I am thrilled to share my big news – Aunt Phil wins international awards, two huge awards from the 2016 Literary Classics international competition: Best Historical Nonfiction AND Best Nonfiction Series! Looks like I’m off to Las Vegas in October to accept the awards in a formal ceremony and participate in Nevada’s largest book festival. […]
Alaska’s first dog team relay run
Did you know, Balto the dog, the four-legged hero who helped deliver the diphtheria serum to Nome, wasn’t the first to make an epic medicine run in Alaska? One of Anchorage’s most respected doctors took on a similar task four years earlier. The year was 1921. Alaska Railroad doctor John Beeson got word that the […]
How did Alaska get its name?
The man credited with purchasing Alaska from the Russians in 1867 probably signed his name to more government documents than any man of his day. He also appears to be the chief architect of the name given to America’s new possession. William H. Seward, born May 16, 1801 in Orange County, New York, held many […]
First Miss Alaska Turns Heads
Dubbed The Arctic Venus by newspapers across the globe, Helmar Liederman turned many heads as she strutted her stuff in 1922 during the Inter-City Beauty Contest – forerunner of the Miss America Pageant. The 23-year-old beauty, who immigrated from Sweden in 1921, proved to be one of the most popular contestants of the 57 that […]
Conman topples Alaska Governor
Many have heard tales touting the shenanigans of conmen like Jefferson “Soapy” Smith and a man named Hendrickson, better known as the “Blue Parka Bandit.” But neither of them caused the demise of an Alaska governor’s political aspirations. That dubious honor falls upon H.D. “Harry” Reynolds, who singlehandedly brought down Gov. John Brady in 1906, […]
Alaska’s Operation Santa Claus brings smiles
The Alaska Air National Guard has been putting smiles on faces from Savoonga to Ruby to Barrow at Christmas time for 59 years. Its Operation Santa Claus program, which delivers gifts and goods to many Alaska villages, began in 1956 after the Guard received a request from St. Mary’s Mission for toys for their children. […]
The last sled dog mail service
The explosion of airplane competition didn’t stop Chester Noongwook of St. Lawrence Island from continuing his sled dog mail service run until 1963. His was the last mail delivery of its kind in the country. Wien Airlines established the first commercial airplane base on St. Lawrence Island at Gambell and built a landing strip at […]
ZJ Loussac – Down but never out
Z.J. Loussac was broke when he arrived in the United States from his native Russia in 1901. The 18-year-old boy, a refugee from the Tsar’s secret police, landed in New York City and found a job running errands for a drug store in a Russian neighborhood. He worked there long enough to learn basic English […]
Dawson dancehall girls mine the prospectors
During the Klondike Gold Rush, Dawson’s dancehall girls offered prospectors a welcome diversion from their grueling, lonely days of digging in the sub-arctic tundra. “The sourdoughs lay on their bunks until noon – and noon might just as well be any other time – moving painfully about only to stoke the stove or break off […]
Richest Native woman in the north!
A baby girl born in 1865 would become the richest Native woman in the North and grow famous for her reindeer herd. Born to an Inupiaq Eskimo mother and a Russian trader father, Mary Makrikoff grew up in St. Michael on the southern shore of Alaska’s Norton Sound. Her mother called her Changunak. Mary grew […]
Alaska’s first law officer
Alaska’s first law officer in the Interior knew a thing or two about the criminal element. Frank Canton, appointed deputy marshal for Circle in February 1898, had served with distinction as a peace officer in Wyoming and Oklahoma Territory. He’d also escaped from prison while serving time for bank robbery, murder and holding up a […]
Toll road to the Klondike
The short, feisty frontiersman held a rifle on the party trying to travel over his Yukon trail without paying the toll. Jack Dalton meant business, and people found he was a tough man with whom to deal. Dalton watched the group with their herd of cattle floundering through scrub trees and bushes and kept alongside […]
Alaska’s 1st Sourdough Governor
Alaska’s governor from 1933 to 1939 believed the vast northern territory should become a state. And John Weir Troy, who came to Alaska during the gold rush in 1897, thought a larger population and a better road system would help achieve that goal. “More people for Alaska is her greatest need,” said the former pack-train […]
Nuns Head to Nome
Many images come to mind when one thinks of gold rush days in Alaska: bearded prospectors swishing pans filled with water as they search for specks of gold; saloons beckoning the hardworking boys to forget all their troubles with a slug of whiskey and a game of chance; and ladies known as “Lil” leaning against […]
Alaska treasure 100 years old
A turn-of-the-last-century pioneer set down roots in the Greatland in the early 1900s that are still with us today in a historical Seward landmark, the Brown & Hawkins building. T. W. Hawkins came to Alaska in 1898 via the Chilkoot Pass to Dawson, Yukon Territory. He searched for gold in the Tanana country, and then […]
Early Alaska railroader tunnels to Whittier
One of Anchorage’s earliest settlers carved a name for himself in the Last Frontier. Literally. Anton Anderson engineered the project that pierced through three miles of solid granite to open the Port of Whittier to the railbelt in Southcentral Alaska. Anderson began his Alaska Railroad career in 1915. “Tents without floors, pole bunks covered with […]