alaskans are seeing one of the warmest January’s on record. And as the thermometer hovers in the mid-40s across much of the state, the melting snow […]
Read MoreFired with the romance of the undertaking and inspired by exciting rumors, thousands thronged to Nome’s beaches in 1900 after gold nuggets were found in the sand. Lured by the siren’s cry of “gold,” prospectors who’d not had luck elsewhere in Alaska came in the hopes that Nome’s sand would become their pay dirt. But […]
Read MoreRobert Service would have been the first to call what he wrote verse – and he advised young men to “write verse, not poetry – the public wants verse.” Although this Englishman of Scottish ancestry spent most of his life in the New World in Canada, Alaskans adopted the poet of the Yukon, too. For […]
Read MoreWith all the recent talk about the nation’s leading lawmakers, and politics in general, I started thinking about the early movers and shakers in Alaska history. They had huge problems to deal with, too. For instance, Anchorage’s first mayor, elected on Nov. 29, 1920, bore the responsibility of governing a railroad town after five years […]
Read MoreMany Alaska Native families will celebrate the Russian Orthodox Christmas this next week, beginning on January 7. This observation of Christ’s birth began after Christmas celebrations were banned following the Russian Revolution of 1917. Russian families turned decorating trees and giving presents into New Year’s traditions. Alaska’s First People have a long history with the […]
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