Anchorage, Alaska

Anchorage is a bustling metropolitan center surrounded by rugged wilderness country. Sometimes called the "City of Lights and Flowers," Anchorage enjoys summers marked by long hours of sunlight that encourage cultivation. Anchorage residents offset the darkness of the city's long winter with a tradition of decorating homes and businesses with a multitude of miniature white lights.

Landscape

Anchorage is located in south-central Alaska. It sits at the base of the Chugach Mountains, along the shores of Cook Inlet. Six separate mountain ranges—the Chugach, Kenai, Talkeetna, Tordrillo, Aleutian, and Alaska—are visible from downtown.

Anchorage is the seat for the municipality of Anchorage, which sprawls over some 1,955 square miles, or an area roughly the size of the state of Delaware. The municipality contains numerous glaciers, several dozen of which exist within 50 miles of Anchorage's city limits. These include one of Alaska's most popular tourist attractions, Portage Glacier, located 45 miles south of downtown Anchorage.

Anchorage consists of several districts, each with its own distinctive history and character. Government Hill, located at the city's northernmost edge, is the oldest district. Hard hit by an earthquake in 1964, parts of the district have never been rebuilt. This is the site of a major shipyard through which millions of barrels of Alaskan oil pass each year.

The Ship Creek District marks the area where the city's earliest settlers set up their first temporary camps before they expanded their settlement northward to the vicinity of Government Hill. Today Ship Creek is noted for its excellent salmon fishing. It is also the site of a popular annual ice sculpting competition.

Anchorage's downtown area is dominated by gleaming skyscrapers that serve as the headquarters of various oil industry giants. The Alaska Center for the Performing Arts is also located in this section. Many of the city's schools, stores, and restaurants are spread out across the midtown section.

The Spenard District, which makes up the west-central portion of the city, is an enclave for some of Anchorage's more offbeat and artistically inclined cultural residents. The South District consists largely of quiet residential neighborhoods. Some of these neighborhoods encircle lakes. It is not uncommon for residents to own floatplanes, which they park on the bodies of water that serve as part of their backyards.

The East-Northeast District is a largely working-class residential area. It is the site of the Alaska Native Heritage Center, as well as of the Alaska Botanical Garden. This area marks the city's northeastern boundary. Just beyond it lie Fort Richardson and the Elmendorf Air Force Base.

Anchorage features, thanks to its coastal location, a climate that is fairly mild relative to other parts of Alaska. Temperatures range from average wintertime lows of around 20° Fahrenheit to average summertime highs close to 70° Fahrenheit. Average annual snowfall in Anchorage generally adds up to less than 6 feet—less than what falls in Buffalo, New York, in a typical year.

Anchorage's far northern latitude causes the amount of functional daylight the city sees to vary throughout the year. The smallest amount of daylight occurs around December 21, the winter solstice, on which Anchorage experiences slightly more than seven and one-half hours of daylight. By the summer solstice, which occurs around June 21, the city's residents have nearly twenty-four hours of functional daylight.

People

Anchorage is Alaska's largest city, with a United States Census Bureau estimated 2022 population of 287,145. The city is home to more than 40 percent of the state's total population. Anchorage is one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the United States.

In 2021 the city's population had a median age of only 34, and residents between the ages of thirty-five and forty-four made up its largest segment, at 30 percent. By contrast, as of 2022, people aged sixty-five or older made up 18.5 percent of the city's population. A large number of these are military retirees.

Anchorage is an ethnically diverse city. According to the 2022 census, non-Hispanic White people made up 55.2 percent of the population, with Alaska Native people accounting for 7.4 percent of the population and Asians for 9.8 percent, followed by African Americans at 5.3 percent, and Hispanics or Latinos of any race at 9.4 percent.

Alaska Natives make up one of the city's fastest-growing groups, as more are migrating from rural areas to the Anchorage. The increasing numbers of Native residents led some candidates, during the 2009 Anchorage mayoral campaign, to call for the teaching of Native languages in Anchorage schools in addition to the recently established Native charter school in the city. These have been accompanied by calls to address, through increased affordable housing, the reality that a disproportionate number of the Anchorage's growing homeless population are Native Americans.

Economy

Anchorage's manufacturing base turns out fishery products, wood and wood products, petroleum products, coal, and minerals. However, Anchorage's economy has long been anchored by two sectors: the US federal government, primarily in the form of a substantial military presence in the vicinity, and the oil industry.

Anchorage is home to Joint Base Elmendorf–Richardson, a combined Army and Air Force facility created starting in 2010 by the merger of three separate military posts: Elmendorf Air Force Base, the US Army's Fort Richardson, and Kulis Air National Guard Base. This facility serves some 16,000 active duty personnel. Many local businesses, including health and social services, hospitality, and real estate, rely on the demands created by military personnel and their dependents.

The construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline in the 1970s permanently diversified the Anchorage's economic base when it spurred a large influx of workers. In 2023, Alaska had the fourth-largest proved oil reserves of any state, after Texas, New Mexico, and North Dakota, and the petroleum industry supports about a third of all the jobs in Alaska. Although most of that production takes place outside of Anchorage, the city is home to the industry's administrative infrastructure. This sector employs only 2 percent of the local workforce but accounts for nearly 10 percent of local salaries and wages.

State government represents another key sector in Anchorage's economy. Although Juneau is Alaska's political capital, much of the state's government infrastructure is located in Anchorage, which is the more accessible city of the two. Roughly twice as many state employees work in Anchorage as in Juneau.

In addition to oil and gas interests and the military, Anchorage also underpins its economy with the transportation sector. The Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport employs around 10 percent of the city's workforce in either direct or indirect capacities. The Alaska Railroad is the busiest transportation link in the state for moving both freight and passengers.

The Port of Anchorage, the largest seaport in the state, supporting about $14 billion commercial activity in Alaska. It serves as the point of entry for more than 90 percent of all consumer goods shipped to Alaska. About 5.2 million tons of iron and steel products, containerized freight, bulk petroleum, cement, wood products, and various other commodities pass over its docks each year.

The tourism and convention industry, and related service businesses, represent another key and growing sector of the Anchorage economy. Thanks to its central location, well-developed transportation connections, and mild climate, Anchorage serves as the starting point for most visitors to the state, regardless of their ultimate destination. Meetings and conventions in Anchorage contribute millions annually to teh state's economy.

The unemployment rate in Anchorage was 4.0 percent in 2023. Anchorage features no sales tax and no state income tax. Alaska's oil revenues provide payment to Anchorage residents, as they do to all state residents, in the form of income from Alaska's Permanent Fund investments. The Alaska Permanent Fund, created in 1976 by a voter-approved amendment to the state constitution, automatically sets aside 25 percent of all state oil and gas royalties and other natural-resource revenues to provide annual dividend payments to eligible residents.

Landmarks

Anchorage is home to many noteworthy museums dedicated to exploring Alaska's rich history and resources. The Anchorage Museum of History and Art, founded in 1968 to celebrate the one-hundredth anniversary of the purchase of Alaska from Russia, features artwork, photographs, and historic and ethnographic artifacts. It includes the Alaska Gallery, a display of more than 1,000 objects that portray the history and people of the state. Since 1992, the museum has also served as the home to the offices of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History Arctic Studies Center.

The Alaska Native Heritage Center provides visitors with an introduction to Native American heritage. It celebrates the ancient traditions as well as contemporary cultures of Alaska's major indigenous groups: the Athabascan, Inupiaq/St Lawrence Island Yupik, Yup'ik/Cup'ik, Aleut, Alutiiq, Eyak, Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian peoples. The center features several authentic life-sized Native dwellings and offers demonstrations and exhibits related to Native culture.

Other Anchorage museums include the Alaska Aviation Heritage Museum, which features displays of historic aircraft, aviation artifacts, and memorabilia specific to Alaskan history; the Alaska Museum of Natural History, whose collections include dinosaur and other fossils, rocks, and artifacts; the Anchorage Fire Department Museum; the Russian-Orthodox Museum, dedicated to exploring the historic connections between Russia and Alaska; and the Oscar Anderson House Museum, which dates to the city's founding and shows how one Swedish immigrant experienced the early history of Anchorage.

Two religious buildings of note in Anchorage are the Saint Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church, the oldest building in the greater Anchorage area, and Saint Innocent Orthodox Cathedral. The cathedral is famous for the dozen onion-shaped domes that adorn it.

Outdoor attractions in Anchorage include Resolution Point, site of the Captain Cook Monument, from which visitors can enjoy sweeping views of Cook Inlet and Denali; Earthquake Park, situated on a once-affluent residential area destroyed by the massive 9.2 "Good Friday" earthquake of 1964; and the Alaska Botanical Garden, a 110-acre spruce and birch woodland, dedicated to showcasing northern horticulture and native plants. The garden opened in 1993 on land once occupied by the Athabascan people. Much of it remains in a wild state, with individual gardens linked by trails cutting through the preserve's boreal forest.

History

Although Russian explorers were also active in the area around the same time, the English explorer Captain James Cook is generally considered the first non-indigenous person to explore and describe the Anchorage area. Cook encountered the site of present-day Anchorage in 1778. The region remained under Russian control, however, for much of the century that followed. In 1867, the era of Russian dominance in Alaska came to a close with the sale of the Alaska Territory to the US for an asking price of just over $7 million.

The first non-Native people to settle in the Anchorage began arriving in the Ship Creek Valley in 1915, motivated by the prospect of jobs building the federally funded railroad destined to link Seward and Fairbanks, located some 474 miles apart. The construction of the headquarters settlement, where 2,000 or so workers eventually set up a tent camp, formally received its name of Anchorage in 1915, by dictate of the US Post Office Department. The city was formally incorporated on November 23, 1920.

The following year saw the first plots of land go up for sale and the opening of the first school in the area. Between 1915 and 1920, federal authorities oversaw the establishment of water lines, a power plant, a crude telephone network, and a municipal sewer system in Anchorage. Residential neighborhoods soon developed both north and south of the original Ship Creek camp. A thriving business district sprang up to serve the ever-growing population of the new city.

The 1923 completion of the Alaska Railroad provided a vital trade link between Anchorage and the rest of the country. But it was the 1942 construction of the 1,400-mile-long Alaska/Canada highway (ALCAN), built as a World War II emergency route, that radically increased Anchorage's accessibility. The city's population expanded from just over 4,000 residents prior to outbreak of World War II to more than 11,000 by 1950. When Alaska became the forty-ninth state to join the union during the administration of President Dwight Eisenhower in 1959, many Anchorage officials and residents hoped the change in status would propel the city to a new level of development.

Only five years later, however, on March 27, 1964, Anchorage suffered a devastating blow when the largest earthquake ever recorded in North America struck. Measuring 9.2 on the Richter scale, the co-called Good Friday Earthquake radiated out from an epicenter located just 60 miles southeast of the city. Although only nine lives were lost—out of a population that by then stood around 30,000—parts of Anchorage suffered severe damage. Casualties of the disaster included an entire neighborhood that simply slid underwater.

In 1968, four years after the earthquake had threatened to derail plans for the city's expansion, Anchorage began to reap the benefits of Alaska's oil riches. In its first year of production, the Prudhoe Bay oil fields generated almost a billion dollars. Three years later, the completion of the 800-mile Trans-Alaska pipeline dramatically increased the state's wealth, which translated into a booming economy and population growth. Between 1970 and 1980, the number of Anchorage residents exploded from just under 50,000 to more than 174,000.

By the end of the 1970s, the greater Anchorage area had become home to half of Alaska's total population. In response to this tremendous growth, two existing governmental entities, the City of Anchorage and the Greater Anchorage Area Borough, merged to form the Municipality of Anchorage in 1975. The new municipality covered nearly 1,955 square miles.

Fueled by enormous oil revenues, Anchorage's rapid expansion continued during the 1980s and 1990s. During these decades, city planners significantly improved public infrastructure and undertook efforts to beautify the city. They thus laid the foundation for the successful tourism and recreation industry that has become of mainstay of contemporary Anchorage's economic and cultural life.

Trivia

• On clear winter nights, it is not uncommon for the aurora borealis, or northern lights, to be visible from Anchorage. The northern lights are glowing, swirling curtains of light that can fill the night sky with vibrant yellow-green, red, blue, and purple patterns. They appear when the electrically charged solar particles react to the earth's magnetic field. Many Anchorage hotels even offer a "northern lights wake-up call" to alert interested guests when the phenomenon appears.
• Downtown Anchorage is the starting point of the annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. Tracked by a worldwide audience, the rugged 1,100 mile-race follows much of the trail originally used in 1925 to prevent an epidemic in the ice-bound town of Nome. Drivers transported by teams of sled dogs made possible the delivery of 300,000 life-saving units of diphtheria serum. The final leg of the delivery was made by a man named Gunnar Kaasen. A commemorative bronze statue of Kaasen's lead sled dog, named Balto, is located in front of the Wendler Building in downtown Anchorage.
• The Anchorage Fur Rendezvous, or the "Rondy," is held every February and bills itself as the premier winter festival in North America.

Bibliography

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"Anchorage, AK." Forbes, 2017, www.forbes.com/places/ak/anchorage/. Accessed 20 Feb. 2024.

Anchorage Economic Profile. Anchorage Economic Development Corporation, 2011, aedcweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/2011-AEDC-Anchorage-Economic-Profile.pdf. Accessed 20 Feb. 2024.

"Anchorage Municipality, Alaska." QuickFacts, US Census Bureau,www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/anchoragemunicipalityalaska/RHI125221. Accessed 20 Feb. 2024.

Fountain, Henry. The Great Quake: How the Biggest Earthquake in North America Changed Our Understanding of the Planet. Crown, 2017.

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