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Anchorage, AK 8.8 mi (14.2 km) |
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I’m north to the present, everyone!
After a mid-day flight back from King Salmon, I’ve returned to full cell phone service and a whole different bustling ball game in the city of Anchorage! After checking in to the Wyndham Garden Anchorage Airport, I decided to take full advantage of the long daylight and go hunt for some history downtown in Alaska’s largest city! I had to start, of course, at Anchorage’s iconic log cabin visitor center, which was first assembled here in 1954! Never actually used as a cabin, it’s been meant to give a feel for Alaska’s frontier lifestyle, without having to rough it on the frontier. I’ll be doing that tomorrow anyway!
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With my directions oriented, I headed north to visit the Eisenhower Alaska Statehood Monument, depicting the 34th president in front of an eagle and some flags, which to me looked like a baseball glove! This monument was designed by Jacques and Mary Regat and installed in 1990 to commemorate both the 75th anniversary of the founding of Anchorage, and the 100th birthday of the president who signed the proclamation making Alaska the 49th state of the union! This was a very strategic move during the Cold War because of how close Alaska was to Russia!
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The statehood monument overlooked an important spot both in Anchorage, and national, history: the Alaska Railroad Depot! See, even though Anchorage is named for its suitability as a place to park ships, the city itself grew around the railroad! Specifically, this was the Alaska Railroad, the nation’s only federally owned railroad, connecting Seward to Fairbanks at the request of a bunch of folks who’d gone to the Yukon to find gold then found it really difficult to get back to the coast! The railroad’s administrative offices were placed here in Anchorage, and so the little tent city grew into a company town then, by World War II, the largest city in Alaska!
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Today, there are still trains aplenty that leave from this depot! For instance, the Denali Star makes the 12-hour journey from Anchorage to Fairbanks via Denali National Park, while the Coastal Classic winds its way down to Seward over four and a half hours for easy access to Kenai Fjords National Park! One day, if I decide to revisit either of those parks, I think I’ll have to try the train!
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Anchorage has long been a place designed for traveling folks like myself, with the first hotel being built at this site in 1916 and expanded to accommodate both human visitors and their dogs, if they rode into town by dogsled! Today, only the Gothic style annex of this original hotel remains, built in 1936 to the designs of Eugene Sedille, who’d come here as part of an unusual New Deal program called the Matanuska Colony project. This project moved busted farm families from the Midwest to the then-territory of Alaska! Mr. Sedille stuck around afterward and put his talents to use building the Anchorage Hotel Annex and the original City Hall.
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I didn’t take a photo of the old City Hall, because there were homeless folks all over the sidewalk and steps leading up to it. To be homeless in Alaska must be way tougher than in the lower 48! And no one would know more about this than Bigfoot! I was tickled to see an abstract depiction of the old hairy hominid and his grizzly pal outside Grizzly’s Gifts! I didn’t realize he ranged so far north, but Alaska is famously home to the legendary Nantiinaq, a hairy biped blamed (by the Discovery Channel) for killing folks in the fish canning community of Portlock!
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Old Nantiinaq was standing at the entrance to 4th Street, the main street of Anchorage since railroad times and one that’s rich with history! In particular, it’s home to the Wendler Building, the oldest building and only one with a Victorian turret in all of Anchorage! It was built in 1915 by Tony and Florence Wendler to be the community’s first general merchandising store, and served time as a boarding house and private club for women before moving here in 1984 from its original site 5 blocks to the west! It paved the way for making 4th Street the hub of shops and restaurants that it is today. In 2025, it’s home to the Fur Rondy Shop, headquarters of the annual Fur Rendezvous, a winter festival like the Scandihoovian one in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, which takes place each February and features festivities like the Native Alaskan blanket toss, outhouse races, and the World Championship Sled Dog Race!
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That World Championship Sled Dog Race has drawn competitors from all over the world since 1946! The course spans 26 miles through the streets of Anchorage, and dog teams compete against each other on that course for three consecutive days, totaling 78 miles! This year, it almost didn’t happen because there was no snow on the ground in February, but that is never an issue a few weeks later when snow gets trucked in, if necessary, to kick off the annual Iditarod, also here in front of the Wendler Building! That race spans 938 miles from Anchorage to Nome along the historic Iditarod Trail. The current record stands at 7 days, 14 hours, 8 minutes and 57 seconds by Dallas Seavey, who has won the race six times!
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I didn’t plan to do any footraces any time soon, but I did go looking for dinner downtown, stopping on 5th Avenue to admire one more nationally registered mercantile in Anchorage’s commercial center. While the Wendler Building is the oldest in town, Kimball’s Store (now The Kobuk) is the only remaining commercial building in its original location! Founder, Irving Kimball, had previously set up shops in Seward then Latouche Island before he and his wife, Della, arrived in what was then called Ship Creek. When the Kimballs’ final store opened here in September of 1915, it was one of the only multi-story buildings in the tent city. It thrived through World War II until Mrs. Kimball died in 1958, and today hosts the Kobuk Cafe!
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I strolled east, looking for a bite during Alaska’s crowded tourist season, until I found myself at the shore! There was a statue of a man looking out toward the horizon on a very majestic, and empty, boardwalk! Something seemed familiar about this fellow!
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Indeed, it was none other than Captain James Cook, surveyor for the English King, who passed this way on his third voyage aboard the Resolution and dropped anchor here June 1, 1778! He’d mapped his way up the Pacific coast, hoping that when reached this area, he’d encounter the fabled northwest passage connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific. Finding no such thing, his ships turned and sailed south to what were then called the Sandwich Islands. There, he famously met his demise on February 14 1779!
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Today, Cook Inlet bears the surveyor’s name, and I took a moment to peer out over that body of water. I just crossed it this morning, heading east, and tomorrow, I will be crossing it once again, returning to Katmai for the kind of national park experience I can’t believe I haven’t tried in the fourteen years I’ve been doing this quest: a multi-day backpacking adventure!
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First, though, I had to wait until my friend’s flight arrived around 12:30 AM, then try to sleep through the profound lack of darkness. Life in Alaska sure can confuse the circadian rhythm, and I’ll bet it will only get tougher once we’re all in tents!
One wild Alaskan adventure coming up!
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Total Ground Covered: 16.8 mi (27.1 km) |
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