On August 2nd, 1924, a fire broke out in the power plant in Kennicott, the world’s leading producer of copper in the world. The steam-powered power plant produced electricity for the mines in the mountains, the Bonanza, Jumbo, Mother Lode, and Erie, as well as for the town that had sprung up to house and […]
The first oil flowed into the Alyeska pipeline on June 20th, 1977 and began it’s 800-mile journey through a 48-inch wide pipe from Prudhoe Bay to the port of Valdez at 4 miles an hour. In the Port of Valdez, a 1,000-acre facility, across the bay from the city of Valdez, the S.S. ARCO Juneau […]
On July 24th, 1897, President McKinley appointed the District of Alaska’s first ex-officio Secretary/Surveyor General. The position would remain throughout Alaska’s district status that ended in 1912 and continue on throughout Alaska’s territorial designation until 1959. It was then that as Alaska gained statehood that the position was changed to Secretary of State. That new […]
On July 21st, 1917, a salmon tender pulled into Seward with news of deaths in the major storms that had encompassed Cook Inlet. The crew on the tender reported that five fishermen were lost and two Kenai fish traps had been washed away as the storms lashed the coastline there. Fish traps dotted the seascape […]