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.

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.