Legends & Legacies Project

The Cook Inlet Historical Society is proud to present the Legends and Legacies, Anchorage, 1910-1940 website. Launched in 2017, the website features 175 bibliographic sketches of early Anchorage individuals and families. These biographies are of people who lived in Anchorage for an extended period of time during Alaska’s formative years. They highlight a diverse group including early newcomers, long-time residents, immigrants, Alaska Natives, and sourdoughs. 

The Anchorage community History Project 

The Anchorage Community History Project is a community-based, collaborative project in which qualified Anchorage-based historians write accessible yet scholarly, peer-reviewed public histories of communities of the Anchorage and greater Southcentral Alaska region. These will then be collected for publication in e-form, posted on the Cook Inlet Historical Society’s website and printed for local distribution.

The creation of neighborhood histories is an opportunity to research the history of communities and to understand and appreciate the historical heritage of the past and present. In the early 1950s, the City of Anchorage included only the original Anchorage Townsite and the South Addition, a twenty-one-block area south of 11th Avenue annexed in 1945. In 1950, the population of Anchorage was 11,250, with an additional 18,800 persons living outside of the city in homesteads and unincorporated suburbs like Eastchester Flats, Spenard, Mountain View, and Woodland Park to escape city taxes.

The goals of the project:

• to contribute towards the first comprehensive collection of community-based histories of the Anchorage and greater Southcentral Alaska region.

• to publish a series of neighborhood community histories by writing at length about neighborhoods in Anchorage and other areas within the Municipality of Anchorage, in which little has previously been written, but are worthy of recognition and public information.

• to work especially with long-time residents, to identify significant people, events, and places within these neighborhoods and areas.

• to address the need to expand on the existing histories of Anchorage and the surrounding area, published by historians, journalists, local government employees, in which the coverage of local neighborhoods, areas outside of the city in homesteads, and in previously unincorporated suburbs has been condensed or has scant or no mention.

• to create published community histories with a popular audience in mind, highlighting the colorful history of the neighborhoods in a clear, accessible manner, while providing a greater level of scholarly oversight and tone appropriate to the reading public.

• to provide local historians opportunities to develop their research and writing skills using a variety of sources (such as oral history interviews, letters, diaries, newspaper and journal articles, and books), resulting in a published work.

Funding

The Cook Inlet Historical Society has obtained grant support from the Atwood Foundation for this multi-year project. Please check this website for updates about when specific community histories have been completed, posted on the website, and printed for local distribution. We are grateful for any private donations from members of the Society and from anyone who has an interest in supporting local community history. Visit the membership page for information about making a donation in support of the Alaska History Project.