Whether you’re a born-and-raised Alaskan, a recent transplant, or just passing through, Alaska Curiosities will have you laughing out loud as B. B. Mackenzie takes you on a rollicking tour of the strangest sides of the Last Frontier State. Catch a glimpse of the ghost ship Clara Nevada, lost in a storm in 1898 while carrying a cargo of gold from the Klondike. Watch a baseball game on the longest day of the year in Fairbanks. Witness the Running of the Reindeer down 4th Avenue in Anchorage—held annually in March.
This book documents, with photographs and complete descriptions, the more than 2,200 Native Alaskan (Eskimo, Aleut, Northwest Coast, and Athapaskan) objects originally collected by the Alaska Commercial Company and donated to the University of California in 1897. Introducing the catalogue are essays on the historical background and cultural context and significance of the collection. Also included are indexes of personal and geographical names and a concordance.
The stunning wilds of Alaska are not for the faint of heart—but when Beth Rivers finds herself with a need to disappear, she’s already faced far worse. So how hard could it be? Beth Rivers, known to the world as Elizabeth Fairchild, has spent years as a bestselling novelist. Her twisty, page-turning thrillers have garnered a legion of fans, but unfortunately, her story-telling landed her in an unbelievable tale of her own—a situation even more terrifying than she could have dreamed. Crazed Elizabeth Fairchild super-fan Levi Brooks stalked and kidnapped Elizabeth, holding her captive inside a van for three days. She escaped by throwing herself from the speeding van, suffering a severe head injury and memory loss. Scarred and still healing from her injuries, she secretly escapes to the beautiful—and very remote—Benedict, Alaska. It’s the only place she can be sure no one will find her. But just before Beth’s arrival, the already small population of Benedict was reduced by one. Linda Rafferty’s death was ruled a suicide, but no one in the close-knit community quite believes that conclusion, even the sheriff. While she waits for her attacker to be apprehended in the lower 48, Beth takes on a project to revamp the Benedict town newspaper. She knows enough to go where the story is, and there’s clearly one behind Linda’s death. As rumors of murder spread, suspicion falls upon the felons staying at a local halfway house—and Beth herself. Intrigued by both the mystery and the wary folks who call Benedict home, Beth starts asking questions—only to find her investigation stirring up memories she’d much rather had stayed forgotten...
Before Alaska became a mining bonanza, it was a scenic bonanza, a place larger in the American imagination than in its actual borders. Prior to the great Klondike Gold Rush of 1897, thousands of scenic adventurers journeyed along the Inside Passage, the nearly thousand-mile sea-lane that snakes up the Pacific coast from Puget Sound to Icy Strait. Both the famous—including wilderness advocate John Muir, landscape painter Albert Bierstadt, and photographers Eadweard Muybridge and Edward Curtis—and the long forgotten—a gay ex-sailor, a former society reporter, an African explorer, and a neurasthenic Methodist minister—returned with fascinating accounts of their Alaskan journeys, becoming advance men and women for an expanding United States. In Darkest Alaska explores the popular images conjured by these travelers' tales, as well as their influence on the broader society. Drawing on lively firsthand accounts, archival photographs, maps, and other ephemera of the day, historian Robert Campbell chronicles how Gilded Age sightseers were inspired by Alaska's bounty of evolutionary treasures, tribal artifacts, geological riches, and novel thrills to produce a wealth of highly imaginative reportage about the territory. By portraying the territory as a "Last West" ripe for American conquest, tourists helped pave the way for settlement and exploitation.
Includes chapters on history, topography, climate, resources, land and sea animals, the reindeer, Eskimo habits and customs, Indians, missions and schools, scenery, routes, Yukon gold fields, and the boundary dispute.
