History of Alaska
Alaska was probably first settled by humans who came there across the Bering Land Bridge. Eventually, Alaska became populated by the Inuit and a variety of Native American groups. Most, if not all, of the pre-Columbian population of the Americas probably took this route and continued further south and east. The first written accounts indicate that the first Europeans to reach Alaska came from Russia. Vitus Bering sailed east and saw Mt. St. Elias. The Russian-American Company hunted otters for their fur. The colony was never very profitable, because of the costs of transportation.
At the instigation of U.S. Secretary of State William Seward, the United States Senate approved the purchase of Alaska from Russia for $7,200,000 (approximately $90,750,000 in 2005 dollars, adjusted for inflation) on 9 April 1867, and the United States flag was raised on 18 October of that same year (now called Alaska Day). The purchase was not popular in the contiguous United States, where Alaska became known as "Seward's Folly" or "Seward's Icebox," though the emergence of the Klondike Gold Rush would soon make the transaction pay off.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Alaska Statehood Act into United States law on 7 July 1958 which paved the way for Alaska's admission into the Union on January 3, 1959. Alaska suffered one of the worst earthquakes in recorded North American history on Good Friday 1964, the Good Friday Earthquake, killing 103 people and wrecking several villages, but recovered with the discovery of oil and the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline and in 1989, the Exxon Valdez hit a reef in the Prince William Sound, spilling between 11 million and 35 million U.S. gallons of crude oil over 1,100 miles.
Pre-history
Alaska was probably first settled by humans who came there across the Bering Land Bridge. Eventually, Alaska became populated by the Inuit and a variety of Native American groups. Most, if not all, of the pre-Columbian population of the Americas probably took this route and continued further south and east.[1] Today, early Alaskans are divided into several main groups: the Southeastern Coastal Indians (the Tlingits and Haidas), the Athabascans, the Aleuts, and the two groups of Eskimos: Inupiat and Yup'ik.[2]
The Coastal Indians were probably the first wave of immigrants to cross the Bering Land Bridge, although many of them originally settled in Canada. The Tlingits were the most numerous of this group, claiming most of the coastal Panhandle. A small southern portion was taken up by the less populous Haidas. They were later joined in the late 1800s by the Tsimshian, Coastal Indians who emigrated from Canada to Annette Island off the southeastern coast. The Tlingets were known to travel for more than 1,000 miles south to trade with Native peoples in the Pacific Northwest. The standard of currency was "blanket value," based on blankets made of cedar bark, dog, and goat hair.
The Coastal Indians believed fish and animals gave themselves willingly to humans, and strove to honor their sacrifice. The believed the bones of a consumed salmon should be returned to the river where it had been caught to allow for reincarnation, or else the fish would return deformed. They lived in a capitalist society that allowed private ownership. Each household owned anything they had made themselves, while the clan owned religious titles and objects, such as the right to practice a certain dance or profession.
In the social organization of the Tlingits and Haidas, status was determined by wealth. To maintain position, a person of power demonstrated wealth by giving a ceremonial potlatch when he would give away, destroy, or invite guests to consume all his food and possessions. Those who received goods at one potlatch had to reciprocate and better their host in the future. Another important feature of the potlatch was the recitation of family histories and bloodlines.
The mild climate and plentiful resources of the Panhandle allowed the Coastal Indians leisure time to devote to social pastimes, travel, and trade. They enjoyed ceremony and drama, and their potlatch traditions kept an accurate account of the generations. The painted designs developed by the Coastal tribes featured fish and animals, often in patterns of black and red. They decorated their craft goods, domestic utensils, clothing, masks, canoes, ritual objects, and the totems that marked family residences.
The Athabascan Indians of Alaska's interior were hunters and inland fishermen. Most lived in small nomadic bands along the region's rivers. They traveled for days without food and existed in temperatures of -50°F or less without a shelter or fire. Endurance and physical strength were prized, and game was often run down on foot. Athabascans hunted salmon, rabbits, caribou, and bear with the help of snares, clubs, and bows and arrows. Periods of famine were common. Because they were semi-nomadic and hunted on foot, footwear was very important, and the Athabascans designed snowshoes made of birch. The Athabascans used birch from the interior forests to make canoes, containers, sleds, and cradles. Clothing was made of animal hides, decorated with porcupine quills.
Some Athabascan groups inhabited permanent winter villages and summer fishing camps. Most bands consisted of a few nuclear familes and had limited internal organization. Leadership was acquired by warriors or hunters. Athabascans also gave potlatches to mark a death and celebrate a child's first successful hunt, as a prelude to marriage. Those who aspired to leadership were expected to host memorable potlatches, at which the would-be leader would give away all his possessions then prove his prowess by providing for himself and his family for an entire year without outside help.
The Aleuts settled the islands of the Aleutian chain approximately 10,000 years ago. Although their location allowed them easy access to fishing, they also had to contend with unpredictable weather and earthquakes. Aleut fishing technology included fish spears, weirs, nets, hooks, and lines. Various darts and nets were used to obtain sea lions and sea otters. Whales were usually killed with a poisoned, stone-bladed lance. The job of women and children was to gather shellfish along the beaches at low tide.
Aleut society was divided into three categories: honorables, usually respected whalers, common people, and slaves. At death the body of an honorable was mummified, and sometimes slaves were killed in honor of the deceased. The one- and two-man skin boats used by the Aleuts were called "baidarkas" or "bidarkas" by the Russians. Because of a ready supply of grass in the summer, Aleut women became skillful at basketry, weaving the baskets so closely that they could hold water. Mats and some kinds of clothing were also made this way.
Eskimos, the Native group most familar to non-Alaskans, were originally divided into two sub-groups, with the Inupiat Eskimos settling in Alaska's Arctic region and the Yup'ik living in the west. To combat the cold, seasonal food was stored against future shortage and for the winter. A hunter always divided a fresh kill evenly amongst the community, and status within a village was determined by hunting ability. Eskimo village sites were chosen for availability of food sources. The Arctic coast people depended on seal, walrus, and whale, while the inland Eskimos lived on a diet of caribou, birds, and other small game animals. eggs were gathered, and berries, roots, and wild greens were eaten fresh, or preserved in skin containers.
Eskimos used boats called umiaks and smaller kayaks to hunt larger sea animals. Both were made of a frame of wood covered with skins or hides. Sleds and dog teams were used for winter travel, and during the summer dogs were used as pack animals. Women were skilled in basketry and sewing. They stitched and fitted waterproof garments made of animal intestine and fish skins. The Eskimos' everyday clothing of trousers, boots, and coats were sewn from skins and fur, sometimes in complex geometric designs. The coats, which were called parkas, featured an attached hood and ruff.
Eskimos were known for their carvings, especially their small ivory pieces. In early times household utencils and weapons were ornamented. Using wood, bone, baleen, walrus ivory, and fossil mammoth tusks, Eskimos crafted dishes and knives, oil lamps, small sculptures, game pieces, and goggles to protect their eyes from the glare of snow and ice. The ulu, or women's knife, can be found in most Alaskan tourist shops today.
Russian Alaska
The first written accounts indicate that the first Europeans to reach Alaska came from Russia. In June 1741, the St. Peter and the St. Paul, captained by a Dane, Vitus Bering, and a Russian, Alexei Chirikof, set sail from Russia at the Siberian port of Petropavlovsk.[3] Six days later they lost sight of each other in a thick fog, but continued to sail east. On July 15, Chirikof sighted land, probably the west side of Prince of Wales Island in Southeast Alaska. He sent a group of men ashore in a long boat. When the first group failed to return, he sent a second, which also vanished. Chirikof pulled the anchor and moved on.
In the meantime Bering and the crew of St. Peter sighted a towering peak on the Alaska mainland, Mt. St. Elias. Turning westward, Bering achored his vessel off Kayak Island while crew members went ashore to explore and find water. Georg Wilhelm Steller, the ship's naturalist, hiked along the island and took notes on the plants and wildlife. He also first recorded the Steller's Jay that bears his name. Bering was anxious to return to Russia and turned westward.
Chirikof and the St. Paul returned to Siberia in October with news of the land they had found. His ship was battered by storms, and in November he was forced to land on one of Russia's uninhabited Commander Islands. Bering fell ill with scurvy and died, and soon after the St. Peter would be dashed to pieces by high winds. The stranded crew wintered on the island, and when weather improved the 46 survivors built a 40-ft boat from the wreckage and set sail for Petrapavlovsk in August 1742. Bering's crew returned to Russia with sea otter pelts, soon judged to be the finest fur in the world. Spurred by the riches represented, Russia threw itself into setting up hunting and trading posts.
Rather than hunting the marine life for themselves, the Russians forced the Aleuts to do the work for them. As word spread of the riches in furs to be had, competition among Russian companies increased and the Aleuts were forced into slavery. Catherine the Great, who became Czarina in 1763, proclaimed good will toward the Aleuts and urged her subjects to treat them fairly, but the hunters' quest for furs made them disregard Aleut welfare. Hostages were taken, families were split up, and individuals were forced to leave their villages and settle elsewhere. The Aleuts revolted that year, and won some victories, but the Russians retaliated, killing many and destroying their boats and hunting gear, leaving them no means of survival. Eighty percent of the Aleut population was destroyed by violence and European diseases, against which they had no defenses, during the first two generations of Russian contact.
About this time, the British were continueing their search for the Northwest Passage, the fabled water route between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Captain James Cook sailed north from Vancover Island to the Aleutians in 1778. The Russians tried to impress him with the extent of their control over the region, but Cook considered them a tenuous group of ragtag hunters and traders. Although Cook died in Hawaii after visiting Alaska, his crew continued on to Canton, China, where they sold sea otter pelts they had obtained at Alaska for unusually expensive prices. Cook's expedition spurred the British to increase their sailings along the northwest coast, and they were followed by the Spanish, who were already established on the coast of California.
Though the colony was never very profitable, because of the costs of transportation, most Russian traders were determined to keep the land for themselves. In 1784, Grigor Ivanovich Shelikof arrived in Three Saints Bay on Kodiak Island with two ships, the Three Saints and the St. Simon.[4] The indigenous Koniag harassed the Russian party and Shelikof responded by killing hundreds and taking hostages to enforce the obediency of the rest. Having established his authority on Kodiak Island, Shelikof founded the first permanent Russian settlement in Alaska on the island's Three Saints Bay, built a school to teach the natives to read and write Russian, and introduced the Russian Orthodox religion.
In 1790, Shelikof, back in Russia, hired Alexandr Baranov to manage his Alaskan fur enterprise. Baranof moved the colony to the northeast end of Kodiak Island, where timber was available. The site later became what is now the city of Kodiak. Russian members of the colony took Koniag wives and started familes whose names continue today, such as Panamaroff, Petrikoff, and Kvasnikoff. In 1795, Baranof, concerned by the sight of non-Russian Europeans trading with the Natives in southeast Alaska, established Mikhailovsk six miles north of present-day Sitka. He bought the land from the Tlingits, but in 1802, while Baranof was away, Tlingits from a neighboring settlement attacked and destroyed Mikhailovsk. Baranof returned with a Russian warship and razed the Tlingit village. He then built the settlement of New Archangel, which became the capital of Russian America.
As Baranof secured the Russians' physical presence in Alaska, the Shelikof family continued to work back in Russia to win a monopoly on Alaska's fur trade. In 1799, Shelikof's son-in-law, Nikolay Petrovich Rezanov, had aquired a monopoly on the American fur trade from Czar Paul I. Rezanov then formed the Russian-American Company. As part of the deal, the Czar expected the company to establish new settlements in Alaska and carry out an expanded colonization program.
By 1804, Alexander Baranof, now manager of the Russian-American Company, had consolidated the company's hold on fur trade activities in the Americas. Despite these efforts, the Russians never fully colonized Alaska. For the must part they clung to the coast and shunned the inland. By the 1830s, the Russian monopoly on trade was weakening. The Hudson's Bay Company, formed by the British in 1821, set up a post on the southern edge of Russian America in 1833. The British firm began siphoning off trade.
The Americans were also becoming a force. Baranof began to depend heavily on American supply ships, since they came more frequently than Russian ones. In addition, Americans could sell furs to the Canton market, which was closed to the Russians. The downside was that American hunters and trappers encroached on territory Russians considered theirs. In 1812 a settlement was reached giving the Russians exclusive rights to fur trade above 55°N latitude, the Americans to that below. The agreement soon went by on the wayside, however, and with Baranof's retirement in 1818, the Russian hold on Alaska was further weakened.
When the Russian-American Company's charter was renewed in 1821, it stipulated that the chief managers from then on be naval officers. Most naval officers did not have any experience in the fur trade, so the company suffered. The second charter also tried to cut off all contact with foreigners, especially the competitive Americans, but this strategy backfired since the Russian colony had become used to relying on American supply ships, and America had become a valued customer for furs. Eventually the Russian-American Company entered into an agreement with the Hudson's Bay Company, which gave the British rights to sail through Russian territory.
Although the mid-1800s were not a good time for Russians in Alaska, conditions improved for the coastal Alaska Natives who had survived contact, primarily the Aleuts, Koniags, and Tlingits. The Tlingits were never conquered and continued to wage war on the Russians into the 1850s. The Aleuts, many of whom had been removed from their home islands and sent as far south as California to hunt sea otter for Russians, continued to decline in population during the 1840s. The naval officers of the Russian-American Company established schools and hospitals for the Aleuts and gave them jobs. Russian Orthodox clergy moved into the Aleutian Islands. Father Ivan Veniaminof, famous throughout Russian America, developed an Aleut dictionary and grammar. The Aleut population began to increase.
By the 1860s, Russians were considering ridding themselves of Russian America. Zealous overhunting had severely reduced the fur-bearing animal population, and competition from the British and Americans exacerbated the situation. This, combined with the difficulties of supplying and protecting such a distant colony, brought about a waning of interest.
The Department and District of Alaska
At the instigation of U.S. Secretary of State William Seward, the United States Senate approved the purchase of Alaska from Russia for $7,200,000 (approximately $90,750,000 in 2005 dollars, adjusted for inflation) on 9 April 1867, and the United States flag was raised on 18 October of that same year (now called Alaska Day). Coincident with the ownership change, the de facto International Date Line was moved westward, and Alaska changed from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar. Therefore, for residents, Friday, October 6, 1867 was followed by Friday, October 18, 1867; two Fridays in a row because of the date line shift. The first American administrator of Alaska was Włodzimierz Krzyżanowski. The purchase was not popular in the contiguous United States, where Alaska became known as "Seward's Folly" or "Seward's Icebox," however the resources of Alaska would soon show that this was a wise buy. Alaska celebrates the purchase each year on the last Monday of March, calling it Seward's Day. After the purchase of Alaska between 1867 and 1884 the name was changed to the Department of Alaska.
When America had first bought Alaska, vast regions of the area still remained unexplored. In 1865, Western Union decided to lay a telegraph line across Alaska to Bering Stait where it would connect with an Asian line. Robert Kennicott, part of a Western Union surveying effort, had led his crew to Nulato on the banks of the Yukon. He died the following year and William H. Dall took charge of scientific affairs. The Western Union expedition conducted the first scientific studies of the region and produced the first map of the entire Yukon River. That same year, 1866, workers finally succeeded in laying an Atlantic undersea telegraph cable, and the Alaskan overland project was abandoned. Dall returned to Alaska many times, recording and naming geological features.
The Alaska Commercial Company also contributed to the growing exploration of Alaska in the last decades of the 1800s, building trading posts along the Interior's many rivers. Small parties of trappers and traders entered the Interior, and, though the federal government provided little money to the region, army officers would occasionally explore on their own. In a four-month journey, Lt. Frederick Schwatka and his party rafted the Yukon from Lake Lindeman in Canada to Saint Michael near the river's mouth on the Bering Sea. In 1885, Lt. Henry T. Allen and four others left the Gulf of Alaska, followed the Copper River, crossed a mountain range, and traveled down the Tanana River to the Yukon, and portaged to the Kanuti and Koyukuk rivers. Allen went up the Koyukuk, then back down the Yukon, crossed over to Unalakeet on the coast, and then made his way to Saint Michael, exploring about 1,500 miles of Interior Alaska.
Legislators in Washington, D.C. were occupied with post-Civil War reconstruction issues, and had little time to dedicate to Alaska. General Jefferson C. Davis, a U.S. Army officer, was put in charge as the first commander of the Department of Alaska, which between 1884 and 1912 was renamed the district of Alaska and was appointed a civil government by President Chester Arthur. It was the discovery of gold in the Yukon in 1896 that brought attention to the United States's northern possession. A wave of fortune hunters clamored for passage to the Klondike, but the Klondike was in Yukon Territory, Canada, not Alaska as many would-be miner believed. Still, the easiest route was by ship to Skagway, in Southeast Alaska. Miners had their choice of two passes across the mountaisn to the Yukon fields: White Pass, also called Dead Horse Trail, or the Chilkoot Trail, an old Native route.
Alaska still had plenty of gold of its own, and many who didn't make their fortunes in the Klondike strike came back to look for it. An earlier strike had established Juneau in Southeast Alaska. and gold was found in Nome in 1899. For several years a prospector named Felix Pedro had been searching in the Tanana Hills of the Interior for a gold-rich creek he had stumbled upon years earlier but had been forced to abandon. As the summer of 1901 drew to a close, Pedro was about to embark with his partner on a 165-mile walk to Circle City for supplies. He met up with E.T. Barnette, who had been forced to disembark from the steamer Lavelle Young with his entire load of supplies, some of which he sold to Pedro.
Replenished with supplies, Pedro continued his search in the area, and finally struck gold in July 1902. Shortly afterward Barnette's outpost was transformed into a booming town. Named Fairbanks in honor of a U.S. senator, the settlement grew as more miners and new businesses arrived. The town had shanties on the fringes, but the center offered many of the economic conveniences of the rest of the U.S.A. Traffic came through the river, and an overland route to Valdez cut days off a trip to the contiguous United States. Eventually the Tanana Mining District became a huge gold producer, and the metal attracted Americans and Europeans alike. In 1902 the Alaska Railroad began to be built, which would connect from Seward to Fairbanks by 1914, though Alaska still doesn't have a railroad connecting it to the lower 48 states today.
Many people in Alaska found ways to profit from the gold rushes without actually panning for the metal themselves. At Ruby Creek, a strike in 1907, and a more substantial one in 1910, brought the rush of miners to the area and created the town of Ruby. The steamers the newcomers used required large quantities of wood to keep them moving, and residents along the river supplemented their trapping and fishing by maintaining profitable wood lots. Ruby grew from a tent city in 1911 to a river port and then had running water in summer, a theater, shops, and cafés. By 1917, at the height of the rush, creeks south of Ruby had yielded $875,000 worth of gold.
Other precious and semi-precious metals were being mined in Alaska, too, particularly copper. In 1910, the richest copper mine in the world started operation at Kennicott in the Wrangell-St. Elias Mountains. The mine extracted more than 591,535 tons of copper ore from the earth, and at its peak employed more than 800 workers. The more traditional ways of life, fishing, in particular, also provided a livelihood for many Alaskans, particularly after canning was introduced. In 1878 businessmen built the first two canneries at Klawock and Sitka. In 1883 the Arctic Pack Company established a cannery at Nushagak Bay in Southwest Alaska, where they were able to exploit the immense runs of salmon. Two years later the Alaska Packing Company opened a cannery across the bay, and by 1908, 10 canneries ringed Nushagak Bay in Southwest Alaska. Kodiak's first canneries were built in the late 1800s, when word of phenomenal fish runs became widespread.
Alaska Territory
By the turn of the 20th century, commercial fishing was gaining a foothold in the Aleutian Islands. Packing houses salted cod and herring, and salmon canneries were opened. Another traditional occupation, whaling, continued with no regard for overhunting. They pushed the bowhead whales to the edge of extinction for the oil in their tissue, but in recent years their populations have rebounded enough for Natives to harvest many each year without affecting the population. The Aleuts soon suffered severe problems due to the depletion of the fur seals and sea otters which they needed for survival. As well as requiring the flesh for food, they also used the skins to cover their boats, without which they couldn't hunt. The Americans also expanded into the Interior and Arctic Alaska, exploiting the fur-bearers, fish, and other game on which Natives depended.
In 1912 Alaska was reorganized and renamed the Territory of Alaska when Congress passed the Second Organic Act[5]. By 1916, its population was about 58,000. James Wickersham, a Delegate to Congress, introduced Alaska's first statehood bill, but it failed to due lack of interest from Alaskans. Even President Harding's visit in 1923 could not create widespread interest in statehood. Under the conditions of the Second Organic Act, Alaska had been split into four divisions. The most populous of the divisions, whose capital was Juneau, wondered if it could become a separate state from the other three. Government control was a primary concern, with the territory having 52 federal agencies.
Then, In 1920 the Jones Act required U.S.-flagged vessels to be built in the United States, owned by U.S. citizens, and documented under the laws of the United States. All goods entering or leaving Alaska had to be transported by American carriers and shipped to Seattle, making Alaska dependent on Washington. The Supreme Court rules that the provision of the Constitution saying one state shouldn't hold sway over another's commerce didn't apply because it was a territory. The prices Seattle shipping businesses charged began to rise to take advantage of the situation.
The Depression in Alaska caused prices of fish and copper, vital to Alaska's economy at the time, to decline. Wages were dropped and the workforce decreased by more than half. In 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt thought Americans from agricultural areas could be transfered to Alaska's Matanuska-Susitna region for a fresh chance at agricultural self-sustainment. Colonists were largely from northern states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota under the belief that only those who grew up with climates similar to that of Alaska's could handle settler life there. The United Congo Improvement Association asked the president settle 400 African-American farmers in Alaska, saying that the territory would offer full political rights, but racial prejudice and the belief that only those from northern states would make suitable colonists caused the proposal to fail.
World War II
Main article: Battle of the Aleutian Islands
On June 3, 1942, the Japanese launched an air attack on Dutch Harbor, a U.S. naval base on Unalaska Island.[6] U.S. forces managed to hold off the planes, and the base survived this attack, and a second one, with minor damage. On June 7, the Japanese landed on the islands of Kiska and Attu, where they overwhelmed Attu villagers. The villagers were taken to Japan and interned for the remainder of the war. Aleuts from the Pribilofs and Aleutian villages were evacuated by the United States to Southeast Alaska.
In the fall of 1942, the U.S. Navy began constructing a base on Adak, and on May 11, 1943, American troops landed on Attu, determined to retake the island.[7] The battle wore on for more than two weeks. The Japanese, who had no hope of rescue because their fleet of transport submarines had been turned back by U.S. destroyers, fought to the last man. The end finally came on May 29 when the Americans repelled a banzai charge. Some Japanese remained in hiding on the small island for up to three months after their defeat. When discovered, they killed themselves rather than surrender.
The taking of Attu was the second bloodiest battle of the Pacific theater. Only Iwo Jima was more costly in terms of human lives. The U.S. then turned its attention to the other occupied island, Kiska. From June through August, tons of bombs were dropped on the tiny island. The Japanese, under cover of thick Aleutian fog, escaped via transport ships. After the war, the Native Attuans who had survived internment in Japan were resettled to Atka by the federal government, which considered their home villages too remote to defend.
As a result of World War II, the construction of the Alaska-Canada Military Highway was completed in 1942 to form an overland supply route to America's Russian allies on the other side of the Bering Strait. Running from Great Falls, Montana, to Fairbanks, the road was the first stable link between Alaska and the rest of America. The construction of military bases also contributed to the population growth of some Alaskan cities. Anchorage almost doubled in size, from 4,200 people in 1940 to 8,000 in 1945. The three of the outer Aleutian Islands—Attu, Agattu and Kiska—were the only part of the United States to have land occupied during the war.
The Good Friday Earthquake
Main article: Good Friday Earthquake
By the turn of the 20th century, a movement pushing for Alaska statehood began, but in the contiguous 48 states, legislators were worried that Alaska's population was too sparse, distant, and isolated, and its economy was too unstable for it to be a worthwhile addition to the U.S.[8] World War II and the Japanese invasion highlighted Alaska's stategic importance, and the issue of statehood was taken more seriously, but it was the discovery of oil at Swanson River on the Kenai Peninsula that dispelled the image of Alaska as a weak, dependent region. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Alaska Statehood Act into United States law on 7 July 1958 which paved the way for Alaska's admission into the Union on January 3, 1959. Juneau, the territorial capital, continued as state capital, and William A. Egan was worn in as the first governor.
On March 27, 1964, the Good Friday Earthquake struck Southcentral Alaska, churning the earth for four minutes. The earthquake was one of the most powerful ones ever recorded and killed 131 people.[9] Most of them were drowned by the tsunamis that tore apart the towns of Valdez and Chenega. Throughout the Prince William Sound region towns and ports were destroyed and land was uplifted or shoved downward. The uplift destroyed salmon streams, as the fish could no longer negotiate waterfalls and other barriers to reach their spawning grounds. Ports at Valdez and Cordova were beyond repair, and the fires destroyed what the mud slides hadn't. At Valdez, an Alaska Steamship Company was lifted by a huge wave over the docks and out to sea, but most hands survived. At Turnagain Arm, off Cook Inlet, the incoming water destroyed trees and caused cabins to sink into the mud. On Kodiak, a tidal wave wiped out the villages of Afognak, Old Harbor, and Kaguyak and damaged other communities, while Seward lost its harbor.
Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act
Despite the extent of the catastrophe, Alaskans rebuilt many of the communities. In the mid-1960s Alaska Natives had begun participating in the state and local government. More than 200 years after the arrival of the first Europeans, Natives from all ethnic groups united to claim title to lands wrested from them. The government responded slowly, until, in 1968, the Atlantic-Richfield Company discovered oil at Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic coast, and catapulted the issue of land ownership into headlines. In order to lessen the difficulty of drilling at such a remote location and transporting the oil to the lower 48 states, the best solution seemed to be building a pipeline to carry the oil across Alaska to the port of Valdez, built on the ruins of the previous town. At Valdez the oil would be loaded onto tanker ships and sent by water to the contiguous states. The plan was approved, but a permit to construct the pipeline, which would cross lands involved in the native dispute, could not be granted until the Native claims had been settled.
With major petroleum dollars on the line, there was a new urgency for an agreement, and in 1971 the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act was signed, under which the Natives relinquished aboriginal claims to their lands.[10] In return they received access to 44 million acres of land and were paid $963 million. The land and money were divided among regional, urban, and village corporations. Some handled their funds wisely and others did not, leaving some Natives land-rich and cash-poor. The settlement compensated the Natives for the invasion of their lands and also opened the way for all Alaskans to profit from the state's largest natural resource, oil.
The Trans-Alaskan Pipeline
Main article: Trans-Alaskan Pipeline
Between Arctic Alaska and Valdez, there were three mountain ranges, active fault lines, miles of unstable, boggy ground underlain with frost, and migration paths of caribou and moose. To counteract the unstable ground and animal crossings, half the 800-mile pipeline is elevated on supports high enough to keep it from melting the permafrost and destroying natural terrain.[11] To help the pipeline survive an earthquake, it was laid out in a zigzag pattern, so that it would roll with the earth instead of breaking up. The first oil arrived at Valdez on July 28, 1977. The total cost of the pipeline and related projects, including the tanker terminal at Valdez, 12 pumping stations, and the Yukon River Bridge, was $8 billion.
As the oil bonanza took shape, per capita incomes rose throughout the state, with virtually every community benefitting. State leaders were determined that this boom wuld not end like the fur and gold booms, in an economic bust as soon as the resource had disappeared. In 1976, the people of Alaska amended the state's constitution, establishing the Alaska Permanent Fund. The fund invests a portion of the state's mineral revenue, including revenue from the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline System, "to benefit all generations of Alaskans." 25% of all mineral lease proceeds go into the fund, and income from the fund is divided three ways. It pays annual dividends to all residents who apply and qualify, it adds money to the principal account to hedge against inflation, and it provides funds for state legislature use. The fund is the largest pool of money in the United States and a top lender to the government. Since 1993, the fund has produced more money than the Prudhoe Bay oil fields, whose production is diminishing and may dry up early in the 21st century, though the funds should continue to benefit the state. In March 2005, the fund's value was over $30 billion.
Contemporary Alaska
Prior to 1983, the state lay across four different time zones—Pacific Standard Time (UTC -8 hours) in the extreme southeast, a small area of Yukon Standard Time (UTC -9 hours) around Juneau, Alaska–Hawaii Standard Time (UTC -10 hours) in the Anchorage and Fairbanks vicinity, with the Nome area and most of the Aleutian Islands observing Bering Standard Time (UTC -11 hours).[12] In 1983 the number of time zones was reduced to two, with the entire mainland plus the inner Aleutian Islands going to UTC -9 hours (and this zone then being renamed Alaska Standard Time as the Yukon Territory had several years earlier (circa 1975) adopted a single time zone identical to Pacific Standard Time), and the remaining Aleutian Islands were slotted into the UTC −10 hours zone, which was then renamed Hawaii–Aleutian Standard Time.
In the second half of the 20th century, Alaska discovered tourism as an important source of revenue. Tourism became popular after World War II, when men stationed in the region returned home praising its natural splendor. The Alcan Highway, built during the war, and the Alaska Marine Highway System, completed in 1963, made the state more accessible than before. Tourism is now big business in Alaska, and over 1.4 million people visit the state every year, attracted to Denali National Parkm Katmai, Glacier Bay, and the Kenai Peninsula, and although wildlife-watching is popular, only a small portion of visitors go to the wilderness.
With tourism more vital to the economy, environmentalism has also risen in importance. Alaskans are trying to balance the needs of their land with those of its residents. Much is already well-protected. The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) of 1980 added 53.7 million acres to the national wildlife refuge system, parts of 25 rivers to the national wild and scenic rivers system, 3.3 million acres to national forest lands, and 43.6 million acres to national park land. As a result of the lands act, Alaska now contains two-thirds of all American national parklands.
On March 24, 1989, the tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound, releasing 11 million gallons of crude oil into the water, spreading along 1,100 miles of shoreline.[13] According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, at least 300,000 sea birds, 2,000 otters, and other marine animals died as a result of the spill. Exxon spent $2 billion on cleaning up in the first year alone. Approximately 12,000 workers went to the shores of the sound in the summer of 1989. Work included bulldozing blackened beaches, sucking up petroleum blobs with vacuum devices, blasting sand with hot water, polishing rocks by hand, raking up oily seaweed, and spraying fertilizer to aid the growth of oil-eating microbes.
The spill generated international publicity, and the influx of clean-up workers filled to capacity every hotel and campsite in the Valdez area, which boosted Valdez's economy, but weakened the tourist industry. Exxon, working with state and federal agencies, continued its clean-up into the early 1990s. In some areas, such as Smith Island, winter storms did more to wash the shore clean than any human efforts. Government studies show that the oil and the cleaning process itself did long-term harm to the ecology of the Sound, interfering with the reproduction of birds and animals in ways that still aren't fully understood. Prince William Sound seems to have recuperated, but scientists still dispute the extent of the recovery.
Over the years various vessels have been named USS Alaska, in honor of the state. Alaska has become famous for its Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, gaining popularity in the 1970s and 1980s. Alaska is one of the only states never to have had a death penalty, although it did execute eight men between 1900 and 1957 under civil authority. In 1957, the death penalty was abolished by the Territorial Legislature, just two years before Alaska's statehood.
Endnotes
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- ^ (2003). Alaska. Maspeth, NY: Langensheidt Publishers, Inc. ISBN 1-58573-284-2
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- ^ Littke, Peter. (2003). Russian-American Bibliography
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