Opinions

Cook Inlet Historical Society helps Anchorage know who and what it is

The "Imagining Anchorage" centennial celebration just completed at the Anchorage Museum should direct attention to the importance and the success of one of the city's oldest and most significant civic organizations, the Cook Inlet Historical Society.

A volunteer, private, nonprofit agency, the Society was established in 1955, primarily by Evangeline Atwood, civic leader and wife of the publisher of the Anchorage Daily Times, then the largest circulation newspaper in the territory, and Elmer Rasmuson, owner and president of the National Bank of Alaska, who would later become the greatest philanthropist in the state.

Sister and brother, Atwood and Rasmuson, in addition to their numerous activities and contributions to the development of the city, were committed to civic education through history. Though not trained, Evangeline was an amateur historian. She wrote a useful biography of James Wickersham, and in 1956, as part of the Alaska statehood campaign, she wrote the historical sketch of Anchorage for the city's successful application for an All America City award from the National Civic League.

Atwood and Rasmuson founded the historical society in conjunction with the municipal museum, the Anchorage Museum of History and Art. They wanted to bring attention to Anchorage's best-known artist, Sydney Laurence, and preserve his works. At the same time, they understood that a community that takes no steps to acknowledge and interpret its history has no permanent identity or sense of its place.

To Atwood and Rasmuson, historical society and museum were spoken in one breath; they were two sides of the same coin. This was true, also, of Elmer Rasmuson's second wife, Mary Louise Milligan. They married in 1961 and she became a dedicated supporter of the city's civic organizations. In their later years, before the university thought better of broadcasting it, Elmer and Mary Louise Rasmuson watched the weekly television broadcast of the Alaska history course at UAA.

A host of civic leaders have served as directors of the Cook Inlet Historical Society through the years, and the society has contributed exhibits, conferences and symposia, lecture series and continuing advice on history to the Anchorage museum. The society has always been housed at the museum.

"Imagining Anchorage" included a daylong symposium on Captain James Cook, followed by a second daylong symposium on Anchorage's centennial. Cook was probably the first European with whom the resident Dena'ina people had contact -- "probably," because there is no record of Russians having pushed this far northeast with fur-gathering activities until about the same time that Alexandr Baranov moved the first permanent Russian post from Three Saints Bay to St. Paul Harbor on Kodiak Island in 1792. Cook was here in 1778.

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Though he would be astonished at the size and character of Anchorage today, Cook would have understood that a far-removed, isolated town could not be self-sustaining and would need the support of government to survive. Such is Anchorage's history. From its beginning until World War II, the town subsisted on the weekly payroll of the Alaska Railroad, the only federally built and operated railroad in U.S. history. Robert Atwood, publisher of the Times, once said that before the war, the railroad and other government jobs allowed Anchorage businesses to make about 10 percent profit a year, sometimes less, never more.

World War II brought an economic bonanza, increasing government support of the Anchorage economy almost immeasurably as tens of thousands of military flooded the town. The business people couldn't resist, charging many times more than before the war for familiar items, until the commander of the Alaska Defense Command gathered them together and read them the riot act: they were killing the golden goose, he said, and if they didn't stop it, he threatened to put their stores off limits.

Though government spending, both federal and state, continued to be a mainstay of Anchorage's economy, it was joined at the start of the 1970s by Big Oil, the activities of which comprise a third of the state's current economic base.

These and other remembrances provided substantive insight into the city's character at the "Imagining Anchorage" symposia, a signal triumph of the Cook Inlet Historical Society and its people. The society's role in the Anchorage museum must remain a vital part of what makes Anchorage what it is.

Steve Haycox is professor emeritus of history at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com

Steve Haycox

Steve Haycox is professor emeritus of history at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

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