ALASKA TALES: ANCHORAGE THEN AND NOW

And You Thought Your Boarding Was Tough!

Some of you will be lucky enough to get to Alaska this year or maybe soon.  This magnificent state, called the Great Land by the earliest natives, can be overwhelming.  After all, if you dropped Alaska on the Lower 48, parts of it would go off the edges and it would cover ⅔ rds of the ground area of continental USA.  So, when someone says that there is a lot to see in Alaska, a polite “Duh” is not inappropriate.  In the rush to see Denali, Glaciers, Gold Rush towns and famous sea ports sometimes Anchorage is just a place tourists zoom through on the way to somewhere else.

That’s a shame because Anchorage is the throbbing heart of Alaska.

Recent Commercial View of Downtown

Believe it or not, 4th Street Anchorage 1959

Whether you take a Sea-Land tour or get on or off your ship in the Anchorage area, spend more than a moment to check out this frontier town that pulses with the energy of an adolescent just trying out the new growth and the muscle that goes with it.

Port of Anchorage 1960

AMSTERDAM in Juneau

Capt Cook & Cdr Daley looking over Cook Inlet from the deck at Resolution Park

Some of the Fruits & Veggies at Anchorage's Saturday Market

Twins Stop for a Snack on Anchorage Highway

Blanket Toss in Anchorage 1956

If you are really lucky you might arrive in Anchorage on MS AMSTERDAM, a Holland America ship that actually transits Cook Inlet and ties up in the Port of Anchorage, virtually in the middle of downtown.  Because of the great rise and fall of the tides normal at the end of a long inlet, in the past ships seldom ventured into the port of Anchorage.  Between the tides and the huge amount of silt that gets washed downstream from melting glaciers it was common for unwary mariners to find themselves sitting on a bank of soft, viscous black sandy dirt.  

To capitalize on the boom in ship borne tourism the State of Alaska invested in making the Port of Anchorage more accessible to relatively deep draft ocean going vessels.  I have been bouncing around the port of Anchorage since the first time we lived in Alaska, July 1959, the same year our 2nd child was born there.  Between subsequent business trips, employment interviews, speaking engagements on a variety of cruise ships and visits to our #1 son & family we have enjoyed Alaska and Anchorage ever since that long ago day we first walked across the pier in Whittier.  Rather than just talk or should I say write about it let me show you some pictures that trace the vibrant growth of Anchorage and the Port of Anchorage as we saw it for the past half century.

                          There's Gold In Them Thar Hills