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The history of Alaska dates back to the end of the
Upper Paleolithic Period (around 12,000 BC),
when Asiatic groups crossed the
Bering Land Bridge into what is now western
Alaska. At the time of European contact by the
Russian explorers, the area
was populated by Alaska Native groups. The name
"Alaska" derives from the Aleut word alaxsxaq,
meaning "mainland" (literally, "the object toward which the action of the sea is
directed").
The first European contact with Alaska occurred in the 1741, when
Vitus Bering led an
expedition for the Russian Navy
aboard the St. Peter. After his crew returned to Russia bearing sea otter
pelts judged to be the finest fur in the world, small
associations of fur traders began to sail from the shores of Siberia towards the
Aleutian islands. The first permanent European settlement was founded in 1784,
and the Russian-America Company
carried out expanded colonization program during the early to mid-1800s. Despite
these efforts, the Russians never fully colonized Alaska, and the
colony was never very profitable.
William H. Seward, the
U.S. Secretary of State,
engineered the Alaskan purchase in
1867 for $7.2 million.
In the 1890s, gold rushes in
Alaska and the nearby Yukon Territory brought
thousands of miners and settlers to Alaska. Alaska was granted territorial
status in 1912.
During World War II, three of the outer
Aleutian Islands—Attu, Agattu and Kiska—were
occupied by the enemy. Their recovery became a matter of national pride. The
construction of military bases contributed to the
population growth of some Alaskan cities.
Alaska was granted statehood on January 3,
1959.
In 1964, the massive "Good
Friday Earthquake" killed 131 people and leveled several villages.
The 1968 discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay and the
1977 completion of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline
led to an oil boom. In 1989, the Exxon Valdez
hit a reef in the Prince William Sound,
spilling between 11 and 35 million US gallons (42,000 and 130,000 m³) of crude
oil over 1,100 miles (1,600 km) of coastline. Today, the battle between
philosophies of development and conservation is seen in the contentious debate
over oil drilling in the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge.
Paleolithic families moved into northwestern North America sometime between
16,000 and 10,000 BC across the Bering Land Bridge
in western Alaska. Alaska became populated by the Inuit
and a variety of Native
American groups. Today, early Alaskans are divided into several main groups:
the Southeastern Coastal Indians (the Tlingit,
Haida, and Tsimshian), the
Athabascans, the Aleut, and the
two groups of Eskimos, the Inupiat and the
Yup'ik.
The Coastal Indians were probably the first wave of immigrants to cross the
Bering Land Bridge in western Alaska, although
many of them initially settled in interior Canada. The Tlingit were the most
numerous of this group, claiming most of the coastal
Panhandle by the time of European contact. The southern portion of
Prince of Wales Island was settled by the
Haidas emigrating from the Queen Charlotte
Islands in Canada. The Aleuts settled the islands of the Aleutian chain
approximately 10,000 years ago.
Cultural and subsistence practices varied
widely among Native groups, who were spread across vast geographical distances.
The first European contact with Alaska came as a part of the 1733-1743
second Kamchatka expedition, after
the St. Peter (captained by Dane Vitus Bering)
and the St. Paul (captained by his deputy, Russian
Alexei Chirikov) set sail from Russia in June
1741. On July 15, Chirikov sighted
land, probably the west side of Prince
of Wales Island in Southeast Alaska. He sent a group of men ashore in a long
boat, making them the first Europeans to land on the
northwestern coast of North America. Bering and his
crew sighted Mt. St. Elias. Chirikov and Bering's
crew returned to Russia in 1742, carrying word of the expedition. The sea otter
pelts they brought, soon judged to be the finest fur in the
world, would spark Russian settlement in Alaska.
After the second Kamchatka expedition, small associations of fur traders
began to sail from the shores of Siberia towards the Aleutian islands. As the
runs from Siberia to America became longer expeditions, the crews established
hunting and trading posts. By the late 1790s, these had become permanent
settlements.
On some islands and parts of the Alaska Peninsula, groups of traders had been
capable of relatively peaceful coexistence with the local inhabitants. Other
groups could not manage the tensions and perpetrated exactions.
Hostages were taken, individuals were enslaved, families
were split up, and other individuals were forced to leave their villages and
settle elsewhere. Over the years, the situation became catastrophic. Eighty
percent of the Aleut population was destroyed by violence and European
diseases, against which they had no defenses, during the
first two generations of Russian contact.
Though the colony was never very profitable, most
Russian traders were determined to keep the land. In 1784,
Grigory Ivanovich Shelikhov arrived in Three
Saints Bay on Kodiak Island. Shelikov established
Russian dominance on the island by killing hundreds of indigenous Koniag, then
founded the first permanent Russian settlement in Alaska on the island's Three
Saints Bay.
In 1790, Shelikhov hired Alexandr Baranov to
manage his Alaskan fur enterprise. Baranov moved the colony to what is now the
city of Kodiak. In 1795, Baranov, concerned by the
sight of non-Russian Europeans trading with the Natives in southeast Alaska,
established Mikhailovsk near present-day Sitka. Though he
bought the land from the Tlingits, Tlingits from a neighboring settlement later
attacked and destroyed Mikhailovsk. After Baranov retaliated, razing the Tlingit
village, he built the settlement of New Archangel. It became the capital of
Russian America and today is the city of Sitka.
Missionary activity
The Russian Orthodox religion (with its
rituals and sacred texts, translated into Aleut at a very early stage) had been
informally introduced, in the 1740s-1780s, by the fur traders. During his
settlement of Three Saints Bay in 1784, Shelikov introduced the first resident
missionaries and clergymen. This missionary activity would continue into the
1800s, ultimately becoming the most visible trace of the Russian colonial period
in contemporary Alaska.
Spanish claims to Alaska dated to the papal bull of
1493, which allocated to the Spanish the right to colonize the west coast of
North America. When rival countries, including
Britain and Russia,
began to show interest in Alaska in the late 18th century, King
Charles III of Spain sent a number of
expeditions to re-assert Spanish claims to the northern Pacific Coast of
North America, including Alaska.
In 1775, Bruno de Hezeta
led an expedition designed to solidify Spanish claims to the northern Pacific.
One of the expedition's two ships, the Señora, ultimately reached 59°N
latitude, entering Sitka Sound
near the present-day town of Sitka,
Alaska. There, the Spaniards performed numerous "acts of
sovereignty," naming and claiming Puerto de Bucareli
(Bucareli Sound), Puerto de los Remedios, and
Mount San Jacinto, renamed Mount Edgecumbe
by British explorer James
Cook three years later.
In 1791, Alessandro Malaspina undertook
an around-the-world scientific expedition, with orders to locate the
Northwest Passage and search for
gold, precious stones, and any
American, British, or Russian settlements along the northwest coast. He
surveyed the Alaska coast to the Prince William Sound. At Yakutat Bay, the
expedition made contact with the Tlingit.
In the end, the North Pacific rivalry proved to be too difficult for Spain,
which withdrew from the contest and transferred its claims in the region to the
United States in the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819.
Today, Spain's Alaskan legacy endures as little more than a few place names,
among these the Malaspina Glacier and the town
of Valdez.
Britain's presence
British settlements in Alaska consisted of a few scattered trading outposts,
with most settlers arriving by sea. Captain James Cook,
midway through his third and final voyage of exploration in 1778, sailed along
the west coast of North America aboard the
HMS Resolution, mapping the coast
from the state of California all the way to the
Bering Strait. During the trip, he discovered what
came to be known as Cook Inlet (named in honor of Cook
in 1794 by George Vancouver, who had served
under his command) in Alaska. The Bering Strait proved to be impassable,
although the Resolution and its companion ship
HMS Discovery made several attempts
to sail through it. The ships left the straits to return to
Hawaii in 1779.
Cook's expedition spurred the British to increase their sailings along the
northwest coast, following in the wake of the Spanish.
Three Alaska-based posts, funded by the Hudson's
Bay Company, operated at Fort Yukon, on
the Stikine River, and in
Wrangell (the only Alaskan town to have been the
subject of British, Russian, and American rule) throughout the early 1800s.
19th century
Later Russian settlement and the Russian-American
Company (1799-1867)
In 1799, Shelikhov's son-in-law, Nikolay
Petrovich Rezanov, acquired a monopoly on the American fur trade from Czar
Paul I and formed the
Russian-American Company. As part of the
deal, the Tsar expected the company to establish new
settlements in Alaska and carry out an expanded colonization program.
By 1804, Alexandr Baranov, now manager of the
Russian–American Company, had consolidated the company's hold on the American
fur trade following his victory over the local Tlingit clan at the
Battle of Sitka. Despite these efforts, the
Russians never fully colonized Alaska. The Russian monopoly on trade was also
being weakened by the Hudson's Bay Company,
which set up a post on the southern edge of Russian America in 1833.
American hunters and
trappers, who encroached on territory claimed by Russians, were also
becoming a force. An 1812 settlement giving Americans the
right to the fur trade only below 55°N latitude was
widely ignored, and the Russians' hold on Alaska weakened further.
The Russian-American Company suffered because of 1821 amendments to its
charter, and eventually it entered into an agreement with
the Hudson's Bay Company that allowed the British to sail through Russian
territory.
At the height of Russian America, the Russian population reached 700.
Although the mid–1800s were not a good time for Russians in Alaska,
conditions improved for the coastal Alaska Natives who had survived contact. The
Tlingits were never conquered and continued to wage war on
the Russians into the 1850s. The Aleuts, though faced with
a decreasing population in the 1840s, ultimately rebounded.
Alaska purchase
Financial difficulties in Russia, the desire to keep
Alaska out of British hands, and the low
profits of trade with Alaskan settlements all contributed to Russia's
willingness to sell its possessions in North America. At the instigation of
U.S. Secretary of State
William Seward, the
United States Senate approved the
purchase of Alaska from Russia
for $7,200,000. (approximately $90,750,000 in 2005 dollars, adjusted for
inflation) on 9 April
1867. This purchase was popularly known in the U.S. as
"Seward's Folly", or "Seward's Icebox", and was unpopular at the time, though
the later discovery of gold and oil would show it to be a worthy one.
After Russian America was sold to the U.S., all the holdings of the
Russian–American Company were liquidated.
The Department of Alaska (1867-1884)
The United States flag was raised on 18 October
1867 (now called Alaska Day). Coincident with the
ownership change, the de facto International
Date Line was moved westward, and Alaska changed from the
Julian calendar to the
Gregorian calendar. Therefore, for residents,
Friday, October 6, 1867 was
followed by Friday, October 18, 1867—two
Fridays in a row because of the date line shift.
During the Department era, from 1867 to 1884, Alaska was variously under the
jurisdiction of the U.S. Army (until 1877), the
United States Department of
the Treasury (from 1877 until 1879) and the U.S. Navy
(from 1879 until 1884).
When Alaska was first purchased, most of its land remained unexplored. In
1865, Western Union laid a
telegraph line across Alaska to the Bering Strait where it would connect,
under water, with an Asian line. It also conducted the first scientific studies
of the region and produced the first map of the entire
Yukon River. The Alaska Commercial
Company and the military also contributed to the growing exploration of
Alaska in the last decades of the 1800s, building trading posts along the
Interior's many rivers.
District of Alaska (1884-1912)
In 1884, the region was organized and the name was changed from the
Department of Alaska to the District of Alaska. At the time, legislators in
Washington, D.C., were occupied with post-[[American
Lpngissues, and had little time to dedicate to Alaska. In 1896, the
discovery of gold in Yukon Territory in
neighboring Canada, brought many thousands of miners and new settlers to Alaska,
and very quickly ended the nation's four year economic depresson. Although it
was uncertain whether gold would also be found in Alaska, Alaska greatly
profited because it was along the easiest transportation route to the Yukon
goldfields. Numerous new cities, such as Skagway,
Alaska, owe their existence to a gold rush in Canada. No history of Alaska
would be complete without mention of Soapy Smith, the
crime boss confidence man who operated the largest criminal empire in gold rush
era Alaska, until he was shot down by vigilantes. Today, he is known as "Alaska's
Outlaw."
In 1899, gold was found in Alaska itself in Nome, and
several towns subsequently began to be built, such as
Fairbanks and Ruby.
In 1902, the Alaska Railroad began to be built,
which would connect from Seward to Fairbanks by
1914, though Alaska still does not have a railroad connecting it to the lower 48
states today. Still, an overland route was built, cutting transportation times
to the contiguous states by days. The industries of
copper mining, fishing, and
canning began to become popular in the early 1900s, with 10 canneries in
some major towns.
In 1903, a boundary dispute with Canada
was finally resolved.
By the turn of the 20th century, commercial fishing was gaining a foothold in
the Aleutian Islands. Packing houses salted cod and
herring, and salmon canneries were opened. Another
traditional occupation, whaling, continued with no regard for over-hunting. They
pushed the bowhead whales to the edge of extinction
for the oil in their tissue (though in recent years, due to a decline in
commercial whaling, their populations have rebounded enough for Natives to
harvest many each year without affecting the population). The Aleuts soon
suffered severe problems due to the depletion of the fur
seals and sea otters which they needed for
survival. As well as requiring the flesh for food, they also used the skins to
cover their boats, without which they could not hunt. The Americans also
expanded into the Interior and Arctic Alaska, exploiting the furbearers, fish,
and other game on which Natives depended.
20th century
Alaska Territory (1912-1959)
When Congress passed the Second Organic Act in 1912, Alaska was
reorganized, and renamed the Territory of Alaska.
By 1916, its population was about 58,000. James
Wickersham, a Delegate to Congress, introduced Alaska's first statehood bill,
but it failed to due lack of interest from Alaskans and small population. Even
President Harding's visit in 1923 could not create
widespread interest in statehood. Under the conditions of the Second Organic
Act, Alaska had been split into four divisions. The most populous of the
divisions, whose capital was Juneau, wondered if it could become a separate
state from the other three. Government control was a primary concern, with the
territory having 52 federal agencies governing it.
Then, in 1920, the Jones Act
required U.S.-flagged vessels to be built in the United States, owned by U.S.
citizens, and documented under the laws of the United States. All goods entering
or leaving Alaska had to be transported by American carriers and shipped to
Seattle prior to further shipment, making Alaska
dependent on Washington. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the provision of the
Constitution saying one state should not hold sway over another's commerce did
not apply because Alaska was only a territory. The prices Seattle shipping
businesses charged began to rise to take advantage of the situation. This
situation created an atmosphere of enmity among Alaskans who watched the wealth
being generated by their labors flowing into the hands of Seattle business
holdings.
The Depression caused prices of fish and copper,
which were vital to Alaska's economy at the time, to decline. Wages were dropped
and the workforce decreased by more than half. In 1935, President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt thought
Americans from agricultural areas could be transferred to Alaska's
Matanuska-Susitna Valley for a fresh
chance at agricultural self-sustainment. Colonists were largely from northern
states, such as Michigan, Wisconsin,
and Minnesota under the belief that only those who grew
up with climates similar to that of Alaska's could handle settler life there.
The United Congo
Improvement Association asked the president to settle 400
African-American farmers in Alaska, saying that
the territory would offer full political rights, but racial prejudice and the
belief that only those from northern states would make suitable colonists caused
the proposal to fail.
The exploration and settlement of Alaska would not have been possible without
the development of the aircraft, which allowed for the influx of settlers into
the state's interior, and rapid transportation of people and supplies throughout.
However, due to the unfavorable weather conditions of the state, and high ratio
of pilots-to-population, over 1700 aircraft
wreck sites are scattered throughout its domain. Numerous wrecks also trace
their origins to the military build-up of the state during both
World War II and the Cold War.
World War II
During World War II, three of the outer
Aleutian Islands—Attu, Agattu and Kiska—were
invaded and occupied by the Japanese troops. They were the only part of the
continental territory of the United States to be occupied by the enemy during
the war. Their recovery became a matter of national pride.
On June 3, 1942, the
Japanese launched an air attack on
Dutch Harbor, a U.S. naval base on
Unalaska Island, but were repelled by U.S.
forces. A few days later, the Japanese landed on the islands of
Kiska and Attu, where they overwhelmed Attu
villagers. The villagers were taken to Japan, where they
were interned for the remainder of the war. Aleuts from the Pribilofs and
Aleutian villages were evacuated by the United States to Southeast Alaska.
Attu was regained in May 1943 after two weeks of intense fighting and 3,929
American casualties. The U.S. then turned its attention to the other occupied
island, Kiska. From June through August, tons of bombs were dropped on the tiny
island, though the Japanese ultimately escaped via transport ships. After the
war, the Native Attuans who had survived their internment were resettled to Atka
by the federal government,
which considered their home villages too remote to defend.
In 1942, during World War II the
Alaska–Canada Military Highway was completed, in
part to form an overland supply route to America's Russian allies on the other
side of the Bering Strait. Running from Great
Falls, Montana, to Fairbanks, the road was the first stable link between
Alaska and the rest of America. The construction of
military bases, such as the Adak base,
contributed to the population growth of some Alaskan cities.
Anchorage almost doubled in size, from 4,200
people in 1940 to 8,000 in 1945.
Statehood
By the turn of the 20th century, a movement pushing for Alaska
statehood began, but in the contiguous 48 states,
legislators were worried that Alaska's
population was too sparse, distant, and isolated, and
its economy was too unstable for it to be a worthwhile addition to the United
States. World War II and the Japanese invasion highlighted Alaska's strategic
importance, and the issue of statehood was taken more seriously, but it was the
discovery of oil at Swanson River
on the Kenai Peninsula that dispelled the image
of Alaska as a weak, dependent region. President
Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Alaska
Statehood Act into United States law on
7 July 1958, which paved the way for
Alaska's admission into the Union on January 3,
1959. Juneau, the territorial capital,
continued as state capital, and William A. Egan
was sworn in as the first governor.
Alaska has no counties, as do other
states in the United States. Instead, it is divided into 16
boroughs and one "unorganized
borough" made up of all land not within any borough. Boroughs have organized
area-wide governments, but within the unorganized borough, where there is no
such government, services are provided by the state. The unorganized borough is
divided into artificially-created
census areas by the
United States Census Bureau for
statistical purposes only.
The "Good Friday Earthquake"
On March 27, 1964 the "Good
Friday Earthquake" struck South-central Alaska, churning the earth for four
minutes with a magnitude of 9.2. The earthquake was
one of the most powerful ever recorded and killed 131 people. Most of them were
drowned by the tsunamis that tore apart the towns of
Valdez and Chenega. Throughout the Prince
William Sound region, towns and ports were destroyed and land was uplifted
or shoved downward. The uplift destroyed salmon streams, as the fish could no
longer jump the various newly created barriers to reach their spawning grounds.
Ports at Valdez and Cordova were beyond repair, and the fires destroyed what the
mudslides had not. At Valdez, an Alaska Steamship Company ship was lifted by a
huge wave over the docks and out to sea, but most hands survived. At Turnagain
Arm, off Cook Inlet, the incoming water destroyed
trees and caused cabins to sink into the mud. On Kodiak, a tidal wave wiped out
the villages of Afognak, Old Harbor, and Kaguyak and
damaged other communities, while Seward lost its harbor.
Despite the extent of the catastrophe, Alaskans rebuilt many of the communities.
1968 to present: oil and land politics
Oil discovery, ANSCA, and the Trans-Alaska
Pipeline
The 1968 discovery of oil on the North Slope's
Prudhoe Bay--which would turn out to have the most
recoverable oil of any field in the United States-- would change Alaska's
political landscape for decades.
This discovery catapulted the issue of Native land
ownership into the headlines. In the mid-1960s, Alaska Natives from many
tribal groups had united in an effort to gain title to lands wrested from them
by Europeans, but the government had responded slowly before the Prudhoe Bay
discovery. The government finally took action when permitting for a pipeline
crossing the state, necessary to get Alaskan oil to market, was stalled pending
the settlement of Native land claims.
In 1971, with major petroleum dollars on the line, the
Alaska Native Claims Settlement
Act was signed into law by Richard Nixon. Under
the Act, Natives relinquished aboriginal claims to their lands in exchange for
access to 44 million acres (180,000 km²) of land and payment of $963 million.
The settlement was divided among regional, urban, and village corporations,
which managed their funds with varying degrees of success.
Though a pipeline from the North Slope to the nearest
ice-free port, almost 800 miles (1,300
km) to the south, was the only way to get Alaska's oil
to market, significant engineering challenges lay ahead. Between the North Slope
and Valdez, there were active fault lines, three mountain ranges, miles of
unstable, boggy ground underlain with frost, and migration paths of caribou and
moose. The Trans-Alaska Pipeline was
ultimately completed in 1977 at a total cost of $8 billion.
The pipeline allowed an oil bonanza to take shape. Per capita incomes rose
throughout the state, with virtually every community benefiting. State leaders
were determined that this boom would not end like the fur and gold booms, in an
economic bust as soon as the resource had disappeared. In 1976, the state's
constitution was amended to establish the
Alaska Permanent Fund, in which a quarter of all mineral lease proceeds is
invested. Income from the fund is used to pay annual dividends to all residents
who qualify, to increase the fund's principal as a hedge against inflation, and
to provide funds for the state legislature. Since 1993, the fund has produced
more money than the Prudhoe Bay oil fields, whose production is diminishing.
In March 2005, the fund's value was over $30 billion.
Environmentalism, the Exxon-Valdez, and ANWR
Oil production was not the only economic value of Alaska's land, however. In
the second half of the 20th century, Alaska discovered
tourism as an important source of revenue. Tourism became popular after
World War II, when men stationed in the region returned home praising its
natural splendor. The Alcan Highway, built during
the war, and the Alaska Marine Highway
System, completed in 1963, made the state more accessible than before.
Tourism became increasingly important in Alaska, and today over 1.4 million
people visit the state each year.
With tourism more vital to the economy,
environmentalism also rose in importance. The
Alaska National
Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) of 1980 added 53.7 million acres
(217,000 km²) to the National Wildlife
Refuge system, parts of 25 rivers to the
National Wild and Scenic Rivers system,
3.3 million acres (13,000 km²) to
National Forest lands, and 43.6 million acres (176,000 km²) to
National Park land. Because of the Act,
Alaska now contains two-thirds of all American national parklands. Today, more
than half of Alaskan land is owned by the
Federal Government.
The possible environmental repercussions of oil production became clear in
the Exxon Valdez oil spill of
1989. On March 24, the tanker
Exxon Valdez ran aground in
Prince William Sound, releasing 11 million
gallons of crude oil into the water, spreading along 1,100 miles (1,800 km) of
shoreline. According to the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service, at least 300,000 sea birds, 2,000 otters, and other
marine animals died because of the spill. Exxon spent
US$2 billion on cleaning up in the first year alone. Exxon, working with state
and federal agencies, continued its cleanup into the early 1990s. Government
studies show that the oil and the cleaning process itself did long-term harm to
the ecology of the Sound, interfering with the reproduction of birds and animals
in ways that still aren't fully understood. Prince William Sound seems to have
recuperated, but scientists still dispute the extent of the recovery. In a civil
settlement, Exxon agreed to pay $900 million in ten annual payments, plus an
additional $100 million for newly discovered damages. In a class action suit
against Exxon, a jury awarded punitive damages of US$5 billion, but as of 2007
no money has been disbursed and appellate litigation continues.
Today, the tension between preservation and development is seen in the
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR)
drilling controversy. The question of whether to allow
drilling for oil in
ANWR has been a
political football for every sitting American
president since Jimmy Carter. Studies performed by
the US Geological Survey have shown that the
"1002 area" of ANWR, located just east of
Prudhoe Bay, contains large deposits of
crude oil. Traditionally, Alaskan residents, trade
unions, and business interests have supported drilling in the refuge, while
environmental groups and many within the
Democratic Party have
traditionally opposed it. Among native Alaskan tribes, support is mixed. In the
1990s and 2000s, votes about the status of the refuge occurred repeatedly in the
U.S. House and Senate, but as of 2007 efforts to allow drilling have always been
ultimately thwarted by filibusters, amendments, or vetoes.
Notable historical figures
-
Clarence L. Andrews
customs official and an information officer, recognized authority on the
history and culture of the Alaskan territory in early 1900's, photographer,
author
-
Alexandr Baranov (1746-1819) trader,
public official, Russia
-
Edward Lewis "Bob" Bartlett (1904–1968) was
the territorial delegate to the US Congress from 1944 to 1958, and was
elected as the first senior U.S. Senator
in 1958 and re-elected to a full 6-year term in 1960 and again in 1966.
There are streets, buildings, a
high school and even
the first state ferry, named for him.
-
Benny Benson, designed state flag at age 13,
Chignik
-
Vitus Bering (1681-1741) explorer
-
Charles E. Bunnell
educator
-
Jimmy Doolittle (1896-1993) (James Harold
"Jimmy" Doolittle) served with great distinction as a general in the United
States Army Air Forces during the Second World War, earning the Medal of
Honor as the commander of the Doolittle Raid.
-
Wyatt Earp (1848-1929) lived in Alaska from
1897 to 1901; he built the Dexter Saloon in Nome, Alaska with C.E. Hoxsie.
-
William A. Egan (1914-1984) served two years as
an "Alaska-Tennessee Plan" Senator in Washington D.C. prior to becoming the
first Governor of Alaska, and remains the only Alaskan Governor to serve
three terms.
-
Carl Ben Eielson pioneer pilot
-
Vic Fischer emeritus professor
and one of two remaining signers of the Alaska Constitution
-
Henry Ernest Gruening (1886–1974) was
appointed Governor of the Territory of Alaska
in 1939, and served in that position for fourteen years. He was elected to
the United States Senate in 1958 and re-elected in 1962 and served until
1969. One of two Senators who voted against
Tonkin Gulf Resolution at beginning of
the heaviest period of the Vietnam War.
-
Jay Hammond (1922–2005) was Governor during
the building of the Alaska Pipeline and
established the Alaska Permanent Fund,
providing Alaskans with essentially free money. He is regarded as somewhat
of a hero because of this. He was also governor during passage of the
Alaska National
Interest Lands Conservation Act and effectively served to moderate
associated issues within the state among disparate interest groups ranging
from conservationists to natives to pro-development interests.
-
B. Frank Heintzleman territorial
governor
-
Walter Hickel former governor
-
Sheldon Jackson (1834-1909) an American
missionary and educator, the first federal superintendent of public
instruction for Alaska, and bearer of the first reindeer to Alaska from
Siberia. The Sheldon Jackson Museum
and College are located in Sitka.
-
Joseph Juneau (1836–1899) and
Richard Harris (1833-1907),
prospectors and founders of what is now Alaska's capital city, Juneau.
-
Austin Eugene "Cap" Lathrop
industrialist
-
Ray Mala (1906-1952) is the first Native
American movie star and the only film star the state of Alaska has yet to
produce. He starred in MGM's
Oscar-winning classic Eskimo/Mala the Magnificent filmed entirely
on location in Alaska. His son Dr. Ted Mala became the first Alaska native
male to become a Doctor. Dr. Mala served on Governor
Walter J. Hickel's cabinet (1990) as
Commissioner of Health and Social Services.
-
Eva McGown (1883-1972),
Fairbanks hostess and chorister
-
John Muir (1838-1914), naturalist, explorer,
and conservationist who detailed his amazing journeys in Alaska Territory
and was instrumental, through his friendship with President
Theodore Roosevelt, in protecting
substantial area of forest wilderness and wildlife preserves in Alaska.
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William Oefelein (b. 1965) Alaska's
first astronaut. His first mission, STS-116.
Commander Oefelein received his commission as an Ensign in the United States
Navy from Aviation Officer Candidate School in Pensacola, Florida in 1988.
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Sarah Palin (b. 1964) Alaska's youngest
Governor and first female Governor
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Elizabeth Peratrovich (1911-1958) a
Native (Tlingit) Alaskan who fought for equality of
Native Alaskans and is honored with "Elizabeth Peratrovich Day."
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George Sharrock (1910–2005) moved to the
territory before statehood, eventually elected as the mayor of Anchorage and
served during the Good Friday Earthquake
in March 1964. This was the most devastating earthquake to hit Alaska and it
sunk beach property, damaged roads and destroyed buildings all over the
south central area. Sharrock, sometimes called the "earthquake mayor," led
the city's rebuilding effort over six months.
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Soapy Smith, Jefferson Randolph Smith,
"Alaska's Outlaw." The infamous confidence man and early settler, who ran
the goldrush town of Skagway, Alaska,
1897-98.
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Fran Ulmer was the first woman elected to
statewide office—she became Lieutenant Governor in 1994.
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Joe Vogler (1913-1993) founder of the Alaskan
Independence Party
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Ferdinand von Wrangell (1797-1870)
explorer, president of the Russian-American Company in 1840-1849.
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