Reminder! AHS Call for Papers

We wish to remind everyone that the May 15 deadline for proposals to the 2013 AHS meeting is approaching. Please submit your proposals for papers and panels to Jim Simard (contact info below). The AHS meeting, held in association with Museums Alaska and sponsored in part by the Sheldon Museum, will be September 25–28, in Haines. The AHS Conference theme is "Confluence."

Confluence might suggest many of the converging influences in this region and throughout Alaska. Lynn Canal, for instance, is one of the world’s longest and deepest fjords, carved by ice age glaciers and fed by the Chilkat and Chilkoot Rivers. Yet it is but a small portion of the vast Alaskan coastline.

The ice fields and mountain passes above Southeast Alaska are at once a barrier and a gateway. The Chilkoot Trail follows one of the ancient trade routes between the coastal Tlingit people and the Inland First Nations people of the Yukon. The trail became the fabled pathway to the Klondike gold fields, bringing immigration, growth, conflict and permanent change to Alaska and the Yukon.

Salmon migrations have sustained the economies of the region for millennia, from the ancient Tlingit fishing culture, through the era of industrial fish traps and canneries, and into modern day subsistence and the commercial fishing industry.

Haines Mission was an early outpost of the Presbyterian Board of National Missions, becoming a center for boarding school education and a significant catalyst for change in the region, as were boarding schools throughout Alaska.

Alaska Native languages, declining in use during much of the 20th Century, are currently experiencing revitalization, as are traditional cultural expressions such as carving, weaving, dance, music and indigenous watercraft.

The U.S. Army was a major presence in Haines from the Gold Rush through the end of the Second World War. Fort Seward, now an historic landmark, has become a cultural and economic center for the community. Military installations throughout Alaska continue to make a significant contribution to the economy and social life of the state.

The Alaska Marine Highway celebrates its 50th year of service. The Alaskan transportation infrastructure has grown to include ground, air and water carriers, connecting Alaska with the world as never before.

These themes of convergence are just a few of the many possibilities for consideration. We will be pleased to hear about many more.


Proposals for papers, panels, and posters should be sent no later than May 15, 2013 to Jim Simard, Conference Planning Committee: james.simard@alaska.gov

Mailing address:

Alaska Historical Collections

Alaska State Library 
PO Box 110571

Juneau, Alaska 99811-0571

Attention: Jim Simard

Proposals should include name of presenter(s), contact information, title and an abstract of no more than 200 words. Presenters will have access to audio-visual equipment and will be given 20 minutes for their papers. Posters will be displayed throughout the meeting. Presenters are to register for the conference.

Alaska’s Historic Canneries

By Anjuli Grantham

During the early twentieth century, the most visible signs of human settlement in most of coastal Alaska were dozens of isolated canneries. These industrial processing facilities were mini-towns in their own right, with their own stores, metal shops, and carpenters, in addition to port facilities and housing. Alaskan canneries were the most ethnically diverse enclaves in the territory, with Asians, Natives, Latinos, and Europeans rubbing shoulders as they sauntered down the docks. After all, it was the riches of the sea that brought the bulk of the then new immigrants to our coastal communities, just as it is the riches of the sea that sustain our ports today.

 

Northwest Fisheries cannery at Naknek, 1918

(UAA-hmc-0186-volume4-3807)

However, today you are more likely to find the worn down nubs of a dock piling than a standing cannery structure as you cruise our waterways. Our canneries are critical to the history of our state, yet they are neglected resources that are actively deteriorating before their histories and structures are documented. Yet Alaska's historic canneries are architectural treasures, not due to their high design, but due to the significance of the stories that they embody.

The Alaska Historical Society’s cannery committee is dedicated to educating individuals about the importance of our state’s canneries to Alaska history, culture, and identity. We are eager to share the history of our canneries and advocate for their preservation and documentation. One way that we hope to accomplish this aim is through our blog, Alaska’s Historic Canneries. This blog is meant to be a place for cannery history buffs to gather. It is not only a forum for cannery histories, but also a place to share personal stories that relate to canneries, photos, art, etc.

Please visit us at: alaskancanneries.blogspot.com

So many Alaskans and visitors have a cannery story – what is yours? Please be in touch if you are interested in contributing.

Wrangell Mountain Skyboys: Making History above the Copper Belt

Lee Ramer and his dog team and Gillam’s Swallow biplane in

the saddle of Bremner pass in the early 1930s. Bertha Ramer

Collection, McCarthy-Kennicott Historical Museum,

McCarthy, Alaska.

By Katie Ringsmuth

The Wrangell Mountain Skyboys are represented by pilots whose names are recalled today by even the youngest Alaskans: Harold Gillam, Merritt D. “Kirk” Kirkpatrick, Merle “Mudhole” Smith, and Bob Reeve, “the Glacier Pilot.” Their competitive rivalries brought reliable air service to eastern Alaska, and eventually formed the primarily stops along a regularly scheduled flight route called, “The Copper Belt Line.”

To Alaskans, these 1930-era bush pilots stood shoulder to shoulder with the sourdough as the new face of the Last Frontier. Although they brought steadfast and safe air service to the Far North, for a nation plagued by economic despair, Alaska’s aviators were presented by the day’s writers and reporters as cowboys, blazing trails in fixed-wing biplanes, defiantly ushering in Alaska’s Manifest Destiny.

Merle Smith poses in front of his Stearman C2B biplane in

McCarthy in 1937, his first year flying the Copper Belt Route.

Courtesy of the Cordova Historical Museum, 95-46-45.

To the average factory worker or farmer, the stories of Alaska aviation conjured up alluring pictures of vast terrain over which flew bold and romantic flyers to whom adventure was mundane. To someone tied to a machine or daily farms chores, Alaska appeared a land of freedom. This familiar story not only echoed the past, but reinforced it. Scribes themselves rarely flew and most lacked a working knowledge of the physics of flight. The challenge of accurately describing aviation was like trying to explain magic in print. By using a simple, non-confusing, and universally understood nineteenth century narrative to explain the complexity of twentieth century modern flight, authors and journalists were able to put into words—to describe to non-flyers—the indescribable.

But the real Alaska Skyboy was more than a frontier myth…

 

Cordova pilot Herb Haley lands on top of Mount Wrangell

at 14,000 feet. Courtesy of Charles “Buck” Wilson, Fairbanks, Alaska.

Want to know more about these daring flyers who established aviation in the Wrangell-St. Elias mountain region? Then visit the Anchorage Museum this summer to view the Wrangell Mountain Skyboys exhibition, a supplement to Arctic Flight: A Century of Alaska Aviation, currently on display until August 11. The exhibition is curated by Katherine Ringsmuth and runs from May 3 through August 25. Collaborators include the National Park Service Alaska Region, Wrangell St. Elias National Park and Preserve, and the Wrangell Mountain aviation community.