Alaska Pioneers and Artists

White settlers first came to Alaska 120 years ago in a mad stampede for gold and displaced many of the Native peoples who lived there. 
 
At a National Park Service display in Skagway, we learned about the thousands of people, largely men, who spent a year trying to get to the Klondike gold field only to find the gold gone by the time they got there. 

Twenty years later, the early Pioneers to Alaska celebrated their achievements and built community through a chain of Pioneer Clubs, each chapter called an Igloo. We visited Igloo #19 in Cordova.  

Throughout the 20th century Alaska teased the imaginations of people who wanted to get away from civilization in the lower 48  and take advantage of the isolation of the new frontier. We found signs as we traveled in Alaska of itinerant seekers who made their way north to Alaska through the 1940s, 50s, 60s and 70s.

In the Anchorage Museum,  we found  splendid new exhibits that tell the history of the state as well  new art that shows expresses new visions of Alaskan artists.  We end with a piece of mural art in downtown Anchorage.

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This group of stampeders in the Klondike gold rush used dogs to help them carry their supplies over the mountains from Skagway.

In the 1950s, Jim Edwards migrated to McCarthy where he built Rigor Mortis out spare parts.

Old vehicles are often left to rust in place in Alaska. This one was turned into a garden in McCarthy.

"Arkansas to Alaska" reads the painted words on this old school bus parked in McCarthy.

Teenagers warming up before a square dance at the Pioneers of Alaska hall in Cordova.

Dnace hall at Igloo #19 of the Pioneers of Alaska.

Pioneers love their dogs.

Thousands of seaplanes fly into the bush to carry goods and passengers who live off the grid.

Carnivore Creek by David Mollett captures the beauty of northern Alaskan mountains.

“Everything I Love is Here,” reflects on the lifeways of artist Alvin Amason’s family and Sugpiaq culture in Kodiak.

A mural on a building in downtown Anchorage.

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