David Reamer is a historian who writes about Anchorage. His peer-reviewed articles include topics as diverse as baseball, housing discrimination, Alaska Jewish history and the English gin craze. He’s a UAA graduate and nerd for research who loves helping people with history questions. He also posts daily Alaska history on Twitter @ANC_Historian.
Histories of Anchorage: Gaudy and blockish or vibrant and cheerful? The downtown Sunshine Plaza mall has drawn strong opinions from some unexpected corners.
History: This particular narrative includes an intoxicated Swiss miner, police, some unfortunate windows, and an opportunity to examine the historical context.
Histories of Anchorage: Apathy and disappointing ticket sales ultimately drove professional basketball away.
Histories of Anchorage: B-girls are women employed by a bar to coax men into spending more money. Effective B-girls were highly sought after in Anchorage, and club owners imported many of them from the Lower 48.
Histories of Anchorage: Prior to 1940, the natural options for seaplanes were underwhelming at best and dangerous at worst. Tides and waves made the Knik Arm unappealing, and none of the lakes close to town were sufficiently long and clear for fully laden takeoffs.
Histories of Anchorage: Anchorage Memorial Park Cemetery has its fair share of cultural and political heavyweights; here are the stories of some of the cemetery’s less well-known residents.
Though it happened more than a century ago, many Alaskans might still be familiar with the image of a boat seemingly pointing towards the sky. However, the rest of the story is slightly less well known.
Histories of Anchorage: In the late 1910s, Anchorage was the latest city that succumbed to one of the great if largely forgotten American food fads. From the 1890s through the 1920s, Americans went mad for tamales.
Alaska history: The first wave of what a modern toy aisle shopper might recognize as a board game arrived in 1897, when a bumper crop of Klondike Gold Rush games appeared on store shelves across the country.
Historian David Reamer has answered over 1,000 ADN reader-submitted history questions in the past year. Here were some of the stand-outs.
History: The quicksilver genius of the simple phrase — “ton of gold” ship — helped sell a nation on the idea that gold fever might indeed be a rational, practical path to a fortune.
Histories of Anchorage: The opening of a café specializing in pie probably doesn’t seem like such a big deal these days. But in 1945, guaranteed pie stock was an innovation.
