Seattle celebrates an Alaska-related centenary next year, the 100th anniversary of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. The commemoration fits nicely with Alaska's 50th, for the two anniversaries are inextricably bound together.
The AYP was a mini-worlds fair organized by the Alaska Bureau of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce. Its purpose was to showcase Alaska's potential for investment capital for economic development. The Klondike gold rush of 1898 had catapulted Alaska to national attention. But while in 1909 the Klondike rush was still a fresh memory, investors were not yet thinking of Alaska as a permanent field of opportunity. Many gold rushes had been "flashes in the pan," and by 1909 the easy pickings were long gone.
Many of the 40,000 people who had crossed over Chilkoot and White Passes headed for Dawson in 1898 had moved on into Alaska. Many stayed, at least for a while. There had been barely 5,000 non-Natives in Alaska in 1890, but the 1900 census counted 30,000 (and 30,000 Natives), a six-fold increase, the result of prospectors and business people hoping this last frontier would be as lucrative as the earlier ones had been.
But what was Alaska's long-term future? Would the Argonauts stay in the North, or as deposits played out, would they head back home? The Seattle business community judged Alaska's investment opportunities to be excellent. There were still furs, there were forests to be cut, there were many mineral prospects, and perhaps even oil. If they could persuade would-be investors to put money into Alaska projects, the new settlements spawned by the Klondike rush could become permanent.
The signs were good. At the very time of the exposition, the Guggenheim-J.P. Morgan Alaska Syndicate was building the Copper River and Northwestern Railway from Cordova up the Copper River to Chitina, and thence east to the Kennecott copper fields. The syndicate had plans to take the railroad north all the way to the Tanana River, where they hoped to establish a river barge service that would help supply their other Interior prospects, and others' as well. And they were in the process of buying the Alaska Steamship Co. If the Guggenheims were bullish on Alaska, the Seattle folks thought, so too should be other potential investors.
The 1910 census was critical to Alaska's investment future, and much hinged on the official count, though there was plenty of evidence beforehand to suggest what the results would show. The Alaska Bureau helped fund the Alaska-Yukon Magazine, a monthly that consisted of self-congratulatory articles on successful Alaska commercial enterprises. Story after story reported new population, new businesses, new banks and new prospects. And when the official numbers finally did come in, they confirmed everything the AYP and the A-Y Magazine had claimed. Again the census reported about 30,000 non-Natives, demonstrating that, statistically, at least, Alaska had left its pioneer phase and was on the high road to development. The time to get in on the ground floor was "now!"
As it happened, in 1909 Judge James Wickersham, recently retired from the federal bench in Alaska, had just been elected as Alaska's non-voting delegate to Congress. Wickersham would serve six successive terms. With the new numbers, Wickersham went to work in Congress. His first project was a territorial legislature, and in 1912 his congressional colleagues authorized it. It would convene first in 1913. Next, Wickersham tackled a much larger project, convincing Congress to fund construction and operation of a federal railroad in the territory. That had never been done before, Congress providing frontier settlers with a railroad to nurture economic development and support non-Native migration. 1909 was the height of the Progressive Era, when anti-monopoly became a rallying cry for reformers, and part of the justification for the federal Alaska Railroad was to provide competition with the Guggenheims. Congress approved the project in 1914.
The railroad men chose Anchorage as their construction and later administrative headquarters. And as the city grew into Alaska's premier investment, supply and political center, the idea of statehood matured, and eventually was realized. Alaska statehood, then, was an evolutionary outgrowth of the investment, risk-taking environment that gave rise to the AYP Exposition of 1909, the gleam in Seattle eyes that became today's reality.
Steve Haycox is a professor of history at the University of Alaska Anchorage.
STEVE HAYCOX
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