This February marks one hundred years since a tag team of 20 mushers and over 150 sled dogs braved blizzard conditions and dangerously cold temperatures to bring life-saving anti-toxin to Nome. Cook Inlet Historical Society will mark the anniversary of the “Great Race of Mercy” with a mix of vocal and instrumental music, dramatic readings, and historical anecdotes. 

Two journalists. One male and one female. Each from northwest Washington. Each successful in the contiguous United States. Each came to Alaska in 1913 seeking greater notoriety by covering the Chisana gold stampede.

Julia O’Malley, food journalist, and Aaron Leggett, senior curator at the Anchorage Museum, will have a freewheeling on-stage conversation – including taking audience questions – about the culinary history and food culture of Anchorage.

On William Henry Seward’s exact 223rd birthday, Cook Inlet Historical Society presents a program of songs, instrumental music, and dramatic readings exploring Seward’s complicated but undeniable role in Alaskan history.

How can current and historical records help us better understand the differences between these terms, the roots of climate change as seen in Alaska, and what we may see in the future? This program will feature four panelists: Rick Thoman, Ken Tape, Jackie Qataliña Schaeffer and Molly McCammon. The panel will discuss the topic at hand and take questions from both a live and online audience.

During this program, the panel will focus on what Alaska’s history can teach us about the relationship between economic growth and our interests in stewarding Alaska’s lands and waters for present and future generations. The program will feature four panelists: Jen Rose Smith, James Magdanz, Courtnay Carothers and Bathsheba Demuth. The panel will discuss the topic at hand and take questions from both a live and online audience.

Join us for a talk from Mr. Whitekeys about his new Alaska gold rush book, The Voyage of the Alaska Union. Eighty greenhorns from Chicago set out to strike it rich in Alaska in 1898. It was the largest gold rush expedition ever launched, and they had no idea what they were in for.

The second of a four-part lecture and panel series about major public policy issues facing Alaska, the “Americanization of Alaska” will discuss whether the extension of the federal government over Alaska was positive with new government services or an unwelcome colonization.

The first of a four-part lecture and panel series about major public policy issues facing Alaska, this session will consider the history of the relationship between Native groups and the federal government.

Alaska, as a relatively late component in American territorial expansion, offered a set of opportunities to establish American institutions in a new frontier. MD Snodgrass became a key figure in the creation of many institutions new to Alaska.

Celebrate the Centennial of the Alaska Railroad with an evening of instrumental music, songs, and stories. The program draws inspiration from this year’s Official Alaska Railroad Print: Art Chase’s Alaska Railroad:100 Years Strong and will integrate stories of the nine evolving railroad engines with live music performance, archival recordings, and projected images.

Anchorage in 1964 was a small town with snow and a young, active population but no dedicated city ski trails, no biathlon range, no ski jumps, and not many winter recreational opportunities. That year the Nordic Skiing Association of Anchorage (NSAA) got its start. 

Fifty-two years ago, Anchorage’s Chugach State Park was formally established in 1970 after Alaska Governor Keith Miller signed the legislation creating the park into law. With a half million acres, it is the third largest state park in the United States. Join the Cook Inlet Historical Society for a panel discussion on Chugach State Park’s past, present and future legacy.

Hear and see some of the fascinating history of cycling behind Jessica Cherry and Frank Soos’ new anthology, Wheels on Ice: Stories of Cycling in Alaska.

This talk looks at the intertwined, co-dependent lives of people, dogs, and salmon along the nineteenth century Yukon for examples of how to tell more capacious, polyvocal narratives—and the stakes of doing so for and about Alaska, a place where the politics of who speaks the past has bearing on present conflicts over land, meaning, and the possibilities of the future.

Join audio engineer and preservationist Kurt Riemann for a discussion about Alaska’s rich music history and the need to conserve and make available irreplaceable historical and cultural audio resources. Learn about the mechanics of preservation, sample audio from incredible performances, and hear a few wild stories lifted from the recordings and the accompanying program material.

In 2015 Bob King and Katie Ringsmuth embarked on a journey to Bristol Bay to preserve the history of the Diamond NN Cannery at South Naknek, Alaska, resulting in the seven-year public history endeavor called The NN Cannery History Project. Uncovered along the way was the story of the Cannery Caretakers, which looks at cannery work from the perspective of village residents.

David Tarcy and Jennifer Romer will explore the less well-known impacts of the 1964 earthquake on smaller communities in Prince William Sound and the Kodiak Archipelago. These were predominately Alaska Native, Alutiiq communities, or communities largely comprised of Alaska Native inhabitants.

Speaker Hig (Bretwood) Higman will lay out how historic tsunamis in Alaska and around the world have helped advance our understanding and preparedness for tsunamis, but all too often caught locals and scientists by surprise with disastrous consequences.

Colleen Mondor, author of The Map of My Dead Pilots: The Dangerous Game of Flying in Alaska, will dive into the records of several of these missing aircraft, both infamous and obscure, and discuss how myths can develop when investigations must remain incomplete and final answers are elusive.

Drawing on work for his new book, Cold Mountain Path, author and journalist Tom Kizzia will discuss the evolution of the Wrangell Mountains community in the half-century between the departure of the last copper train and the coming of the National Park Service.

Fifty years ago, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 (ANCSA) marked a shift in the Congressional approach to federal policy for Indigenous communities. The landmark passage of ANCSA created visionary for-profit corporations tasked with promoting the social, cultural, and economic advancement of their Alaska Native people and communities in perpetuity. Join the Cook Inlet Historical Society for a panel discussion on ANCSA’s past, present and future legacy.

Despite massive publicity in 1989, the sea otter “rescue” effort has received scant attention in later retrospectives examining the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound. Over the years a mythology has grown up, portraying the wildlife rehabilitation project as a futile, expensive publicity stunt. In this talk, Shana Loshbaugh describes the history of the project, including information about conflicts among Exxon, agencies, and staff factions with agendas as disparate as embezzlement and animal rights.

In the spring of 1921, ordinary people did something extraordinary: united by a desire to create art and entertain, early Anchorage residents produced Anchorage’s first full-length classical concert, A Longfellow Evening, at the Empress Theatre. On the exact centenary, Anchorage Festival of Music Artistic Director Laura Koenig presents the story behind the concert and the remarkable biographies of the original performers told through newly discovered historical images, archival documents and family recollections.

Nellie Frost followed her husband from San Jose, California, to Sunrise City in 1897, the second year of the gold rush that brought an estimated 10,000 people to Turnagain Arm 20 years before Anchorage began. Written and edited from one hundred-year-old historic documents and through narratives told to her daughter Dorothy Frost, Gold Rush Wife chronicles Nellie’s experiences in a northern gold rush that predated the more famous stampede to the Klondike. Nellie’s story provides insight into the rich social life of an isolated, predominately male mining camp. It is that rare narrative of a woman’s experiences, in her own words, of life in a remote mining camp in the late 1890s.

After less than eight weeks on the job, Anchorage's first police chief died from a “gunshot wound by person unknown." Histories of the city typically ascribe his death to frontier lawlessness, illegal liquor, or gambling dens of inequity. Who killed police chief J. J. "Jack" Sturgus?

The staunch little steamer Dora served in Alaskan waters her entire career: delivering the mail, transporting food and goods from Southeast Alaskan ports all the way to Bristol Bay and rescuing hundreds lost at sea. This talk will be a celebration of her life and a commemoration of her tragic sinking one hundred years ago.

A rarely if ever mentioned aspect of early Anchorage life is the inescapable mud, ruts, mosquitos, trash, splashes, human waste, and associated odors, among many other lifestyle impairments. This talk presents some of the grittier and dirtier--literally--qualities of daily life in early Anchorage.

We’re proud to have a duo of historians discuss the flu pandemic of 1919. Tim Troll will first share a brief film, Bristol Bay Remembers: The Great Flu of 1919, and photographs from the U.S. Revenue Cutter Unalga that responded first in Unalaska and later in Bristol Bay. From there, Katie Ringsmuth will discuss how Bristol Bay was the last manifestation of the Spanish influenza outbreak in Alaska.

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Join us on Facebook for a virtual Cook Inlet Historical Society lecture.

Local archivists and museum curators give an overview of their respective institutions archival, manuscript and museum holdings related to Alaska and the Circumpolar North.

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