Articles written by laurel downing bill
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Chickaloon coal drive helps to establish Anchorage
In the early 1900s, coal was being shipped from as far away as Cardiff, Wales, to the U.S. Navy's coal station at Sitka. Some thought that the coal deposits at Chickaloon in the Matanuska Valley...
Alaska establishes the "borough" unit
More than 60 years ago, the framers of Alaska's Constitution found one of their most difficult problems to be the intermediate government between municipalities and the state. Their solution was the...
Dancehall girls mine 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...
First Alaska Territorial Legislature convenes in 1913
Americans have been casting ballots on the first Tuesday in November since the mid-1840s. Why November and why Tuesdays? The answer goes back to our founding fathers when agriculture was prominent. Co...
Myth surrounds Alaska purchase
One hundred and fifty-two years ago, a ceremony held in Sitka transferred Alaska from Russia to the United States. The agreed-upon purchase price of $7.2 million had been paid earlier in the year. It...
Captain Healy rules Alaska waves
A "floating court" of sorts evolved when justice was meted out from the decks of revenue cutters beginning in the late 1880s. And a commander in the U.S. Revenue Marine, precursor to the U.S. Coast...
The discovery day that started the Klondike Gold Rush
Three men found a large deposit of nuggets on Aug. 17, 1896, which started the famed Klondike Gold Rush. George Washington Carmack, who came north in 1885, James Mason, better known as Skookum Jim,...
Black Wolf Squadron lands in Nome
The U.S. Army Service's famed "Black Wolf Squadron" planted its mark on Alaska history in 1920, when four biplanes flew across our northern skies in an attempt to prove the feasibility of long-distanc...
Nome town boy makes good
Seventy-seven years ago this month Japanese Zeros bombed Dutch Harbor and then occupied Attu and Kiska in the Aleutian Islands. Why? Because they thought that two months earlier James "Jimmy"...
Scandal surrounds Alaska's first governor
After Alaska became part of the United States in 1867, the U.S. military ruled America's newest possession for about 17 years. Then on July 4, 1884, U.S. President Chester A. Arthur appointed...
Klondike Mike and the piano
Klondike Mike Mahoney's return trip to Dawson in 1898 included a hike up the Chilkoot Trail with an unusual item strapped to his back: a piano. It all started when Mahoney hopped aboard the City of Se...
Secretary of State Seward visits Alaska, 1869
In July 1869, the steamer Active arrived in Sitka with former Secretary of State William H. Seward and his entourage on board. He had negotiated the purchase of Alaska from the Russians for a mere...
Uncovering Alaska's first serial killer
Between 1912 and 1915, a number of single, unattached men mysteriously disappeared in Southeast Alaska. The few law enforcement officials in the territory were baffled, but a suspect finally emerged...
Willoughby and the Silent City hoax
One man who arrived in Southeast Alaska's new gold-rush settlement of Harrisburg, later named Juneau, in 1880 created a sensation by claiming he had seen a city appear above a glacier. But people who...
Gold brings prospectors to Cook Inlet
Russians knew there were gold deposits in Alaska, as they had sent a mining engineer to search the land after the gold discovery in the late 1840s in California. The engineer found colors all around...
Ice road emerges in Alaska wilderness
President Richard Nixon signed the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act on Nov. 16, 1973, but many people had been working for years to lay the foundation for building that line long before it was...
Grueling glacier trail births Valdez
After news of gold found in the Klondike spread during the summer of 1897, many people in the Lower 48 left their jobs and families to head north to search for their fortunes. And soon a hoax,...
Reindeer herding introduced to Alaska
U.S. Revenue Cutter Service captains saw a need for supplemental food for Alaska's Native people in the Last Frontier during the late 1880s, as whale and seal populations had diminished. And since...
Floodwaters fill Fairbanks, August 1967
Water in the Chena River inched up ever higher during July 1967 when 3.34 inches of rain, instead of the normal 1.84 inches, fell on Fairbanks. The city's 30,000 residents weren't too worried, though....
Russian shipbuilding rises with the Phoenix
During July 1791, Alexander Baranof arrived at Kodiak Island to manage the fur exporting operation of Grigorri Ivanovich Shelikhov, who formed the North American Company. When he received orders to...
Painter makes points with Alaskans, and beyond
Among the memorials in the Anchorage Municipal Park Cemetery stands a small, pink marker adorned with a palette. It is the final resting place of Sydney Mortimer Laurence, one of Alaska's greatest art...
Ruby was once the Gem of the Yukon
One northern town became an integral part of Alaska's gold rush history after prospectors sifting through red rocks along a creek south of the Yukon River thought they had found rubies mixed with...
Many mentally ill became 'The Lost Alaskans'
Imagine being deemed insane through a jury trial, and then sent to the Lower 48 for treatment in the dead of winter before planes and automobiles were available to transport you south. That's what...
Border dispute heats up due to gold
There was no border established between the Great Land and Canada when the U.S. agreed to purchase Alaska from Russia for 2 cents an acre in March 1867. The lack of an agreed-upon boundary caused...
First Fur Rondies help beat the winter blues
In the mid 1930s, a few fellows got together and decided it would be great to put together a winter sports tournament for all of Anchorage's residents. Vern Johnson, Clyde Conover, Thomas Bevers and...
