Anchorage History

Far off the beaten path, Alaska has a history of being accessed by explorers with funding obtained from deep-pocketed investors. Although Russian explorers had settled in Alaska by 1784, Captain James Cook is credited with discovering Anchorage in 1778, arriving with the funding from the British Admiralty, intent on its search for the elusive Northwest Passage. Mistaking the inlet for a river, Cook named it the River Turnagain and it was later renamed the Turnagain Arm by a British explorer, George Vancouver. Although the inlet was not what Captain Cook had hoped to find, Anchorage impressed him nevertheless, as it is home to one of the greatest fluctuating tides in the world at 39 feet. (Springtime bore tides here create six-foot-high walls of water moving at 10 knots or better.) Also greeting Captain Cook and his crew were the Alaska Range—topped by Mount McKinley, which at 20,320 feet is the highest peak in North America—and the Chugach Range, with its 13,000-foot vertical rise bordering the city's east side.

During the next century, Russian trade thrived in the inlet. However economic problems prompted Russian government to sell Alaska to the United States for $7.2 million, or about two cents per acre. It took 101 years and the first major oil discovery for "Seward's Folly" to be recognized as an asset. The Russian presence remains evident in Anchorage's historic churches and throughout the surrounding area. St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church, located in the nearby town of Eklutna, was built in the 1830s and is the oldest building within the Anchorage municipality. The Eklutna Historical Park, meanwhile, offers a glimpse of a combined Russian Orthodox and Athabascan Indian settlement.

It took more government money to motivate the arrival of the first white pioneers to make it specifically to Anchorage, though once there, they needed little encouragement to stay. Beginning in 1914, hot on the heels of President Woodrow Wilson's authorization of the area's first federally funded railroad, 2,000 Americans flooded the Ship Creek Viewing Platform valley looking for federal employment. This massive, undeveloped territory was rich in resources but lacked transportation. To alleviate this problem, the legislature allocated funds to build a 500-mile-long railroad, stretching from Seward to Fairbanks and passing through Anchorage, in doing so serving as a catalyst to the city's growth.

During its early years, Anchorage was truly a city of wilderness; moose and bear regularly crossed through downtown streets, ignoring their new neighbors but appreciating the varied and accessible food sources they provided such as vegetables and compost piles.

Many years down the road, in 1959, Alaska finally became a state. Anchorage's first few years in the new state remained relatively quiet from a business and resource-development standpoint, but the city was soon dealt a devastating blow. In 1964, North America's largest recorded earthquake struck, measuring 9.2 on the Richter scale and releasing 10 million times more energy than an atomic bomb. The earthquake centered in Prince William Sound, approximately 60 miles southeast of the city. Amazingly, only nine people lost their lives. Structural damage to Anchorage was worse, though, as a school fell 30 feet, the Turnagain neighborhood dropped into the Inlet, street-side buildings toppled onto parked cars and the brand new downtown JC Penney & Co., Inc. store lost a corner of its building. Almost immediately after this earthquake, and in spite of the $65 million in damage it caused, soon-to-be governor Walter Hickle built the Captain Cook Hotel (The) in order to demonstrate the continued prosperity of Alaska's largest city, which then had a population of around 30,000.

Far more impacting than the earthquake, though, was the development of the Prudhoe Bay oil fields in 1968. The first year's production totaled $900 million in North Slope oil lease sales. Within two years, Alaska's gross products had doubled, and after three years, the 800-mile Trans-Alaska pipeline was finished. Development projects around the state, including the oil fields in Cook Inlet and nearby Kenai Peninsula, added to the boost in Anchorage's economy and population. The tremendous outpourings of the oil fields led to the formation of the Alaskan Dividend Fund in 1980, which decreed that a portion of the royalties earned by the oil companies be distributed equally among the residents. Beginning in 1983, the distribution of royalties among all residents was $1,000 per person. In the fall of each year, residents receive their checks, which since 1997 have totaled more than $1,500.

The population grew in leaps and bounds between 1970 and 1980, soaring from 48,000 to 174,000 people. Catering to the transient, cash-rich and predominantly male population, the red-light district of Spenard flourished, becoming home to massage parlors, brothels and streets littered with sparkling girls in skimpy outfits. These decades also brought investors, serious about Alaska's future, who arrived with money for development. Though the Spenard District has been reformed and the genders are more equally represented, there is a favorite old saying among local women: "The odds are good, but the goods are odd."

Anchorage has been the starting point for the annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race since 1973. Watched via television and the Internet worldwide, the 1,100-mile race winds it way across two mountain ranges, following much of the trail used in 1925 to deliver life-saving diphtheria serum to epidemic-threatened Nome. Another major event, the Anchorage Fur Rendezvous, started as a fur trading event and "fixer of the winter blues." Since then it has become labeled the "Alaskan Mardi Gras" and brings in revelers from many countries. One of the largest annual winter festivals in the United States, it began in 1936.

Anchorage is now home to more than a quarter of a million residents. City planners continue to focus on preserving the area's natural beauty and on accommodating its native wildlife. The 500,000-acre, public access Chugach State Park wilderness area, located immediately next to the city and within the municipality boundary, offers proof of these planners' efforts. Throughout the city, you will find more than 190 other parks, trails and gardens, which continue to offer forested havens as well as access to wildlife and surroundings similar to those seen by the first pioneers. Even now, the moose still "garden" and the bears like to "investigate the trash," although lately the bald eagles and wolves have also started to show an unfortunate fondness for small pets.