Timeline Alaska
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Alaska Historical Society: http://www.alaskahistoricalsociety.org/
Alaska Newspapers: http://www.alaska.net/~aknewspr/
Alaska has 226 Indian tribes.
(SFEC, 7/18/99, Par p.7)
Athabaska Indians are native to Alaska.
(SFC,10/20/97, p.A5)
The Yup’ic are native to southwestern Alaska.
(AM, 7/97, p.72)
The city of Nome was named for a misspelling of a nearby cape on a map, which was referred to as "no name." Nome was founded as a result of a gold strike on nearby Seward Peninsula.
(HN, 9/17/01)
State Motto: "North to the Future."
State flower: the Forget-Me-Not.
State bird: Willow Ptarmigan
State fossil: Wooly Mammoth
State mineral: Gold
State gem: Jade.
State tree: Sitka Spruce
State sport: Dog Mushing
100Mil BC Land masses collided about this time and created Alaska.
(SFC, 4/27/99, p.A2)
70Mil BC In 2005 a Univ. of Alaska Fairbanks student found a track from a three-toed dinosaur believed to be about 70 million years old in Denali National Park, the first evidence that the animals roamed there.
(AP, 7/6/05)
69Mil BC A plant-eating duck-billed dinosaur roamed northern Alaska about this time. Fossils of the hadrosaur were reported as a new species in 2015.
(SFC, 9/23/15, p.A8)
20000BC Some scientists believe that ancient people from Siberia crossed the Bering land bridge to Alaska about this time and began their southward migration into the Americas. In 2001 skull measurements indicated that members of the Jomon-Ainu of Japan made the first crossings.
(SFC, 5/23/98, p.A13)(SFC, 7/31/01, p.A4)
16000BC The west coast of North America deglaciated by this time allowing people, who had crossed the Bering Strait land bridge, to move south.
(SFC, 4/4/08, p.A4)
12000BC The last ice age ended about this time flooding the land bridge between Alaska and Siberia.
(SFC, 4/4/08, p.A4)
c12000BC The Broken Mammoth settlement in central Alaska dated to this time.
(SFC, 7/25/03, p.A1)
9500BC In 2011 scientists identified the cremated bones, dating to about this time, of a 3-year-old child buried in the Tanana lowlands of central Alaska.
(SFC, 2/25/11, p.A8)
1728 Vitus Bering (47), Danish explorer, discovered the Bering Strait between Asia and North America.
(PCh, 1992, p.286)
1741 Jul 15, George Steller, an observer with Vitus Bering (1680-1741), claimed to see the American mainland (Alaska). Bering, a Danish-born mariner, was on an exploratory mission on behalf of Russia.
(WSJ, 9/12/00, p.A24)(SFEC, 3/23/97, p.T5)(ON, 2/06, p.2)
1741 Jul 16, Vitus Bering (1680-1741) first sighted Mt. St. Elias, the second highest peak in Alaska at 18,008 feet.
(AAM, 3/96, p.84)(WUD, 1994 p.140)
1741 Dec 8, Vitus Bering, Danish-born explorer and commander in the Russian navy, died on an island off the Kamchatka Peninsula, later named Bering Island.
(ON, 2/06, p.4)
1778 Aug 9, Captain Cook reached Cape Prince of Wales in the Bering straits.
(MC, 8/9/02)
1778 Oct 3, Capt. Cook anchored off Alaska.
(MC, 10/3/01)
1780 A Japanese whaling ship ran aground near the western end of the Aleutian Islands. Rats from the ship reached the nearest island giving it the name Rat Island. The incident introduced the non-native Norway rat, also known as the brown rat, to Alaska. The rats terrorized all but the largest birds on the island. In the Fall of 2008 poison was dropped onto the island from helicopter-hoisted buckets for a week and a half. By mid 2009 there were no signs of living rats and some birds had returned.
(Econ, 1/20/07, p.43)(Reuters, 6/12/09)
1784 Aug 14, The 1st Russian settlement in Alaska was established on Kodiak Island. Grigori Shelekhov, a Russian fur trader, founded Three Saints Bay.
(MC, 8/14/02)
1796 An Aleutian island named Bogoslof first appeared after an underwater eruption. Its base lay 5,500 down on the floor of the Bering Sea. By 2017 it measured 169 acres with a peak at 490 feet.
(SFC, 2/7/17, p.A6)
1799 Sitka, Alaska, was founded by Alexander Baranof of the Russian American Company.
(AH, 6/07, p.69)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitka,_Alaska)
1807 Aug 11, The Eclipse, a Yankee fur trading vessel, sank in the Shumagin Islands, south of the Alaska Peninsula. It is the oldest known American shipwreck in Alaska and as of 2007 had not been found.
(AP, 10/8/07)
1820 Sep 4, Czar Alexander declared that Russian influence in North America extended as far south as Oregon and closed Alaskan waters to foreigners.
(HN, 9/4/98)
1825 Feb 22, Russia and Britain established the Alaska/Canada boundary.
(HN, 2/22/98)
1844 The Cathedral of St. Michael the Archangel was built in Sitka, Alaska. It was destroyed by fire in 1966 and painstakingly rebuilt.
(AH, 6/07, p.69)
1856 In Alaska the Russian occupants of the Batzulnetas outpost were massacred by natives.
(AH, 6/07, p.69)
1864 Herbert Liebes opened a fur salon which grew to become H. Liebes & Company. Liebes ran sailing schooners from Alaska to SF with cargoes of furs.
(SFC, 6/29/04, p.B6)
1865 Jun, The Confederate ship Shenandoah under Capt. James Waddell attacked Yankee whalers off the coast of Alaska firing the last shots of the US Civil War. From 1864 to 1865 the Shenandoah captured, sank or ransomed 38 Union ships, mostly whalers, in the Indian, Pacific and Arctic oceans.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSS_Shenandoah)(SFC, 8/4/18, p.C4)
1865 Nov 6, The Confederate ship Shenandoah under Capt. James Waddell surrendered in Liverpool, England, after attacking Yankee commercial shipping off the coast of Alaska. It had sunk of captured 38 vessels, mostly New Bedford whaleships. The surrender of the Shenandoah was the last act of the US Civil War.
(SFC, 1/3/15, p.C2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSS_Shenandoah)
1865 US Coast Guard services began in Alaska when the cutter Shubrick led a 6 vessel expedition coastwise to Bering Straits.
(www.ak-prepared.com/vetaffairs/byerslake)
1867 Mar 30, US Secretary of State William H. Seward signed an agreement with Russia’s Baron Edouard de Stoeckl to purchase the territory of Alaska for $7.2 million, two cents an acre, a deal roundly ridiculed as "Seward's Folly," "Seward's icebox," and President Andrew Johnson's "polar bear garden."
(AP, 3/30/97)(HN, 3/30/01)(Reuters, 5/24/11)
1867 Apr 9, The treaty authorizing the purchase was ratified. Alaska became a state in 1959.The per-acre purchase price for Alaska paid by the U.S. to Russia in 1867 was two cents. Through the negotiations of Secretary of State William H. Seward the purchase of the 591,000 square miles (more than 375 million acres) of Russian America territory cost $7.2 million.
(HNQ, 9//98)
1867 Jun 20, Pres. Andrew Johnson announced the purchase of Alaska.
(MC, 6/20/02)
1867 Aug 12, The 1st US official, a coast guardsmen, arrived in Sitka, Alaska.
(www.ak-prepared.com/vetaffairs/byerslake)
1867 Oct 9, The Russians formally transferred Alaska to the US. The U.S. had bought Alaska for $7.2 million in gold.
(MC, 10/9/01)
1867 Oct 18, The United States took formal possession of Alaska from Russia.
(AP, 10/18/97)
1867 Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner popularized the name Alaska for the territory that had been known as Russian America in a famous Senate speech supporting the treaty to purchase Russian America.
(HNQ, 9/28/98)
1868 Jul 15, The Torrent sank in Alaska’s Cook Inlet after tidal currents, among the world's most powerful, rammed it into a reef south of the Kenai Peninsula. About 130 Army soldiers had come north on the Torrent to build the first US military fort in south-central Alaska. About 20 sailors and 15 of the soldiers wives and children were also on board. All 155 people on board survived. Remnants of the wreckage were found in 2007.
(AP, 10/8/07)(www.adn.com/life/story/9364436p-9278126c.html)
1868 Riggs National Bank supplied the $7.2 million in gold bullion for the purchase of Alaska.
(WSJ, 4/7/04, p.A1)
1869 Gustave Niebaum and others in San Francisco incorporated the Alaska Commercial Company with offices at Sansome and Halleck. Its plan was to consolidate Alaskan fur-trading and natural resources operations under a single umbrella.
(SFEM, 10/31/99, p.26)
1870 The US government granted exclusive rights for fur-trading and natural resource operations in Alaska to the Alaska Commercial Company in SF.
(SFEM, 10/31/99, p.26)
1871 A whaling fleet of 32 ships was abandoned off Icy Cape in the Chukchi Sea. Seven other vessels escaped with all the crew members saved. In 1998 an attempt was made to locate the shipwreck site.
(SFC, 7/24/98, p.A3)
1873 The Alaska Packers organized in San Francisco to transport workers for seasonal salmon canning work in Alaska. The Alaska Packers' Association (APA) was a San Francisco based manufacturer of Alaska canned salmon founded in 1891 and sold in 1982.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Packers%27_Association)(SSFC, 3/21/21, p.A2)
1880 Juneau, Alaska, was born when prospectors hit a mother lode on Gastineau Channel. Juneau was settled soon after a gold strike nearby by Richard Harris and Joe Juneau.
(SFEC, 2/6/00, p.T10)(HNQ, 2/6/00)
1880 A US census found 435 non-native residents in Alaska.
(Econ, 8/26/06, p.27)
1882-1884 Norwegian adventurer Johan Adrian Jacobsen collected some 200 Chugach items from graves in caves on Chenega Island, Alaska, for Germany's Royal Museum of Ethnology. In 2018 a Berlin museum returned ancient wooden masks, an idol and other spiritually significant artifacts plundered from graves to indigenous Alaskans.
(AP, 5/16/18)
1884 May 17, Alaska became a US territory. US Congress did not provide for an Alaskan government until this year. Administration of the territory was done in succession by the War Department, the Treasury and the Navy.
(SFEM, 10/31/99, p.26)(MC, 5/17/02)
1887 In Alaska William Moore, a former steamboat captain, homesteaded 160 acres with his son in a settlement he called Mooresville, where the Taiya River meets the Skagway. He anticipated a gold rush that arrived in 1897. His settlement was overrun and became Skagway.
(SSFC, 9/18/05, p.E13)
1890 Israel C. Russell, sponsored by the National Geographic Society, returned from an expedition to Mt. St. Elias with fossil bearing rocks.
(NG, 12/97, p.1)
1892 A Marine Corp. barracks was established in Sitka, Alaska.
(www.ak-prepared.com/vetaffairs/byerslake.htm)
1894 The Cape Fox Tlingit Indians moved to Saxman after smallpox reduced their population from some 1000 to 200.
(WSJ, 8/31/01, p.W13)
1895 Captain Michael A. Healy (b.1839) was stripped of his command in the US Revenue Cutter Service and his position with the Arctic Patrol, in which he served for 21 years. During his service he ferried reindeer across the Bering Strait to Alaska provide a food source for the Inuit.
(SFC, 4/15/05, p.E15)
1896 Aug, 16, A white man from California named George Carmack, a fellow not employed at anything in particular, was hiking around northwest Canada’s Yukon River area with his two Indian brothers-in-law "Skookum Jim" Mason and "Tagish Charley." The three found gold on Rabbit Creek, a stream that feeds the Yukon River near Dawson, Alaska.
(CFA, '96, p.88)(HN, 8/19/01)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klondike_Gold_Rush)
1897 Jul 15, The gold-laden ship Excelsior from Alaska landed in San Francisco. Seattle mayor W.D. Wood was visiting and immediately resigned his job, hired a ship, and organized an expedition from SF to the Yukon territory.
(WSJ, 7/17/97, p.A20)
1897 Jul 17, The Steamer Portland arrived into Seattle from Alaska with 68 prospectors carrying more than a ton of gold. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer announced that men with gold from Alaska were landing. This unleashed the Klondike gold rush and tens of thousands headed for the Yukon. The Klondike gold rush gave America and Canada a psychological boost in getting the economy moving again after suffering through the terrible depression that followed the 1893 crash.
(CFA, ‘96, p.88)(Hem., 7/95, p.79)(CFA, ‘96, p.89)(WSJ, 5/1/97, p.A16)(WSJ, 7/17/97, p.A20)
1897 Sep, Eight whaling ships with 273 men became trapped in ice off Point Barrow in an early freeze. Lt. David Henry Jarvis of the Revenue Cutter Service, the forerunner of the US Coast Guard, led a 1500-mile expedition overland from Nelson Island Point Barrow with a herd of reindeer to the stranded men.
(ON, 1/01, p.1)
1897-1902 The Jesup North Pacific Expedition was made to study the biological and cultural connections between peoples on each side of the Bering Strait. It was one of the first instances where a camera was used in such a study.
(WSJ, 12/30/97, p.A8)
1898 Mar 26, Lt. David Henry Jarvis of the Revenue Cutter Service reached Point Franklin, after a 1500-hundred mile trek, with a herd of reindeer to rescue 273 iced-in whalers stranded here and at Point Barrow.
(ON, 1/01, p.1)
1898 May, Construction began on the White Pass & Yukon railroad. It was led by Big Mike Heney, a Canadian Railway contractor, and Sir Thomas Tancred, who represented the British financiers.
(SFEC, 2/8/98, p.T3)
1898 The Klondike gold rush was in full swing. Gold was found on the Naotuk River in what later became the Gates of the Arctic National Park.
(SFEC,11/16/97, p.T5)(SFEC, 2/6/00, p.T6)
1899 The White Pass & Yukon railroad, which led to the goldfields, was completed.
(SFEC, 2/7/99, p.T4)
1899 Edward H. Harriman, chairman of the Union Pacific RR, led a survey expedition along the Alaska coast with 126 passengers aboard a luxury steamer. The 2-month, 9,000 mile journey from Seattle to Siberia included a stop at Cape Fox where the visitors gathered up items from what looked like an abandoned Tlingit Indian settlement. Much of the plunder was returned in 2001.
(WSJ, 8/31/01, p.W13)
1900 The 110-mile White Pass & Yukon narrow-gauge railroad from Skagway to Whitehorse, the Alaska-British Columbia border, was completed.
(SFEC,11/16/97, p.T5)(SFEC, 2/8/98, p.T3)
1900 Clarence Warner and "Tarantula Jack" Smith staked a claim for copper. They later sold it to Stephen Birch, who found financial backing for a company that eventually became Kennecott Copper.
(AH, 10/01, HT p.30)
1901 E.T. Barnette opened a trading post on the Chena River. A town formed that came to be called Chenoa City and was later renamed Fairbanks.
(SFEC, 2/8/98, p.T7)
1902 Felix Pedro, an Italian miner, discovered gold northeast of Chenoa City. Miners surged in from the Fortymile and Klondike goldfields.
(SFEC, 2/8/98, p.T7)
1903 Jan 24, U.S. Secretary of State John Hay and British Ambassador Herbert created a joint commission to establish the Alaskan border.
(HN, 1/24/99)
1903 Oct 20, A joint commission ruled in favor of the United States in a boundary dispute between the District of Alaska and Canada.
(AP, 10/20/97)
1906 Sep 7-1906 Sep 19, Dr. Frederick Cook (1865-1940) and Ed Barrill explored the foothills of Mt. McKinley, Alaska. Cook soon claimed to have taken a picture of his companion, Edward Barrill, from the summit of Mt. McKinley. In 1909 his book “To the Top of the Continent" was published. In 1923 Cook was convicted of mail fraud for selling worthless oil stocks to unsuspecting investors. In 1998 it was reported that the photo was a fake, and that the 2 men never reached the summit.
(SFC, 11/27/98, p.A3)(ON, 3/06, p.6)
1906 The capital was moved from Sitka to Juneau.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, Z1 p.2)
1906 The Alaska Packers Assoc. bought the square-rigged Balclutha ship and renamed it Star of Alaska. It carried workers to the Chignick Cannery and transported them back after the salmon season.
(SFEC,11/23/97, p.D3)
1906 A fire burned down most of downtown Fairbanks.
(SFEC, 2/8/98, p.T7)
1907 Sep 10, Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, the largest US National Forest, was established as part of the National Forest System in a presidential proclamation made by Theodore Roosevelt. In 1908 it was joined with the Alexander Archipelago Forest Reserve, established in 1902.
(SFEC, 8/29/99, Z1 p.6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongass_National_Forest)
1909 Jan 18, Robert Stroud (1890-1963), who later gained fame as the Birdman of Alcatraz, killed a bartender in Alaska. Barman F. K. "Charlie" Von Dahmer had viciously raped and beat his friend, Kitty O’Brien (36), a prostitute and dance-hall entertainer. Stroud later knifed a fellow prisoner and was transferred to Leavenworth prison where he murdered a guard in the prison dining hall.
(SSFC, 4/15/12, DB p.42)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Stroud)
1909 California became its own Jesuit province becoming fully independent from Turin. The Province boundaries expanded to encompass all of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.
(GenIV, Winter 04/05)(www.jesuitscalifornia.org/Page.aspx?pid=272)
1910 Apr 3, Alaska's Mt. McKinley, the highest mountain in North America, was climbed.
(HN, 4/3/98)
1911 Jun 4, Gold was discovered in Alaska's Indian Creek.
(HN, 6/4/98)
1912 Jun 6, In Alaska the Novarupta volcano began erupting 6 miles from Mount Katmai. When the eruption stopped on June 9th, the ash cloud had spread across southern Alaska. This was later recognized as the most powerful volcanic eruption of the 20th century. Crops withered across Canada and the US that summer under skies shrouded with volcanic ash.
(http://geology.com/novarupta/)(Hem, 4/96, p.78)
1912 Aug 24, By an act of Congress, Alaska was given a territorial legislature of two houses.
(HN, 8/24/98)
1913 Jun, Rev. Hudson Stuck led a team in the 1st ascent to the summit of Mt. McKinley, Alaska.
(ON, 3/06, p.8)(www.themilepost.com/major_attractions/mt_mckinley.shtml)
1915 Jun 27, In Fort Yukon, Alaska, a state record 100° F (38° C) was recorded.
(SC, 6/27/02)
1916 Fairbanks, Alaska, caught fire. The town's bacon supply was burned as fuel to keep the steam powered water pump running. The event was later covered by Margaret Murie (d.2003) in her 1962 autobiography "Two in the Far North."
(SFC, 10/24/03, p.A16)
1917 In Alaska the territorial Legislature created the Univ. of Alaska in Fairbanks and specified that it include a museum. In 1978 the state Legislature paid for a building designed to hold exhibits. In 1980 a 39,000-square-foot space opened as the Univ. of Alaska Museum of the North.
(SSFC, 5/6/07, p.G7)
1917 Denali National Park in Alaska was established. It covered 9,300 square miles. Denali was the native name for Mt. McKinley.
(SFEC, 2/9/97, p.T6)(SSFC, 3/28/04, p.D9)
1918 Oct 25, The Canadian steamship Princess Sophia foundered off the coast of Alaska; some 350 people perished.
(AP, 10/25/08)
1918 The flu epidemic began at Fort Riley, Kansas, in March where 48 men died. 72 of 80 residents at Brevig Mission, Alaska died from the flu in a 5 day period. In 1997 Dr. Johan Hultin recovered tissue in Brevig Mission with frozen virus and submitted it for gene sequencing.
(WSJ, 2/9/98, p.A16)(HNPD, 7/21/98)(SFC, 2/26/01, p.A9)(WSJ, 9/7/01, p.A1)(SFCM, 2/17/02, p.8)
1920s In 1989 Tooru Joe Kanazawa (d.2002 at 95) authored "Sushi and Sourdough," a glimpse into the world of Japanese immigrants in Alaska’s salmon canneries in the 1920s.
(SFC, 10/22/02, p.A16)
1922 Feb 6, The Washington Disarmament Conference came to an end with signature of final treaty forbidding fortification of the Aleutian Islands for 14 years.
(HN, 2/6/99)
1923 Jul 15, President Warren G. Harding tapped the golden spike of the $60 million Alaskan Railway at Nenana.
(SSFC, 2/3/02, p.C9)
1923 Aug 2, President Warren G. Harding died suddenly of an embolism in San Francisco on August 2, 1923, during a return trip form Alaska. Born November 2, 1865, in Corsica, Ohio, Harding was elected the 29th U.S. president in 1920.
(HNQ, 12/7/98)
1923 US Pres. Warren Harding authorized a 22-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve as an emergency oil supply for the US Navy near Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. In 2015 ConocoPhillips became the first company to draw from the reserve.
(Econ, 12/11/04, p.28)(SFC, 3/4/16, p.A9)
1924 Margaret Murie (b.1902) became the 1st woman to graduate from the Univ. of Alaska.
(SFC, 10/24/03, p.A16)
c1924 The railroad made it to Fairbanks.
(SFEC, 2/8/98, p.T7)
1925 Jan 27, Anchorage, Alaska, delivered a diphtheria antitoxin to Nenana. Dr. Curtis Welch in Nome had begun diagnosing cases of diphtheria. An emergency delivery of serum against the disease was arranged by dogsled. 20 mushers rushed the serum 674 miles from Nenana to Nome in 5 days. The last leg of the journey was run by Gunnar Kaasen (1882-1964) and his lead dog Balto (d.1933). An animated film on Balto was made in 1995 by Stephen Spielberg. The longest segment of the journey, 260 miles, was run by Leonhard Seppala and his lead dog Togo. The events were later described by Bill Sherwonit in his book: "Iditarod: the Great Race to Nome."
(SFC, 3/16/98, p.A3)(ON, 11/06, p.1)
1925 Feb 27, Glacier Bay National Monument was dedicated in Alaska.
(HN, 2/27/98)
1935 The Federal Emergency Relief Administration created an experimental farming community known as the Matanuska Valley Colony as part of the New Deal resettlement plan. Palmer, Alaska, was founded during the Great Depression, when 203 Midwestern farm families were relocated here and given 40-acre tracts as part of the Matanuska Colony Project.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matanuska_Valley_Colony)(LAT, 7/2/05)
1935 Aug 15, Humorist Will Rogers (55), American comedian and "cowboy philosopher," and aviation pioneer Wiley Post (36) were killed when their airplane crashed near Point Barrow, Alaska. Rogers once said: "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."
(AP, 8/15/97)(HN, 8/15/98)(MC, 8/15/02)
1936 Mar 26, Mary Joyce ended a 1,000 mile trip by dog in Alaska.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1939 Augie Hiebert went to Alaska to help build the first radio station in Fairbanks.
(WSJ, 9/22/07, p.A8)
1941 The Alaska Territorial Guard was formed.
(www.ak-prepared.com/vetaffairs/byerslake.htm)
1942 Mar 9, Construction of the Alaska Highway began.
(MC, 3/9/02)
1942 Jun 6, Japanese troops landed on Kiska, Aleutians.
(MC, 6/6/02)
1942 Jun 7, The Japanese invaded Attu and Kiska in the Aleutian Islands.
(HN, 6/7/98)
1942 Sep 16, The Japanese base at Kiska in the Aleutian Islands was raided by American bombers.
(HN, 9/16/98)
1942 Oct 29, The Alaska highway was completed. [see Nov 21]
(MC, 10/29/01)
1942 Nov 21, The Alaska-Canadian Highway across Canada was formally opened.
(HFA, '96, p.42)(AP, 11/21/97)
1943 May 11, During World War II, American forces landed on Japanese-held Attu island in the Aleutians; the Americans took the island 19 days later.
(AP, 5/11/02)
1943 Aug 15, Allies landed on Kiska in the Aleutians.
(MC, 8/15/02)
1946 Apr 1, Two large earthquakes shook the Scotch Cap Lighthouse on Unimak Island, Alaska. A resulting tsunami washed away the lighthouse. The Aleutian Islands earthquake also triggered a Pacific-wide tsunami that killed 165 people and caused over $26 million in damages. Tidal waves struck the Hawaiian islands, resulting in more than 170 deaths. 91 people were killed in Hilo.
(AP, 4/1/98)(Ind, 6/8/02, 5A)(SSFC, 8/25/02, p.C14)(SFC, 4/1/09, p.D8)
1946 Universal Services was formed in 1946 to provide catering and other support services for the civilian workforce rebuilding defense bases in Alaska. Extensive work was then developed with the oil industry that was expanding its exploration activity in Alaska. As the search for energy moved to other parts of the world, Universal followed. Operations were established in the Gulf of Mexico (1955), South America (1957), North Sea (1964), Africa (1960s), Middle East and Far East. Additional work was developed with the mining and construction industries.
(WWW, 12/19/98)
1948 Mar 12, In Alaska 24 merchant marines and six crewmen were flying from China to New York City, when their DC-4 slammed into Mount Sanford killing all 30. Pilots Kevin McGregor and Marc Millican discovered some mummified remains in 1999 while recovering artifacts to identify the wreckage they had found two years earlier.
(AP, 8/17/08)
1949 The Alaska travel guide “The Milepost" was 1st published as a 72-page guide named after the Alaska Highway mile markers. The 2005 edition was nearly 800 pages and included coverage of Canada’s Yukon and western Northwest Territories.
(SSFC, 4/3/05, p.E4)
1950s-1960s The Fort Greely base was used for biological and chemical weapons testing. The site also housed a nuclear reactor later entombed in a sarcophagus.
(SFC, 11/3/01, p.C3)
1952 Sep 7, The 369-foot passenger liner Princess Kathleen, launched in 1924, ran aground and sank near Juneau, Alaska. There was no loss of life.
(SFC, 2/22/10, p.A6)(www.greatships.net/princesskathleen.html)
1952 Nov 22, A US military plane crashed near Anchorage, Alaska. All 52 crew members were believed killed. Wreckage was spotted on a melting glacier in 2012. By 2014 the remains of 17 were recovered and identified. The remains of 35 others were not yet recovered.
(SFC, 6/19/14, p.A10)
1953 Augie Hiebert (1916-2007) opened Alaska’s first television station in Anchorage.
(WSJ, 9/22/07, p.A8)
1954 Feb 5, A US Air Force C-47 enroute from Fairbanks to Anchorage crashed on Kesugi Ridge near Byers Lake in Alaska. 10 people were killed and 6 survived.
(www.ak-prepared.com/vetaffairs/byerslake.htm)
1954 The Alaska town of North Pole began Operation Santa, a volunteer program to respond to children’s letters sent to Santa Claus. The US Postal Service dropped the program in 2009.
(SFC, 11/20/09, p.A9)
1955 Jun 24, Soviet MIG’s down a lightly armed US Navy patrol plane over the Bering Strait. Russia’s foreign minister V.M. Molotov expressed his country’s regrets the next day.
(HN, 6/24/98)(SFC, 6/24/05, p.F7)
1957 Mar 9, An 8.1 earthquake shook the Andreanof Islands, Alaska.
(MC, 3/9/02)
1958 Jun 30, Congress passed a law authorizing the admission of Alaska as the 49th state in the Union, the first new state since 1912. The Senate passed the Alaska statehood bill by a vote of 64-20.
(HN, 6/30/98)(AP, 6/30/08)
1958 Jul 7, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Alaska statehood bill. Alaska became the 49th state in January 1959.
(AP, 7/7/07)
1958 Jul 10, A largest tsunami on record was caused by the fall of 90 million tons of rock and ice into Lituya Bay, Alaska, following a local earthquake. The wave washed 500 meters up a mountain on the opposite shore.
(CW, Spring ‘99, p.30)
1958 Aug 26, Alaskans went to the polls to overwhelmingly vote in favor of statehood.
(AP, 8/26/08)
1958 Bill Egan became Alaska’s 1st governor.
(AH, 10/04, p.42)
1959 Jan 3, President Eisenhower signed a proclamation admitting Alaska to the Union as the 49th state. Its area is 586,412 sq. mls. Capital: Juneau; bird: willow ptarmigan; flower: forget-me-not; nickname: The Last Frontier.
(TMC, 1994, p.1959)(THM, 4/27/97, p.L5)(AP, 1/3/98)(440 Int'l. 1/3/99)
1959 Jul 4, A 49-star flag was raised for the first time at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., in honor of Alaska which had become the 49th state in the Union on July 7, 1958.
(IB, Internet, 12/7/98)
1960 The Eisenhower administration created the Arctic National Wildlife Range on 9 million acres of Alaska’s coastal plain and mountains adjacent to Canada.
(SSFC, 8/28/05, p.A13)
1960 Sen. John F. Kennedy was presented with a giant cabbage in Palmer, Alaska.
(LAT, 7/2/05)
1964 Feb 11, Sarah Palin, later governor of Alaska, was born in Sandpoint, Idaho. After 3 months her family moved to Alaska. In 2008 Sen. John McCain named her as his vice-presidential running mate.
(SFC, 8/30/08, p.A6)
1964 Mar 27, On Good Friday, Valdez, Alaska, in Prince William Sound was rocked by an 8.6 earthquake, the largest ever recorded in North America. In 1977 seismologists pegged the quake at 9.2. It lasted 4 minutes and was followed by tsunamis and fires and 131 people were killed. Survivors moved 4 miles west to solid bedrock and rebuilt the town.
(AP, 3/27/97)(SFEC, 2/8/98, p.T5)(SFEC, 4/5/98, Z1 p.8)(SFEC, 10/17/99, p.A3)(SFC, 11/26/99, p.C21)(WSJ, 9/13/01, p.B11)(SFC, 2/15/02, p.G8)(AP, 3/11/11)
1966 Walter Hickel (1919-2010) upset 2-term Democratic Gov. William Egan to become governor of Alaska. In 1969 Hickel was named secretary of the interior under Pres. Nixon.
(AH, 10/04, p.42)(SSFC, 5/9/10, p.C8)
1967 Feb 28, Art Davidson, Ray Genet and Dave Johnston completed the first winter ascent of Alaska’s Mount McKinley. On their descent they became trapped by a storm for 6 days at 18,500 feet in an ice-cave. In 1969 Art Davidson authored “Minus 148°."
(WSJ, 4/28/07, p.P8)(www.summitpost.org/parent/150199/mount-mckinley-denali.html)
1967 Jul 15, In Alaska a major blizzard caught 7 climbers high on Mount McKinley (Denali). Five of 12 climbers managed to reach safety, but 7 were caught and froze to death. In 2007 James M. Tabor’s: “Forever on the Mountain: The Truth Behind One of Mountaineering's Most Controversial and Mysterious Disasters," was published.
(WSJ, 1/17/07, p.D6)
1967 Dec 26, Atlantic Richfield oil workers struck oil on Alaska’s North Slope at Prudhoe Bay.
(AH, 10/04, p.42)
1968 Mar 13, Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) and Humble Oil and Refining Company (now Exxon Company, U.S.A.) announced the discovery of oil on Alaska’s North Slope (Prudhoe Bay). The oil companies soon began efforts to construct a pipeline, but work was suspended due to environmental concerns.
(AH, 2/05, p.14)(www.alyeska-pipe.com/Pipelinefacts/Chronology.html)
1968 May 15, A tornado at Jonesboro, Arkansas, killed 34 people. Another near Anchorage, Alaska, killed one person.
(SFC, 5/15/09, p.D8)
1968 The Anchorage Museum of History and Art opened.
(WSJ, 7/17/97, p.A20)
1968 Ted Stevens began representing Alaska in the US Senate.
(SFC, 12/20/05, p.A1)
1968 Following the disocvery of oil in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, the Eskimos were given 44m acres of land, $1 billion and shares in regional and village corporations so that the government could build a pipeline to the oil.
(Econ, 8/30/14, p.27)
1969 Ben Metcalfe (d.2003 at 83) coordinated the initial campaigns of the Winnipeg-based Don't Make a Wave Committee (later Greenpeace) against planned nuclear tests in the Aleutian Islands.
(SSFC, 10/19/03, p.A31)
1970 Feb 12, Dean Arthur Schwartzmiller (28) was convicted in Juneau, Alaska, of 2 charges of lewd conduct after being accused of molesting 2 boys. Over the next 35 years he was arrested in 6 more states on molestation charges. In 2005 police in San Jose found notebooks at his home that documented over 36,000 sex acts with young boys. In 2006 a jury in Santa Clara, Ca., convicted Schwartzmiller (64) of molesting 2 San Jose boys.
(SFC, 6/17/05, p.A1)(SFC, 9/19/06, p.A1)
1970 Nov 25, Walter Hickel (1919-2010), former governor of Alaska and US Secretary of the Interior, was fired by Pres. Nixon after sending Nixon a letter critical of how the president handled student protests following the National Guard shootings at Kent State.
(AH, 10/04, p.42)(SSFC, 5/9/10, p.C8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wally_Hickel)
1971 Sep 4, An Alaska Airlines jet crashed near Juneau, killing 111 people.
(AP, 9/4/97)
1971 Sep 15, A group of activists set sail on the Phyllis Cormack for Alaska from Vancouver, Canada, to stop a US nuclear weapons test in the Aleutian Islands. Panels reading Green and Peace dangled from the bridge. Bob Hunter (d.2005), one of the activists, became the 1st president of Greenpeace (1973-1977).
(HFA, '96, p.38)(GQ, summer ‘96, p.18)(SFC, 4/30/97, p.A9)(Econ, 5/14/05, p.89)
1971 Nov 6, The US Atomic Energy Commission exploded a 5-megaton bomb beneath Amchitka Island, Alaska, just 87 miles from the Petropavlovsk Russian naval base. It registered as a magnitude-7 earthquake.
(SFC, 12/17/01, p.A4)
1971 Dec 18, Pres. Nixon signed into law the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA). It gave large portions of prime bear habitat to the Alutiiq people, who had hunted and fished on the island for 7,000 years. 10% of the state, 44 million acres of land, was ceded to native tribes.
(http://tinyurl.com/3xjb8w)(SFC, 2/2/00, p.A7)(AH, 10/04, p.42)
1971 Walter Hickel (1919-2010), former governor of Alaska (1966-1969) and former US secretary of the interior (1969-1970) under Pres. Nixon, authored “Who Owns America."
(AH, 10/04, p.42)(SSFC, 5/9/10, p.C8)
1972 Sep 26, Richard M. Nixon met with Emperor Hirohito in Anchorage, Alaska, the first-ever meeting of a U.S. President and a Japanese Monarch.
(HN, 9/26/99)
1972 Oct 16, A small plane disappeared during a flight from Anchorage to Juneau. On board were Thomas Hale Boggs Sr. (b.1914), US Congressman from Louisiana, Representative Nick Begich of Alaska, Begich’s aide Russell Brown and the pilot, Don Jonz. House Resolution 1 of January 3, 1973, officially recognized Boggs's presumed death and opened the way for a special election. Boggs’s wife, Lindy Boggs, (1916-2013), won the special election and served to 1991.
(SSFC, 7/28/13, p.A10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hale_Boggs)
1972 The Alaska Continental Development Corp. merged with the financially troubled Alaska Airlines. The airline soon became profitable in part due to the Alaska oil pipeline.
(WSJ, 1/7/07, p.A4)(http://tinyurl.com/6obvr7)
1973 Nov 16, President Nixon signed the Trans Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act into law. Oil companies formed a consortium that gave British Petroleum 50.1% control of the pipeline.
(www.alyeska-pipe.com/Pipelinefacts/Chronology.html)(AH, 10/04, p.43)
1973 The Alaskan 1,159 mile Iditarod dog-sled race was first run in commemoration of the 1925 dog-sled relay for diphtheria vaccine to Nome.
(Nat. Hist., 3/96, p.34,41)(SFEC, 3/7/99, p.D3)
1974 Apr 29, Work officially began on the trans-Alaska oil pipeline. Prudhoe Bay to Yukon River road construction began.
(AH, 10/04, p.40)(www.alyeska-pipe.com/Pipelinefacts/Chronology.html)
1975 Mar 27, The 1st pipe of the Alaska oil pipeline was laid at Tonsina River.
(www.alyeska-pipe.com/Pipelinefacts/Chronology.html)
1975 Alaska’s Supreme Court ruled that what a person does in his home is protected under a strong privacy provision in the state’s Constitution. Justices concluded that cultivating small amounts of cannabis was harmless. Marijuana remained illegal under federal law.
(SFC, 5/24/10, p.A1)
1976 The Alaska Permanent Fund was created after oil was discovered on the North Slope. Residents of over a year received an annual dividend from the fund.
(SFC, 9/27/02, p.A7)
1977 May 31, The trans-Alaska oil pipeline, formally proposed in 1969, was completed after three years of work. Alaska's Senator Mike Gravel (1930-2021) had seized the issue in 1973 by proposing legislation that would exempt the project from any further court intervention under the National Environmental Policy Act.
(AP, 5/31/97)(NY Times, 6/27/21)
1977 Jun 20, The 1st oil of the Alaska pipeline began to flow south 799 miles from Prudhoe Bay to the port of Valdez. It reached Valdez on Jul 28.
(www.alyeska-pipe.com/pipelinefacts.html)
1977 Jun 28, The 1st Prudhoe Bay oil of the Alaska pipeline reached the port of Valdez as construction of the Trans-Alaskan pipeline was completed.
(www.alyeska-pipe.com/pipelinefacts.html)
1978 Jan 7, In Alaska the body of Shelley Connolly (16) was found next to the train tracks just south of McHugh Creek at milepost 109 of the Seward Highway; she had been sexually assaulted and murdered. The last time she was seen alive was earlier that evening inside Chilkoot Charlies talking to four men. In 2019 police in Oregon arrested Donald F. McQuade following a DNA match from cigarette butts discarded in public.
(http://tinyurl.com/yxza6u32)(SFC, 9/5/19, p.A5)
1978 Pres. Jimmy Carter declared permanent national monuments on 56 million acres in Alaska. Sec. of Interior Cecil Andrus ordered protection of an additional 52 million acres of Alaskan public land.
(SSFC, 3/27/17, p.C3)
1978 Vandals blew up a section of the Alaska pipeline, opened in 1977, spilling 700,000 gallons of oil. No one was arrested.
(SFC, 3/11/06, p.A4)
1980 Oct 4, Some 520 people were forced to abandon the cruise ship “Prisendam" in the Gulf of Alaska after the Dutch luxury liner caught fire—no deaths or serious injury resulted. The ship capsized and sank a week later.
(AP, 10/4/08)
1980 Dec 2, Pres. Carter signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act and protected 104 million acres of wilderness. The size of Denali National Park was tripled to 6.2 million acres. Motorized access to the land was given for traditional activities such as hunting, fishing and camping. Peggy Wayburn’s book: "Alaska the Great Land" was credited with helping persuade Congress. The law directed the Interior Dept. to assess oil potential in 1.5 million acres of the coastal plain. A ban was put on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In 2002 Pres. Bush pushed to overturn the ban. Estimates on oil there ranged from 3.2 to at least 5.7 billion barrels.
(http://alaska.fws.gov/asm/anilca/intro.html)(WSJ, 5/13/99, p.B1)(SFC, 3/28/02, p.A24) (SFC, 9/30/06, p.B6)(Econ, 12/20/03, p.38)(SSFC, 2/24/02, p.A9)(SSFC, 8/28/05, p.A13)
1982 Alaska began issuing oil royalty annual checks to all residents.
(SFC, 9/22/00, p.A10)
1982 The White Pass & Yukon railroad closed after a highway opened between Skagway and Whitehorse, and a slump in metal prices shut down mines.
(SFEC, 2/8/98, p.T3)
1983 The Alaska Veterans Memorial at Byers Lake was erected. It was dedicated by Gov. Bill Sheffield in 1984.
(www.ak-prepared.com/vetaffairs/byerslake)
1985 Mar 20, Libby Riddles of Teller, Alaska, became the first woman to win the Iditarod Trail Dog Sled Race.
(AP, 3/20/05)
1986 Mar 12, Susan Butcher won the 1,158 mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Alaska.
(www.newmorningtv.tv/dailyalmanac_031204.jsp)
1986 The Tatitlek tribe sold timber rights on Prince William Sound and heavy logging resulted.
(WSJ, 9/3/99, p.A1)
1987 Aug 7, Lynne Cox became the 1st to swim from US to Russia across the Bering Strait.
(http://tinyurl.com/lal2h)
1988 Oct 16, Rescue workers near Point Barrow, Alaska, continued their efforts to save three California gray whales trapped in Arctic Ocean ice [see Oct 26].
(AP, 10/16/98)
1988 Oct 26, US-Soviet effort freed 2 gray whales from frozen Arctic near Barrow, Alaska [see Oct 16].
(www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1988/102688j.htm)
1988 The White Pass & Yukon railroad opened for tourists visiting the state from cruise ships and the new road to Skagway.
(SFEC, 2/8/98, p.T3)
1988 Alaskan oil production peaked.
(Econ, 8/23/14, p.23)
1989 Mar 24, Good Friday. The nation's worst oil spill occurred as the supertanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on a reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound and began leaking 11 million gallons of crude. The Exxon Valdez struck ground in Alaska’s Prince William Sound and spilled 10.6 million gallons of oil. It was later renamed the Mediterranean and operated between Europe and the Middle East. Exxon then spent some $2.5 billion to clean up the spill and filed suit against Lloyd’s of London for reimbursement under a $210 million insurance policy. In 1996 a jury in Houston voted that Lloyd’s and some 250 other underwriters should compensate Exxon $250 million. The Exxon Valdez oil spill fouled approximately 1,000 miles of Alaska shoreline. The oil tanker ran aground in Prince William Sound, spilling some 11 million gallons of crude oil. An estimated 250,000 seabirds were killed. The Exxon Valdez spilled 240,000 barrels of oil in Alaska's Prince William Sound.
(AP, 3/23/97)(TMC, 1994, p.1989)(SFC, 5/5/96, p.A-11)(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A10)(SFEC, 2/8/98, p.T5)(HNQ, 8/14/99)
1989 Mar 25, In the wake of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska's chief environmental officer, Dennis Kelso, criticized cleanup efforts as too slow.
(AP, 3/25/99)
1989 Mar 28, President Bush sent three high-ranking officials to Alaska to "take a hard look" at the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound. '
(AP, 3/28/99)
1989 Mar 30, The Anchorage Daily News won the public service award for its reports on alcoholism and suicide among native Alaskans.
(AP, 3/30/99)
1989 Mar 31, The FBI announced it would conduct a criminal investigation into the massive oil spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound.
(AP, 3/31/99)
1989 Apr 1, Alaska Gov. Steve Cowper announced that a "strike force" of state officials and local fishermen were taking over some of the cleanup operations following the massive Exxon Valdez oil spill.
(AP, 4/1/99)
1989 Dec 13, In Alaska Mt. Redoubt began erupting. Nearly every one of the volcanic events during the 1989-90 eruption of Redoubt Volcano generated lahars in the Drift River Valley.
(http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/About/What/Monitor/Hydrologic/AFMRedoubt.html)
1989 Dec 15, Mt. Redoubt erupted in Alaska and sent baseball-sized pieces of pumice over 20 miles from the volcano. A 747 jet flew into its ash cloud, lost all four engines and dropped 4,000 feet before it recovered. No one was hurt but the plane sustained $80 million in damage.
(AAM, 3/96, p.84)(PacDisc. Spring/’96, p.31)
1990 Jan 2, A lahar from the Mt. Redoubt volcano in Alaska flooded part of the oil terminal in Cook Inlet.
(http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/About/What/Monitor/Hydrologic/AFMRedoubt.html)
1990 Jan 29, Former Exxon Valdez skipper Joseph Hazelwood went on trial in Anchorage, Alaska, on charges stemming from the nation's worst oil spill. Hazelwood was acquitted of major charges and convicted of a misdemeanor.
(AP, 1/29/98)
1990 Jan, Mt. Redoubt again erupted in Alaska and sent baseball-sized pieces of pumice more than 20 miles from the volcano.
(AAM, 3/96, p.84)
1990 Feb 27, Exxon Corp and Exxon Shipping were indicted on 5 criminal counts for the oil spill at Valdez, Alaska.
(www.epa.gov/history/topics/valdez/02.htm)
1990 Mar 22, A jury in Anchorage, Alaska, found former tanker captain Joseph Hazelwood innocent of three major charges in connection with the Exxon Valdez oil spill, but convicted him of a minor charge of negligent discharge of oil.
(HN, 3/22/97)(AP, 3/22/00)
1990 Mar 23, Former Exxon Valdez Captain Joseph Hazelwood was sentenced by a judge in Anchorage, Alaska, to help clean up Prince William Sound and pay $50,000 in restitution for his role in the 1989 oil spill.
(AP, 3/23/00)
1990 Dec 3, Walter Hickel (1919-2010), former governor of Alaska (1966-1969) and US Interior chief (1969-1970) under Pres. Nixon, took office as Alaska’s 8th governor. He served to Dec 5, 1994.
(SSFC, 5/9/10, p.C8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wally_Hickel)
1991 Mar 13, Exxon pleaded guilty to criminal charges and agreed to pay $100 million fine in a $1.1 billion settlement of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
(www.epa.gov/history/topics/valdez/02.htm)(HN, 3/13/98)
1991 Jun, Alaska Airlines began the 1st regularly scheduled service from the US to the Soviet Far East.
(WSJ, 1/7/07, p.A4)
1991 Oct 8, A federal judge in Anchorage, Alaska, approved a five-billion-dollar settlement against Exxon for the Valdez oil spill.
(www.explorenorth.com/library/weekly/aa032499.htm)
1992 Aug 18, Christopher McCandless (b.1968), a former student from Harvard, starved to death in the wilderness of Alaska. His story was later told by Jon Krakauer in the book “Into the Wild." In 2007 Sean Penn directed a film of the same name based on the book. In 2020 an abandoned bus that was used by McCandless was removed for public safety.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_McCandless)(Econ, 11/17/07, p.102)(SFC, 6/20/20, p.A4)
1994 Aug 11, A US federal jury awarded $286.8 million to some 10,000 commercial fishermen for losses as a result of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.
(AP, 8/11/99)
1994 Sep 16, A federal jury ordered Exxon Corp. to pay $5.3 billion in punitive damages to commercial fishermen and others harmed in the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska. A US Court of Appeals threw out the punitive damages in 2001.
(AP, 9/16/99)(SFC, 3/27/99, p.A7)(SFC, 11/8/01, p.A17)
1994-2002 Tony Knowles served as governor of Alaska.
(Econ, 8/26/06, p.27)
1995 Sep 22, An AWACS plane carrying US and Canadian military personnel crashed on takeoff from Elmendorf Air Force Base near Anchorage, Alaska, killing all 24 people aboard.
(AP, 9/22/00)
1995 Alaska’s halibut fisherman decided to privatize their fishery by dividing up their annual quota into “catch shares," that were owned in perpetuity by each fisherman.
(Econ, 9/20/08, p.24)
1996 May 4, In Alaska Jessica Baggen was raped and murdered after she celebrated her 17th birthday. Her body was found two days later. On August 3, 2020, suspect Steve Branch (66) died by suicide after state police investigators traveled to his home in Austin, Arkansas, to interview him about Baggen’s murder in the city of Sitka.
(NBC News, 8/11/20)
1996 Sarah Palin (b.1964) was elected mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, and served for 2 terms until 2002 when term limits forced her from office.
(SFC, 8/30/08, p.A6)
1996-2006 In Alaska per-capita federal spending rose from 38% above the national average to 71% above. Much of this was later attributed to Sen. Ted Stevens, who had begun representing Alaska in 1968.
(Econ, 9/6/08, p.34)
1997 Feb 19, In southwestern Alaska Evan Ramsey (16) opened fire with a 12-gauge shotgun as students assembled in a high school lobby, killing a principal and 16-year-old classmate in Bethel, a town of 6,000. Ramsey was sentenced to a 198-year prison term.
(AP, 4/25/06)(www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/weird/kids1/index_1.html)
1997 Nov 9, A family of 7 and the pilot of a commuter plane died in a crash in Barrow.
(SFEC,11/10/97, p.A4)
1997 Nov 26, In the Aleutian Islands 800 miles southwest of Anchorage, Alaska, the freighter, Kuroshima, ran aground off Dutch Harbor in heavy winds. Two crewmen were reported dead and 10,000 gallons of oil was reported to have leaked. As much as 240,000 gallons was reported on board. Emergency workers removed 57,000 gallons on Dec 5 and 30,000 gallons still remained.
(SFC,11/28/97, p.B9)(SFC, 12/1/97, p.A3)(SFC,12/897, p.A12)
1997 Dr. Johan Hultin (72) of San Francisco found remnants of the 1918 Spanish flu in the lungs of a corpse buried in the permafrost of a cemetery in Alaska. An earlier effort at Brevig Mission in 1951 had failed.
(SFC, 10/6/05, p.A14)
1998 Mar 17, In Alaska Jeff King battled through blowing snow and poor visibility to earn his third victory in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
(AP, 3/17/08)
1998 Bob Kaufman, SF venture capitalist, met with Richard Goldman to ask for money to buy 10,539 acres of wilderness for public trust. The Goldman fund provided some $5 million over the next 3 years.
(SSFC, 7/29/01, p.A6)
1998 John V.R. Evans of Alaska’s Matanuska Valley set a Guinness world record by growing an 18-pound, 13 ounce carrot.
(SFC, 7/6/05, p.A2)
1999 Feb, The snowmobile was banned from all but 7,000 of the 2 million acres of Denali National Park designated as the Denali National Wilderness.
(WSJ, 5/13/99, p.B1)
1999 Mar 21, In Alaska an avalanche killed at least 4 snowmobilers at the Turnagain Pass in Chugach National Forest.
(WSJ, 3/23/99, p.A1)
1999 Jun 10, A sightseeing helicopter crashed near Herbert Glacier and all seven people onboard were killed.
(SFC, 6/10/99, p.A3)
1999 Aug, Alfred Reumayr of British Columbia was arrested in a joint operation by the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. In 2008 he pleaded guilty to plotting to blow up the Trans-Alaskan oil pipeline on New Year's Day 2000. He had planned to buy energy securities at low prices before the attack, and hoped to profit by selling them at a higher price amid market turmoil afterward.
(AP, 3/14/08)
2000 Jan 20, The 2000 US census began in Unalakleet, Alaska.
(SFC, 1/21/00, p.A1)
2000 Jan 31, Alaska Airlines Flight 261, an MD-83 jet with 88 people bound for Seattle from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, crashed about 2.7 miles north of Anacapa Island, Ca. There were no survivors. A stop had been scheduled in SF.
(SFC, 2/1/00, p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Airlines_Flight_261)
2000 Mar 14, Defending champion Doug Swingley drove his dog team to victory in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
(AP, 3/14/01)
2000 Sep 2, In Alaska Joshua Alan Wade killed Della Brown (33), a native Alaskan, by smashing her head with a rock in Anchorage. Wade was acquitted in 2003 in her killing, but was convicted of tampering with her body and served several years in prison. In 2010 Wade acknowledged her murder.
(SFC, 2/17/10, p.A6)(http://www.ktva.com/iteam/ci_14413092)
2000 Oct, The annual oil royalty checks from the Alaska Permanent Fund totaled nearly $2000 per resident.
(SFC, 9/22/00, p.A10)
2000 In Haines, Alaska, Dave Pahl created his Hammer Museum, a tribute to the oldest human tool. In 2007 he struggled to retain the name as the Armand Hammer Museum of Art changed its name to the Hammer Museum of Art and applied for a trademark to the name.
(WSJ, 10/5/07, p.A1)
2001 Jan, A rare tundra blaze burned across 15,000 acres in the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge.
(SFC, 1/6/01, p.D8)
2001 Mar 14, Doug Swingley won the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Alaska for the third straight year.
(AP, 3/14/02)
2001 May 7, Four Anchorage school children were stabbed by Jason Pritchard (33). Pritchard was shot with rubber bullets and taken into custody.
(WSJ, 5/8/01, p.A1)(SFC, 5/8/01, p.A2)
2001 Jul 30, A sightseeing plane crashed near Glacier Bay National Park and all 6 people aboard were killed.
(WSJ, 8/1/01, p.A1)
2001 Oct 5, In Alaska Daniel Carson Lewis (37) was arrested for shooting a hole into the oil pipeline, which cause the leakage of up to 280,000 of gallons. Some 285,600 gallons spewed out for 3 days until the leak was plugged Oct 6. The cleanup cost was $7 million.
(SFC, 10/6/01, p.A11)(SSFC, 10/7/01, p.A17)
2001 Oct 10, A small plane crashed following takeoff from Dillingham. 10 people were killed in the Cessna 208 Caravan.
(SFC, 10/11/01, p.A21)
2002 Jan 24, In Juneau, Alaska, Joseph Frederick (18) displayed a banner reading “Bong Hits 4 Jesus" as the Olympic torch passed by. The head teacher at his high school suspended him and Frederick sued in return. The case moved up to the US Supreme Court. In 2007 the US Supreme Court ruled 5-3 that schools may punish youths for statements that might promote drug use.
(Econ, 3/24/07, p.35)(SFC, 6/26/07, p.A8)
2002 Feb 16, Pres. Bush departed on a 6-day Asia trip. Enroute to a three-nation tour of Asia, Bush stopped off at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska, where he told hundreds of cheering US soldiers that "America will not blink" in the fight against terrorism and Osama bin Laden.
(SFC, 2/16/02, p.A3)(AP, 2/16/07)
2002 Mar 12, Martin Buser captured his fourth victory in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
(AP, 3/12/07)
2002 Apr 8, California mountaineers, Aaron Martin (32) and Reid Sanders (30), died on Mount St. Elias while trying to reach the summit in order to ski down.
(SFC, 4/18/02, p.A2)
2002 May 24, Japan led a successful move to deny Alaska and Siberian native peoples a renewal of permission to hunt whales after a failed bid to end a 20-year moratorium on commercial whaling.
(SFC, 5/25/02, p.A17)
2002 Jul 1, A Canadian climber who had scaled Alaska's Mount McKinley alone died after he fell about 1,000 feet (300 meters) while descending from the peak's upper reaches.
(Reuters, 7/1/02)
2002 Sep 25, The annual Alaska oil dividend was announced to be $1,540.76.
(SFC, 9/27/02, p.A7)
2002 Nov 3, A 7.9 earthquake hit Alaska 90 miles south of Fairbanks.
(SFC, 11/4/02, p.A2)
2002 Nov, Frank Murkowski, former Republican senator, was elected governor of Alaska.
(Econ, 3/13/04, p.32)
2003 Mar 13, In Alaska Robert Sorlie of Norway won the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog race in nine days, 15 hours, 47 minutes.
(AP, 3/13/04)
2003 Oct 6, Timothy Treadwell (46) and Amie Huguenard (37) were found fatally mauled by a bear near Kaflia Bay in Katmai National Park, Alaska.
(SFC, 10/8/03, p.A3)
2003 Dec 23, The Bush administration reversed a 2001 Clinton policy and opened some 300,000 acres of Alaska's Tongass National Forest to possible logging or other development. The plan affirmed a Clinton plan from 1997.
(SFC, 12/24/03, p.A4)
2003 Alaska resumed limited aerial wolf hunting. In 1996 and 2000 Alaska voters turned down proposals to resume aerial predation control.
(Econ, 3/26/05, p.36)
2004 Jan 20, Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski called for a constitutional amendment to limit future spending growth.
(ADN, 1/21/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 16, Mitch Seavey won the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in nine days, 12 hours, 20 minutes and 22 seconds.
(AP, 3/16/05)
2004 Nov 3, In Alaska Lisa Murkowski won the US Senate seat she inherited from her father.
(Econ, 11/6/04, p.30)
2004 The federal government owned two-thirds of Alaska.
(Econ, 10/23/04, p.30)
2005 Jan 21, The US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) posted a decision to open thousands of acres on Alaska’s North Slope for exploratory oil drilling.
(SFC, 1/22/05, p.A5)
2005 Feb 5, Gregg Renkes, Alaska’s attorney general, resigned after months of battling criticism for alleged ethics breaches while shaping an int’l. trade deal.
(SSFC, 2/6/05, p.A3)
2005 Mar 16, The US Senate voted 51-49 to drill for oil in Alaska.
(WSJ, 3/17/05, p.A1)
2005 Jun 7, A Univ. of Alaska Fairbanks student found a track from a three-toed dinosaur believed to be about 70 million years old in Denali National Park, the first evidence that the animals roamed there.
(AP, 7/6/05)
2005 Jul 25, In Virginia 4 adult Scout leaders from Alaska were killed on the opening day of their Jamboree when a tent pole apparently struck a power line.
(AP, 7/26/05)
2005 Oct 20, Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, vowed to resign from the Senate if his fellow lawmakers followed through on threats to cancel spending on a $230 million "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska that was stuck into a pork-filled highway bill earlier this year. On Nov 16. lawmakers scuttled plans for the bridge from Ketchikan to Gravina Island.
(KRN, 10/20/05)(SFC, 11/17/05, p.A7)
2005 Oct 28, The Alaska Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional to bar benefits to the same-sex partners of public employees.
(SFC, 10/29/05, p.A3)
2005 Dec 21, The US Senate stopped a bid by Ted Stevens, Alaska’s Republican Sen., on a measure for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the US military spending bill. Senators also forced through a 5-month extension of key provisions of the Patriot Act. The move effectively killed a compromise that would have made permanent 14 of 16 provisions. The next day Senators cut the extension to 5 weeks.
(SFC, 12/21/05, p.A1)(SFC, 12/22/05, p.A5)(SFC, 12/23/05, p.A1)
2005 In Alaska the Chiginagak Volcano in the early summer discharged acidic ash and water into the King Salmon River killing all the fish there.
(SFC, 9/17/05, p.B8)
2006 Jan 11, The US Interior Dept. agreed to open some 400,000 acres on Alaska’s North Slope for exploratory oil drilling.
(SFC, 1/12/06, p.A6)
2006 Mar 2, An oil spill in Alaska curtailed Prudhoe Bay production. At least 265,000 gallons spilled onto the tundra from a British Petroleum (BP) line handling 100,000 barrels per day. The spill of 5,000 barrels was the largest in the field’s 29-year history. In 2011 a $25 million settlement was reached with a BP subsidiary for the spill.
(WSJ, 3/3/06, p.A1)(SFC, 3/11/06, p.A4)(SSFC, 8/13/06, p.A18)(SFC, 5/4/11, p.A6)
2006 Mar 10, In Alaska another oil leak was detected on a 2nd North Slope transmission pipeline. This followed the recently plugged leak discovered on Mar 2.
(SFC, 3/11/06, p.A4)
2006 Mar 15, Veteran musher Jeff King drove his dog team into the Bering Sea town of Nome, Alaska, to capture the 1,100-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, the world's premier dog-sled event, for the fourth time.
(AP, 3/15/06)
2006 Apr 22, In Alaska 6 seventh-graders were arrested in North Pole, just outside of Fairbanks, for conspiracy to commit murder during an assault on their school. Authorities found weapons in their homes.
(AP, 4/25/06)
2006 Apr 23, In Alaska 2 small planes collided midair and crashed about 20 miles north of Anchorage, killing five people.
(AP, 4/24/06)
2006 Jul 6, A US federal rule was published designating some 36,750 square miles in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska as critical habitat for right whales. The rule takes effect Aug. 7.
(AP, 7/7/06)
2006 Jul 23, The 654-foot Singapore-flagged Cougar Ace, a cargo ship carrying 4,813 cars from Japan to Canada, began tilting to its port side late at night hundreds of miles off Alaska's Aleutian Islands. 23 crew members were rescued the next day. The ship was owned by Tokyo-based Mitsui O.S.K. Lines and listed on its side for several weeks before being righted. 4,703 of the cars were new Mazdas valued at about $100 million. After a year of planning Mazda scheduled all the cars for complete reduction to scrap in Portland, Ore.
(AP, 7/25/06)(SFC, 7/25/06, p.A2)(WSJ, 4/29/08, p.A9)
2006 Jul 24, Rescuers from the US Coast Guard and Alaska Air National Guard saved 23 crew members from a cargo ship taking on water south of the Aleutian Islands.
(AP, 7/24/07)
2006 Aug 5, Susan Butcher (51), four-time Iditarod champion, died in Seattle, Wa. In 1986 she became the Alaska race's second female winner and brought increased national attention to its grueling competition.
(AP, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 6, Oil giant BP announced an indefinite shutdown of the biggest oilfield in the US, at Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, after finding a pipeline leak. BP was able to maintain partial operations.
(AP, 8/6/07)
2006 Aug 7, Oil company BP scrambled to assess pipeline corrosion in Alaska that will shut shipments from the nation's biggest oil field, removing about 8% of daily US crude production and driving oil and gasoline prices sharply higher. BP said it would have to replace 16 miles of pipeline at the Prudhoe Bay field.
(AP, 8/7/06)(AP, 8/7/07)
2006 Aug 11, BP PLC announced it would keep one side of the Prudhoe Bay oil field open as it replaced corroded pipes, averting a larger crimp in the nation's oil supply.
(AP, 8/11/07)
2006 Aug 23, In Alaska Republican Gov. Frank Murkowski finished last in a 3-day primary election. Sarah Palin, a former Wasilla mayor, won with over 50% of the vote.
(SFC, 8/24/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 7, BP America, the US arm of British energy giant BP, said it will spend more than 550 million dollars (432 million euros) over the next two years on improvements to its Alaskan oil fields, including pipeline repairs.
(AP, 9/7/06)
2006 Sep 21, In NYC Venezuela’s Pres. Chavez visited the Mount Olive Baptist Church in Harlem and promised to double the amount of discounted heating oil his country is shipping to needy Americans. His offer included 100 gallons of heating oil for each of 12,000 households in rural Alaska.
(SFC, 9/22/06, p.A3)(SSFC, 10/8/06, p.A27)
2006 The population of Alaska reached 665,000.
(Econ, 8/26/06, p.27)
2007 Jan 9, Pres. Bush lifted a ban on oil and gas drilling in Alaska’s Bristol area.
(SFC, 1/10/07, p.A5)
2007 Jan 17, Alaska’s newly elected Gov. Sarah Palin (42) delivered her 1st state speech.
(http://community.adn.com/?q=adn/node/104605)
2007 Mar 13, In Alaska Lance Mackey won the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, in nine days, five hours, eight minutes.
(AP, 3/13/08)
2007 Apr 24, At a conference in Moscow titled “Megaprojects of Russia’s East," supporters proposed a 68-mile tunnel under the Bering Strait. The tunnel linking Alaska and Siberia would cost $65 billion and take some 20 years to build.
(SFC, 4/25/07, p.A6)
2007 May 4, An Alaska lawmaker and two of his former colleagues were arrested for allegedly soliciting and accepting bribes from VECO Corp., a private oil services company, to pass a new oil-tax system.
(Reuters, 5/4/07)
2007 May 28, In Alaska officials from 75 nations began talks critical to whale conservation amid pressure, notably from Japan, to lift a 20-year ban on commercial whale hunting.
(AFP, 5/28/07)
2007 Jun 28, Bruce Kennedy (b.1938), former CEO of Alaska Airlines (1979-1991), was killed when his Cessna 182 crashed in Cashmere, Wash.
(WSJ, 1/7/07, p.A4)
2007 Jul 9, Alaska’s former state Rep. Tom Anderson was convicted of taking thousands of dollars from a corrections company consultant in exchange for his help in the Legislature.
(AP, 7/10/07)
2007 Jul 25, In Alaska a sightseeing plane crashed leaving a pilot and 2 couples from a visiting cruise ship dead.
(WSJ, 1/25/07, p.A1)
2007 Jul 31, A US government watchdog group called for the removal of GOP Sen. Ted Stevens from his Senate committees, less than 24 hours after the FBI and IRS raided the senator’s Alaska home in connection with a public corruption probe centered in the state.
(www.cqpolitics.com/2007/07/ethics_flaps_could_stir_compet.html)
2007 Aug 3, In Alaska Mindy Schloss (52), a nurse practitioner, was last seen alive in Anchorage. Her body was found on Sep 13 near Wasilla. In 2010 Joshua Alan Wade (29) acknowledged that he had shot and killed Schloss, who lived next door to him.
(SFC, 2/17/10, p.A6)(www.amw.com/missing_persons/recovered.cfm?id=47985)
2007 Sep 13, Bill Allen (70), former head of VECO Corp., testified in a federal corruption trial in Anchorage, that he had bribed 3 Alaska legislators, including the son of US Sen. Ted Stevens.
(SFC, 9/14/07, p.A9)
2007 Nov 1, A federal jury convicted Vic Kohring, a former Alaska lawmaker, of corruption charges involving tax protections sought by oil companies as part of plans for a multibillion-dollar natural gas pipeline.
(AP, 11/1/07)
2007 Nov 18, The Jesuit order of the Roman Catholic Church agreed to pay $50 million to 110 Eskimos to settle claims of sexual abuse in Alaska.
(SFC, 11/19/07, p.A3)(Reuters, 11/19/07)
2007 Dec 7, Former Alaska House Speaker Pete Kott was sentenced to six years in a federal prison for accepting $9,000 in bribes from the founder of an oil field services company.
(AP, 12/7/07)
2008 Jan 5, In Alaska a small plane crashed at the end of a runway off Kodiak Island killing 6 people enroute to celebrate Eastern Orthodox Christmas.
(SFC, 1/7/08, p.A3)
2008 Jan 21, Marie Smith (89), a resident of southeastern Alaska, died. She was the last speaker of her native Eyak language.
(Econ, 2/9/08, p.92)
2008 Mar 12, In Alaska Lance Mackey won his second consecutive Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, completing the 1,100-mile journey in just under 9 1/2 days.
(AP, 3/12/08)
2008 Mar 23, The Alaska Ranger, a 189-foot fishing vessel, sank off the Aleutian Islands, killing the captain and 4 crew members. 42 crew members were rescued. State environmental regulators were notified that the ship was carrying 145,000 gallons of diesel when it sank in deep seas.
(AP, 3/24/08)(SFC, 10/1/09, p.A6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FV_Alaska_Ranger)
2008 Jun 25, The US Supreme Court overturned the $2.5 billion in punitive damages that Exxon Mobil Corp had been ordered to pay for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska. Punitive damages were reduced to $507.5 million.
(AP, 6/25/08)(Econ, 5/22/10, p.68)
2008 Jul 9, A grand jury in Anchorage indicted Sen. John Cowdery, an Alaska legislator, on bribery and conspiracy counts in a federal investigation of corruption that already has led to convictions against three former state lawmakers. Federal prosecutors allege that Cowdery conspired with executives of oil field services company VECO Corp. to bribe another unnamed state senator for votes to support oil and gas legislation.
(AP, 7/10/08)
2008 Jul 29, Alaska Senator Ted Stevens (84), the longest-serving Republican in the US Senate, was indicted for making false statements concerning gifts he received from an oil-services firm.
(AFP, 7/29/08)
2008 Jul, In Alaska Gov. Palin’s chief of staff told Walter Monegan, the state public safety commissioner, that he was being fired because the governor wanted “to go in a different direction." Monegan, hired by Palin shortly after she took office in 2006, said his firing was connected to his failure to remove Mike Wooten, Palin’s former brother-in-law, from the state police force.
(SFC, 9/1/08, p.A7)
2008 Aug 4, Alaska sued the US government saying its listing of polar bears as a threatened species will hurt oil exploration and tourism.
(WSJ, 8/6/08, p.A1)(www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/49694/story.htm)
2008 Aug 29, John McCain, on his 72nd birthday, tapped little-known Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (44) to be his vice presidential running mate.
(AP, 8/29/08)(SFC, 8/30/08, p.A1)
2008 Sep 1, The GOP convention opened at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minn., in an abbreviated session due to Hurricane Gustav. Alaska’s Gov. Palin, GOP candidate for the vice-presidency, disclosed that her daughter, Bristol (17), is 5 months pregnant. Over 250 demonstrators were arrested as splinter groups smashed department store and police car windows. On March 11, 2009, Levi Johnson (19) announced he and Bristol Palin had decided to end their relationship.
(SFC, 9/2/08, p.A1,5)(WSJ, 9/2/08, p.A4)(SFC, 3/12/09, p.A6)
2008 Oct 2, US vice presidential candidates held their only debate prior to elections. Alaska’s Gov. Sarah Palin often spoke in generalities. Delaware Sen. Joe Biden was generally focused and forceful, and seemed to take painstaking care not to appear disrespectful in the least.
(AP, 10/3/08)
2008 Oct 10, Alaska released a report in which a legislative investigator found that Gov. Palin had violated state ethics laws and abused her power by trying to have her former brother-in-law fired as a state trooper.
(AP, 10/11/08)
2008 Oct 17, The Bush administration named the beluga whale in Alaska’s Cook Inlet an endangered species, despite opposition from Gov. Palin. Only 375 beluga whales remained there as opposed to some 1,300 in the 1970s. In 2011 a US federal judge upheld the listing.
(SFC, 10/18/08, p.A3)(SFC, 11/22/11, p.A6)
2008 Oct 22, The fishing vessel Katmai sank off Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. 4 crew members were rescued after spending some 15 hours in a life raft. 5 bodies were recovered with 2 men missing.
(SFC, 10/24/08, p.A10)
2008 Oct 27, A Washington DC jury found Alaska’s Sen. Stevens guilty on seven counts of trying to hide more than $250,000 in free home renovations and other gifts from a wealthy oil contractor. Stevens, who first entered the Senate in 1968, faced Alaska's voters in upcoming elections as a convicted felon. On April 1, 2009, the US Justice Dept. dropped charges against Stevens, saying prosecutors’ mistakes forced the move.
(AP, 10/28/08)(WSJ, 4/2/09, p.A1)
2008 Nov 4, In Alaska voters ousted Republican Sen. Ted Stevens. Democrat Mark Begich claimed a narrow victory on Nov 18, after a tally of remaining ballots showed him holding a 3,724-vote edge.
(AP, 11/19/08)
2008 Dec 16, NASA said satellite data indicated that more than 2 trillion tons of land ice have melted in Alaska, Antarctica and Greenland since 2003. The satellite data showed the latest signs of what scientists say is global warming. A scientist from America’s National Snow and Ice Data Center said the shrinking of Arctic ice (and exposure of extra sea to radiation) was warming the world at an accelerating pace.
(http://tinyurl.com/uxl8tm8)(Econ, 12/20/08, p.109)
2009 Mar 18, In Alaska lance Mackey won his 3rd consecutive Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
(WSJ, 3/19/09, p.A6)
2009 Mar 23, Alaska's Mount Redoubt volcano erupted five times overnight, sending an ash plume more than 9 miles into the air in the volcano's first emissions in nearly 20 years.
(AP, 3/23/09)
2009 May 21, Alaska’s Gov. Sarah Palin became the only governor to turn down federal stimulus money for energy efficiency, a move that legislators called "disappointing" for a state with some of the country's highest energy costs.
(AP, 5/22/09)
2009 Jun 18, The US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that William Osborne, a prisoner convicted in Alaska in 1994, has no constitutional right to DNA testing to prove his innocence. In April 2008, a three-judge panel of US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit had held that Osborne should be allowed to obtain new DNA tests. The court said that it is up to the states and Congress to decide such rights.
(SFC, 6/19/09, p.A7)(Econ, 8/1/09, p.25)(http://tinyurl.com/mkmte2)
2009 Jun 22, The US Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to allow a mining company to dump waste from an Alaskan gold mine into a nearby 23-acre lake, although the material will kill all of the lake's fish. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin called the decision "great news for Alaska" and said it "is a green light for responsible resource development." The Kensington gold mine 45 miles north of Juneau will produce as many as 370 jobs when it begins operation.
(AP, 6/22/09)
2009 Jul 3, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin announced her decision to leave office more than a year early, effective July 26. The announcement left open the possibility of a presidential run. Palin was replaced by Sean Parnell.
(AP, 7/4/09)(SSFC, 11/16/14, p.A9)
2009 Jul 15, In Alaska Anthony Rollins, a 13-year decorated Anchorage police officer, was arrested after being indicted for assaulting multiple women while on duty.
(SFC, 7/16/09, p.A6)
2009 July 26, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin stepped down and was replaced by Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Parnell)(SSFC, 11/16/14, p.A9)
2009 Oct 21, Federal court documents linked Alaska Rep. Don Young to a wide-ranging investigation of corruption in Alaska. It was alleged that the 19-term Republican had received gifts totaling nearly $200,000 over 13 years from Veco Corp., a defunct oil field services company run by former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens.
(SFC, 10/24/09, p.A10)
2009 Oct 22, The Obama administration said it is designating over 200,000 square miles in Alaska and off its coast as critical habitat for polar bears.
(SFC, 10/22/09, p.A7)
2009 Oct 28, In Anchorage Bill Allen, an oil services executive at the heart of a federal investigation of corruption in Alaska, was sentenced to 3 years in prison and fine $750,000.
(SFC, 10/29/09, p.A6)
2009 Nov 24, In Alaska the Catholic diocese of Fairbanks and representatives of almost 300 alleged victims of sex abuse by clergy agreed on a settlement of almost $10 million.
(SFC, 11/25/09, p.A4)
2009 Dec 21, In Alaska an oil spill was discovered coming from a 6-inch pipeline in the Prudhoe Bay oil field.
(SFC, 12/23/09, p.A8)
2009 Dec 23, In Alaska a 123-foot tug boat hit Bligh Reef, the same reef that damaged the Exxon Valdez in 1989. Over the next few days 49,000 gallons of diesel fuel were salvaged from the tug. It was unknown ho much fuel was spilled.
(SSFC, 12/27/09, p.A10)
2009 Sarah Palin, former governor of Alaska (2007-2009), authored “Going Rogue: An American Life."
(SFC, 9/29/09, p.A6)
2010 Jan 11, Fox News announced that Sarah Palin, former Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential candidate, would become a regular commentator on its cable channel.
(SFC, 1/12/10, p.A4)
2010 Jan 18, It was reported that Alaska corporations and a multinational firm are planning to build the first fiber optic cable between Asia and Europe through the Arctic. The project estimated at $1 billion, involved laying 10,000 miles of undersea fiber optic cable from Tokyo, along the Alaska coast, through the Northwest Passage, past Greenland to London.
(SFC, 1/18/10, p.D3)
2010 Feb 9, Phil Harris (53), the fishing boat captain whose adventures off the Alaska coast were captured on the television show "Deadliest Catch", died in Anchorage following a massive stroke on Jan 29.
(AP, 2/10/10)
2010 Feb 13, In Alaska an avalanche near Seward buried Jim Bowles, head of Conoco Phillips Alaska and Alan Gage, part of the company’s capital projects team. They were among a party of 12 snowmobilers.
(SFC, 2/15/10, p.A6)
2010 Mar 8, In Alaska the body of rural teacher Candice Berner (32) was found a mile outside of Chignik Lake. Wolf tracks surrounded the body.
(SFC, 3/12/10, p.A8)
2010 Apr, In Alaska Kip Lynch, a former army soldier, shot and killed his wife Racquell (19) and their 8-month old baby, Kyirsta. Their bodies remained in the family's Anchorage apartment for a weekend before they were discovered. Lynch had shot himself but recovered. He was found guilty in June 2011 and in 2012 was sentenced to 80 years in prison.
(Reuters, 1/20/12)
2010 May 7, Walter Hickel (b.1919), former governor of Alaska and US Interior chief (1969-1970) under Pres. Nixon, died in Anchorage.
(SSFC, 5/9/10, p.C8)
2010 May 25, In Alaska several thousand barrels of crude spilled from the trans-Alaska pipeline and overflowed a storage tank. The spill was in a containment area with an impermeable liner.
(SFC, 5/27/10, p.A8)
2010 May 28, In Alaska a backpacker shot and killed a grizzly bear with his handgun in Denali National Park. A man and woman reported that they were hiking when the bear emerged from trailside brush and charged the woman.
(AP, 5/31/10)
2010 Aug 1, In Alaska a Fairchild C-123 registered to All West Freight of Delta Junction crashed in Denali National Park killing all 3 people on board.
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100802/ap_on_re_us/us_alaska_plane_crash)
2010 Aug 9, In Alaska a small plane crashed killing former US Sen. Ted Stevens (86) and 4 others at a mountainside on Bristol Bay. 4 others survived the crash of the 1957 De Havilland DHC-3T.
(SFC, 8/11/10, p.A4)
2010 Aug 21, In Alaska a float-plane carrying 4 people went missing 285 miles southwest of Anchorage. The passengers included 3 Katmai National Park rangers.
(SFC, 8/23/10, p.A5)
2010 Nov 17, Alaska election officials confirmed that Rep. Senator Lisa Murkowski won her US Senate seat as a write-in candidate.
(SFC, 11/18/10, p.A1)
2011 Jun 10, The state of Alaska has released more than 24,000 pages of printed e-mails from former governor Sarah Palin. The e-mails include some from her government account and some from two personal accounts, and are said to shed light on how she did business while she was in office. Individuals who want to read them will have to pay a $725 charge for copying and several hundred dollars more to have them delivered. Interest in Palin remains high amidst rumors that she plans to run for president, and several newspapers were already making plans to scan and publish the e-mails.
(Reuters, 6/10/11)
2011 Jun 11, Brian Young of Kodiak, Alaska, suddenly stopped breathing after he completed the 20-hour climb up to the summit of Mt. McKinley and then back to camp. Young was the fifth climber this season to die at Mt. McKinley, which is North America’s tallest peak.
(Reuters, 6/11/11)
2011 Jul 30, In Alaska two small planes collided. One managed to land in Anchorage, the other crashed killing at least 2 people on board.
(SSFC, 7/31/11, p.A10)
2011 Sep 20, Alaska announced that the Permanent Fund Dividend for residents this year would be $1,174. the fund was created in 1976.
(SFC, 9/21/11, p.A6)
2012 Mar 6, Ten US states voted in the Super Tuesday Republican primaries. Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney edged out conservative rival Rick Santorum in the vital battleground of Ohio and won five of the night's other contests. Romney also notched victories in Alaska, Idaho, Vermont, Virginia and his home-state of Massachusetts, while Santorum won North Dakota, Oklahoma and Tennessee, and Newt Gingrich carried his home state of Georgia.
(SFC, 3/7/12, p.A6)(Econ, 3/10/12, p.18)
2012 Apr 16, In San Francisco the annual Goldman Environmental Prizes were presented 6 individuals. They included Sofia Gatica of Argentina work on diseases related to agrochemicals; Caroline Canon of Alaska for her village efforts against oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean; Ma Jun of China for his efforts on air and water violations by major manufacturers; Ikal Angelei of Kenya for her efforts to protect Lake Turkana; Evgenia Chirikova of Russia for her efforts to protect the Khimki Forest; and Father Edwin Gariguez of the Philippines for advocating against mining developments on indigenous lands.
(SFC, 4/16/12, p.A10)
2012 Jun 14, In Alaska 5 Japanese climbers on an expedition to scale Mt. McKinley were caught up in the avalanche. One managed to escape and 4 were left missing.
(AFP, 6/16/12)
2012 Jul 18, In Alaska 2 visitors from Australia were killed in a fiery small plane crash about 39 miles north of Fairbanks.
(Reuters, 7/19/12)
2012 Aug 13, US Interior Sec. Ken Salazar announced the first comprehensive plan to manage the national petroleum reserve in Alaska, allowing new drilling on half of the nearly 23-million-acre reserve, while putting the rest off limits.
(SFC, 8/14/12, p.A4)
2012 Dec 2, In Alaska Israel Keyes (34), who had also confessed to killing a Vermont couple, was found dead in his jail cell in Anchorage. Investigators later said Keyes had confessed to killing 8 people before he committed suicide.
(AP, 12/3/12)(SFC, 12/8/12, p.A4)
2013 Mar 8, A commercial Beechcraft 1900 cargo plane crashed in southwestern Alaska. The bodies of the pilot Jeff Day (38) and co-pilot Neil Jensen (20) were found the next day.
(SSFC, 3/10/13, p.A8)
2013 Mar 15, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the US is deploying 14 new ground-based missile interceptors in Alaska to counter renewed nuclear threats from North Korea and Iran. Hagel also said the US would shift some "resources," which he didn't specify, from the delayed Aegis anti-missile program in Europe.
(http://tinyurl.com/almlalu)
2013 Mar 31, An Alaska State Trooper helicopter crashed overnight during a mission to rescue a stranded snowmobiler. All three onboard were believed killed.
(SFC, 4/1/13, p.A5)
2013 Jul 7, In Alaska an air taxi crashed after takeoff from Soldotna killing the pilot and all 9 passengers.
(SFC, 7/8/13, p.A4)
2013 Sep 23, British adventurer Sarah Outen arrived at Adak in the Aleutian Islands becoming the first woman to row solo from Japan to Alaska. She had left Choshi, Japan, on April 27.
(SFC, 9/25/13, p.A6)
2013 Nov 29, In southwest Alaska a Hageland Aviation Cessna 208 turboprop crashed near St. Marys. 4 people were killed and six injured. Melanie Coffee (25) left her 5-month-old baby to reach St. Marys and direct rescuers back to the crash site. Her baby died.
(SSFC, 12/1/13, p.A15)
2013 Dec 30, The US FAA selected six states (Alaska, Nevada, New York, North Dakota, Texas and Virginia) to test how drones can be more widely used in US airspace. 24 states had competed for selection.
(SFC, 12/31/13, p.A6)
2014 Jan 30, Royal Dutch Shell said it will suspend drilling in offshore Alaska after a US court decision and as the oil major streamlines operations following a slump in annual profits.
(AFP, 1/30/14)
2014 May 1, Alaska state troopers Gabriel Rich and Sgt. Patrick Johnson were killed in Tanana. Suspect Nathaniel Lee Kangas (19) was arrested.
(SFC, 5/3/14, p.A5)
2014 May 25, A wildfire in Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula grew to almost 218 square miles. Mandatory evacuations were underway.
(SFC, 5/26/14, p.A9)
2014 Jun 10, The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it has granted the first permission for commercial drone flights over US land. The BP energy corporation and drone maker AeroVironment of California have been given permission to use a Puma drone to survey pipelines, roads and equipment at Prudhoe Bay in Alaska. The first flight took place on June 8.
(AP, 6/10/14)
2014 Aug 25, In Alaska a rocket carrying an experimental Advanced Hypersonic Weapon exploded as the flight was terminated following the detection of an anamoly near a Kodiac lauch pad shortly after liftoff.
(SFC, 8/26/14, p.A4)
2014 Aug, The US Forest service gave the go-ahead for the so-called Big Thorne timber sale in the Tongass National Forest of Alaska. Environmental groups soon filed three separate suits to stop the sale.
(SFC, 8/29/14, p.A9)
2014 Oct 7, A US federal appeals court in San Francisco struck down Nevada and Idaho’s bans on same-sex marriage. The ruling also applies to all nine states in the court’s territory and will overturn marriage bans in Montana, Alaska and Arizona.
(SFC, 10/8/14, p.A6)
2014 Oct 12, A US federal judge struck down Alaska’s first-in-the-nation ban on gay marriages.
(SFC, 10/13/14, p.A8)
2014 Nov 4, Alaska voters elected independent candidate Bill Walker to replace incumbent Gov. Sean Parnell. Results were only made final on Nov 14.
(SSFC, 11/16/14, p.A9)
2014 Nov 4, Alaska’s statewide initiative legalized marijuana, but allowed local governments to ban pot businesses within their borders. In 2017 voters in and around Fairbanks and on the Kenai Peninsula rejected efforts to ban commercial marijuana cultivation and retail sales.
(SFC, 10/5/17, p.A7)
2015 Feb 24, Alaska became the first red state to legalize the smoking, growing, and owning of small amounts of marijuana, bringing the decriminalization movement to a conservative stronghold.
(Reuters, 2/24/15)
2015 Mar 21, In Alaska a nearly yearlong search for a missing came to a grim end with the discovery of four bodies - Rebecca Adams (23), her boyfriend, Brandon Jividen (38), and her children, Michelle Hundley (6) and Jaracca Hundley (3) - a dead dog and a handgun just off a trail in a rural area near the family's home on the outskirts of Kenai.
(AP, 3/23/15)
2015 Jun 24, Alaska reported 278 active fires following record heat in May.
(SFC, 6/25/15, p.A6)
2015 Jun 25, In Alaska 9 people aboard a sightseeing airplane were killed when it crashed near Ketchikan.
(SFC, 6/26/15, p.A6)
2015 Jul 22, The Obama administration issued permits with conditions clearing the way for Royal Dutch PLC to begin limited exploratory drilling in Chukchi Sea off Alaska’s northwest coast.
(SFC, 7/23/15, p.A5)
2015 Aug 18, In Alaska 3 men were believed buried by a landslide at a construction site in Sitka. Six landslides hit the city following 2.5 inches of rain over the last 24 hours.
(SFC, 8/20/15, p.A7)
2015 Aug 30, The Obama administration announced its decision to bestow the traditional Alaska Native name of Denali for what has been known as Mt. McKinley on the eve of Pres. Obama’s 3-day visit to the state.
(SFC, 9/3/15, p.A12)
2015 Sep 1, Pres. Obama visited the Exit Glacier in Alaska, which has receded 1.25 miles since 1815 and 187 feet since last year alone, and called it a signpost of climate change.
(SFC, 9/2/15, p.A8)
2015 Oct 2, A report released by the Alaska Department of Labor showed that about 7,500 more people moved out of the state than arrived in fiscal year 2014.
(AP, 10/3/15)
2015 Oct 16, The US Interior Department announced it is canceling future oil lease sales and will not extend current leases in Arctic waters off Alaska's northern coast.
(AP, 10/17/15)
2015 The US federal government owned 60% of the land in Alaska. The state owned 28%.
(Econ, 9/5/15, p.36)
2016 Jan 24, In south-central Alaska a magnitude-6.8 earthquake knocked items off shelves and walls in and jolted the nerves of residents in this earthquake-prone region. There were no immediate reports of injuries.
(AP, 1/24/16)
2016 Jan, In Alaska thousands of dead common murres, a type of seabird also known as a guillemot, washed ashore near Homer and along the state’s vast coastline. The birds appeared to have starved. Researchers later pinned the die-off on warm ocean temperatures that affected the tiny fish eaten by the birds.
(Econ, 1/30/16, p.24)(SFC, 2/11/17, p.A9)
2016 Mar 26, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, breathed fresh life into his campaign for the White House with a clean sweep in caucuses in the western US states of Alaska, Hawaii and Washington.
(AFP, 3/27/16)
2016 Mar 27, In southwestern Alaska the Pavlof Volcano erupted sending ash 20,000 feet into the air.
(SFC, 3/29/16, p.A14)
2016 Nov 13, In Alaska David Grunwald (16) was killed near the Knik River. Four teens were later convicted in the murder. Dominic Johnson (16) had instigated a brutal beating of Grunwald before the murder and 19 days later led authorities to the area where they laid the teen's body. In 2021 Johnson was sentenced to serve a total of 99 years in prison.
(https://tinyurl.com/tdzh7rc8)(Tribune Publ., 5/6/21)
2016 Nov 25, In Alaska four people including an infant were shot and killed at a hotel in Fairbanks. McKay Hutton (22) was identified as the gunman in the murder-suicide.
(SSFC, 11/27/16, p.A8)
2016 Dec 14, Alaska Airlines completed its purchase of Virgin America.
(SFC, 12/15/16, p.C1)
2017 Apr 1, In Alaska workers of Hilcorp Alaska LLC discovered an oil sheen and bubbling from under the company’s Anna platform on the west side of Cook Inlet. It was not clear how much oil had spilled into the inlet southwest of Anchorage.
(SFC, 4/3/17, p.A4)
2017 Apr 3, Pres. Donald Trump signed into law legislation HJ69, undoing Obama-era rules that restricted the hunting of bear in Alaska. This soon led to an increase in orphan bear cubs in the state.
(SFC, 8/12/17, p.A9)
2017 May 3, Ten environmental and Alaskan Native groups filed suit to maintain the ban on oil and gas exploration, a key part of former Pres. Obama’s environmental legacy.
(SFC, 5/4/17, p.C4)
2017 May 11, US environmental regulators cleared the path for a stalled copper and gold mine in Alaska by agreeing to settle current lawsuits and other issues over the project, which had drawn environmental concerns over its potential impact on the world's largest sockeye salmon fishery.
(Reuters, 5/12/17)(SFC, 5/13/17, p.A6)
2017 Jul 25, Kenneth Manzanares of Utah killed his wife as the family was on a vacation on the Emerald Princess after Kristy Manzanares told him in their cabin that she wanted a divorce and she wanted him to get off the ship at Juneau. He was sentenced on June 3, 2020, to a 30-year federal prison term after pleading guilty to the killing. On July 14, 2021) Manzanares (43) was found dead at the Lemon Creek Correctional Center in Juneau.
(https://tinyurl.com/5rcrssx5)(AP, 7/17/21)
2018 Jan 22, US Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke signed a land trade agreement that could lead to construction of a road through Alaska’s Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. The road would connect the King Cove fishing community to an all weather airport at Cold Bay.
(SFC, 1/23/18, p.A6)
2018 Jan 23, A magnitude-7.9 earthquake struck in the Gulf of Alaska, sending the state's coastal residents inland to seek shelter from possible tidal waves. Tsunami alerts were soon lifted.
(Reuters, 1/23/18)
2018 Mar 14, In Alaska Norwegian musher Joar Ulsom was the first to reach the finish line in Nome after traveling nearly a thousand miles across rugged terrain.
(AP, 3/14/18)
2018 Aug 4, In Alaska a small sight-seeing plane crashed on Thunder Mountain in Denali National Park. 4 people were killed and a fifth was missing.
(SFC, 8/7/18, p.A4)
2018 Oct 16, Alaska's Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott resigned for making unspecified innappropriate comments, imperiling the re-election of Gov. Bill Walker.
(SFC, 10/18/18, p.A6)
2019 Mar 13, Pete Kaiser became the latest Alaska Native to win the 1,000-mile Iditarod dog sled race.
(AP, 3/13/19)
2019 May 13, In Alaska at least four people were killed when two sightseeing planes carrying cruise ship tourists collided in midair near Ketchikan. Two people remained missing.
(SFC, 5/14/19, p.A6)
2019 Mar 29, In Alaska US District Judge Sharon Gleason ruled that an executive order by Pres. Donald Trump that lifted an Obama-era ban on drilling in the Arctic Ocean and parts of the North Atlantic coast was unlawful.
(SSFC, 3/31/19, p.A8)
2019 Jul 4, Temperatures in Alaska reached record highs with Anchorage recording 90 degrees. The city's previous record was 85 degrees on June 14, 1969.
(SSFC, 7/7/19, p.A10)
2019 Jul 13, It was reported that over the course of 10 days this month, Alaskan wildfires burned an area of land the size of Rhode Island. This is way above normal — though this doesn't match Alaska's extreme burning of 2015. The UN The World Meteorological Organization noted that over 100 intense fires burned in the Arctic Circle alone over the past six weeks, releasing more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than Sweden does in an entire year.
(Mashable, 7/14/19)
2019 Jul 24, A strike by Alaska's ferry workers halted traffic for the Alaska Marine Highway System, the state-operated ferry system that serves 35 coastal towns, most of them without outside road access.
(Reuters, 7/27/19)
2019 Jul 26, It was reported that the Arctic is suffering its worst wildfire season on record, with huge blazes in Greenland, Siberia and Alaska producing plumes of smoke that can be seen from space.
(The Guardian, 7/26/19)
2019 Jul 27, Alaska ferry workers and state officials sought a federal mediator's help to end a strike that has disrupted travel during the peak summer tourist season as the labor dispute surfaced in the 2020 presidential campaign.
(Reuters, 7/28/19)
2019 Jul 28, Israel's defence ministry said tests of the Arrow-3 system were carried out in the US state of Alaska and it successfully intercepted targets above the atmosphere. The Arrow system, partly financed by the United States, was developed and produced by Israeli Aerospace Industries in partnership with Boeing.
(AFP, 7/28/19)
2019 Aug 2, Alaska officials and the union for striking boat workers said they have reached a deal to end a walkout that has shut down the state's ferry system for 10 days at the peak of the summer tourist season.
(Reuters, 8/2/19)
2019 Sep 6, The Alaska Department of Corrections agreed to policy changes to accommodate Muslim inmates who wish to practice their religion, settling a lawsuit brought last year.
(AP, 9/6/19)
2019 Sep 21, The Alaska Republican Party passed a rule canceling the holding of a presidential primary in 2020. Earlier this month, Republican leaders in Nevada, South Carolina and Kansas voted to scrap their presidential nominating contests in 2020, erecting more hurdles for the long-shot candidates challenging President Donald Trump.
(AP, 9/21/19)
2019 Oct 9, Alaska police said Brian Steven Smith (48) has been arrested in Anchorage after videos were found on a digital memory card depicting a woman being assaulted and killed.
(SFC, 10/10/19, p.A5)
2019 Oct 17, In Alaska a commuter plane carrying 42 people overshot a runway in Unalaska. One of two passengers, who suffered critical injuries, soon died.
(SFC, 10/19/19, p.A6)
2019 Nov 18, Projects to protect Texas marshes from erosion and an Alaskan village from the Bering Sea got help from some of the 44 grants awarded today by the National Coastal Resilience Fund, a public-private partnership assisting communities threatened by storms and flooding from rising and warming seas.
(AP, 11/18/19)
2019 Nov 26, Pres. Donald Trump signed an executive order creating a White House task force on missing and slain American Indians and Alaska Natives.
(SFC, 11/27/19, p.A5)
2019 Dec 31, Two crew members of the Scandies Rose were rescued after the 130-foot crab fishing vessel from Dutch Harbor, Alaska. A search for the five crew members lasted 20 hours before it was called off.
(AP, 1/1/20)
2020 Jan 3, In Alaska Shishaldin Volcano in the Aleutian Islands, one of Alaska’s most active volcanoes, shot a cloud of ash more than 5 miles high, triggering a warning to aviators and putting on a show that was captured in satellite imagery.
(Reuters, 1/3/20)
2020 Jan 15, Four coastal Louisiana tribes and one in Alaska that say the US government violated their human rights by failing to take action on climate change have submitted a formal complaint to the United Nations in Switzerland.
(AP, 1/17/20)
2020 Feb 6, In southwestern Alaska a pilot and four passengers were killed in a commuter plane crash.
(SFC, 2/8/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 14, The Alaska Supreme Court cleared the way for a campaign seeking to oust the state's embattled governor to proceed with plans to collect enough signatures to place a recall initiative on the 2020 ballot. A lower-court judge had ruled that allegations of misconduct lodged against Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy met the legal requirements for placing a recall question on this year's election ballot.
(Reuters, 2/14/20)
2020 Mar 18, In Alaska Thomas Waerner of Norway arrived first at the finish line in Nome to win the Iditirod Trail Sled Dog Race.
(SSFC, 3/22/20, p.A5)
2020 Apr 9, Pantheon Resources PLC reported the discovery of an oil field in Alaska's North Slope region with a potential of 1.8 billion barrels of oil.
(SFC, 4/10/20, p.A3)
2020 Apr 11, Alaska held its presidential primary. Joe biden bet Bernie Sanders 55.3% to 44.7%. A total of 19,759 votes were cast.
(SFC, 4/13/20, p.A4)
2020 Apr 24, Alaska's Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy began allowing the limited reopening of restaurants, stores, hair and nail salons and other businesses. It was not until April 26 that Anchorage allowed those businesses to open.
(AP, 4/25/20)(AP, 4/27/20)
2020 Apr 29, It was reported that BP is donating 3 million gallons of jet fuel to FedEx and Alaska Airlines to help with the distribution of personal protective equipment in the battle against the new coronavirus.
(Reuters, 4/29/20)
2020 May 1, Alaska Airlines and Southwest became the latest airlines to announce they will require passengers wear face coverings as of May 11. This means all major US airlines have made that a requirement for passengers.
(Good Morning America, 5/1/20)
2020 Jun 4, US federal court documents released early today showed that Alaska man Kenneth Zong, accused of laundering $1 billion held in South Korea for Iran, funneled nearly all the money through the United Arab Emirates. Zong allegedly created fake invoices to help Iran draw cash held by South Korea in lieu of payment for oil shipments.
(AP, 6/4/20)
2020 Jul 31, In Alaska 7 people, including state lawmaker Rep. Gary Knopp (67), died when two small airplanes collided in midair near the airport in Soldotna, a small community on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula.
(AP, 7/31/20)
2020 Aug 7, Officials in Anchorage, Alaska, won a key ruling in favor of a ban on indoor restaurant dining after a standoff over COVID-19 restrictions moved to court.
(Reuters, 8/7/20)
2020 Aug 17, The Trump administration issued final approval to allow oil and gas drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a 19 million acre (7.7 million hectares) refuge that has been off-limits to drilling for decades.
(Reuters, 8/17/20)
2020 Sep 14, Alaska dentist Seth Lookhart (35), convicted on 46 counts of defrauding the federal Medicaid program, was sentenced to 12 years in prison. The state requested that the court order Lookhart to pay more than $2 million in restitution for the Medicaid fraud.
(Today, 9/17/20)
2020 Sep 16, If carbon emissions continue at current rates, so much mercury will leach from thawing permafrost that fish in the Yukon River could become dangerous to eat within a few decades, according to a study published in the journal Nature Communications.
(Reuters, 9/16/20)
2020 Sep 20, In Alaska a grizzly bear mauled and killed a moose hunter in a first-of-its-kind attack in the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve.
(Good Morning America, 9/23/20)
2020 Oct 28, It was reported that President Trump will open up more than half of Alaska’s Tongass National Forest to logging and other forms of development, stripping protections that had safeguarded one of the world’s largest intact temperate rainforests for nearly two decades.
(NY Times, 10/28/20)
2020 Nov 11, US Republican Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska won re-election, leaving control of the Senate to be determined in January by two runoff elections in Georgia.
(Reuters, 11/11/20)
2020 Nov 16, The Trump administration announced that it would begin the formal process of selling leases to oil companies in a last-minute push to achieve its long-sought goal of allowing oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.
(NY Times, 11/16/20)
2020 Nov 25, The Army Corps of Engineers denied a permit for the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska, most likely killing the project. Opponents of the mine said it would have irreversibly harmed salmon breeding grounds.
(NY Times, 11/25/20)
2020 Nov 30, In Alaska a shooting spree north of Anchorage left four people dead. Malachi Maxon (18), just out of jail for assault, was soon charged with killing four members of his family, including two cousins ages 7 and 10.
(AP, 12/1/20)
2020 Dec 2, In Alaska six people were missing after a mudslide measuring an estimated two football fields across slammed into a neighborhood in the southeastern community of Haines.
(AP, 12/2/20)
2020 Dec 3, Alaska's state official overseeing elections said personal data such as driver’s license numbers and birth dates for tens of thousands of Alaskans was breached in an online voter database. Election results were not compromised because the online registration and vote tabulation systems are not connected. He became aware of the breach on Oct. 27.
(AP, 12/3/20)
2020 Dec 18, In a last-minute change, the Trump administration cut about 30 percent of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge territory that it plans to auction off for oil exploration.
(Reuters, 12/21/20)
2020 Dec 18, Alaskan race officials announced that the famed Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race across the state will not run to Nome in 2021, a drastic change called necessary to protect the mushers from the COVID-19 pandemic and reduce its spread in rural Alaska. The new route will take racers and dogs to the halfway point, the abandoned gold-mining town of Iditarod for which the trail is named, then they will double back to the starting point.
(Reuters, 12/18/20)
2020 Dec 31, A Pacific storm of record proportions swept a remote stretch of Alaska's Aleutian Islands chain, battering a region used heavily by commercial shipping with hurricane-force winds and seas five stories high.
(Reuters, 12/31/20)
2021 Jan 4, US President Donald Trump's administration announced that it has made final its plan to open up vast areas of once-protected Arctic Alaska territory to oil development.
(Reuters, 1/4/21)
2021 Jan 6, The US government held its first oil and gas lease sale for Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Major oil companies stayed on the sidelines and the sale garnered bids on just half the tracts that were listed. The state of Alaska and two small local companies were the only bidders.
(SFC, 1/7/21, p.A3)(Econ., 1/9/21, p.56)
2021 Feb 2, In Alaska an avalanche slide near Anchorage claimed the lives of three men hiking near Bear Mountain. The bodies of Thomas Devine (54) of Chugiak; Matthew Nyman (43) of Colorado Springs, Colorado; and Edward Watson (50) of Miami, were found the next day.
(AP, 2/4/21)
2021 Feb 6, US District Court Judge Sharon Gleason issued an order barring ConocoPhillips from starting planned gravel mining and gravel-road construction at its Willow project on Alaska's North Slope.
(Reuters, 2/7/21)
2021 Feb 20, The US Department of the Interior said plans for seismic surveys to help find oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge have fizzled due to a lack of protection for polar bears.
(Reuters, 2/21/21)
2021 Feb 23, Andy Teuber (52), head of the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, resigned from the health care organization and as a member of the University of Alaska Board of Regents. Soon after allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced against him. On March 2 he disappeared while piloting a helicopter to Kodiak Island.
(AP, 3/3/21)
2021 Mar 9, Alaska became the first US state to make COVID-19 vaccines available to anyone age 16 or older, eliminating eligibility requirements for people who work or live in the state.
(Reuters, 3/10/21)
2021 Mar 19, US and Chinese officials wrapped up their talks in Alaska without reaching any diplomatic breakthroughs. That was to be expected, but both sides suggested that, despite a contentious start to the high-profile meeting, there were some positives.
(Reuters, 3/19/21)
2021 Mar 28, In Alaska five people were killed on a heli-skiing excursion when their chopper crashed. Czech billionaire, Petr Kellner (56), whose net worth has been estimated at $17.5 billion by Forbes, was aboard the Airbus AS350 B3 helicopter when it went down near Knik Glacier. One survivor was listed in serious but stable condition.
(NY Times, 3/29/21)
2021 Apr 24, Alaska Airlines banned Alaska state Senator Lora Reinbold for refusing to follow mask requirements. Reinbold has been a vocal opponent to COVID-19 mitigation measures.
(AP, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 30, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy ended the state's disaster declaration for COVID-19, saying the decree is no longer necessary.
(SFC, 5/3/21, p.A5)
2021 May 1, A cyberattack caused the Alaska Court System to disconnect most of its operations from the internet, an act expected to block electronic court filings, disrupt online payments and prevent hearings from taking place by videoconference for several days. Only a "handful" of about 3,000 court system computers were affected.
(Tribune Publ., 5/2/21)
2021 May 26, The Biden administration defended a huge Trump-era oil and gas project in the North Slope of Alaska designed to produce more than 100,000 barrels of oil a day for the next 30 years, despite President Biden’s pledge to pivot the country away from fossil fuels.
(NY Times, 5/26/21)
2021 May 28, The Alaska Supreme Court upheld the legality of a state law that allows young Alaskans to face trial as adults for misdemeanor drunken-driving crimes.
(Tribune Publ., 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 1, The Biden administration suspended oil drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
(NY Times, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 25, The US Supreme Court ruled that federal COVID-19 relief funds can go to specially created corporations for Native Alaskans even though they are not officially recognized as tribal governments.
(Reuters, 6/25/21)
2021 Jul 21, Pavel Tsurkan (33), an Estonian man, pleaded guilty to two federal charges of computer fraud and abuse in a complex scheme that compromised roughly 1,000 routers globally. Among the victims were dozens of Alaskans who faced hundreds or thousands of dollars of increased charges for internet service as a result. Tsurkan pleaded guilty last week to separate criminal charges in Connecticut's federal court.
(Anchorage Daily News, 7/23/21)
2021 Jul 28, A powerful 8.2-magnitude earthquake struck off the southern coast of Alaska late today, prompting a tsunami warning for parts of the state and a tsunami watch as far as Hawaii. They were lifted within hours.
(NY Times, 7/29/21)
2021 Aug 3, The Biden administration said it would conduct a new environmental review of oil and gas leasing in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
(Reuters, 8/3/21)
2021 Aug 5, In Alaska a sight-seeing plane crashed in the area of Misty Fyords National Monument near Ketchikan, killing all six people on board.
(SFC, 8/7/21, p.A5)
2021 Aug 10, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy said that state law enforcement agencies had failed to collect the DNA of more than 21,000 people arrested for a variety of crimes, contrary to Alaska law.
(Anchorage Daily News, 8/11/21)
2021 Aug 14, A 6.9 earthquake struck off the coast of the Alaska Peninsula early today. no tsunami warnings were issued.
(AP, 8/14/21)
2021 Sep 9, The Biden administration said it will relaunch a process that could permanently protect a vital Alaskan watershed from the development of the contentious Pebble Mine project.
(Reuters, 9/9/21)
2021 Sep 22, Alaska, which led most US states in coronavirus vaccinations months ago, took the drastic step of imposing crisis-care standards for its entire hospital system, declaring that a crushing surge in COVID-19 patients has forced rationing of strained medical resources.
(Reuters, 9/22/21)
2021 Oct 2, Alaska activated emergency crisis protocols that allow 20 health care facilities to ration care if needed as the state recorded the nation''s worst COVID-19 diagnosis rates in recent days.
(SFC, 10/4/21, p.A5)
2021 Oct 3, It was reported that Alaskan king and chum salmon have dwindled to almost nothing for the first time in memory. The state has banned salmon fishing on the Yukon.
{Alaska, USA, Fish}
(SSFC, 10/3/21, p.A11)
2021 Dec 26, At the island community of Kodiak, the air temperature at a tidal gauge hit 67 F (19.4°C) degrees, the highest December reading ever recorded in Alaska.
(Reuters, 12/28/21)
Go to http://www.timelinesdb.com
Subject = Alaska
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Alaska Historical Society: http://www.alaskahistoricalsociety.org/
Alaska Newspapers: http://www.alaska.net/~aknewspr/
Alaska has 226 Indian tribes.
(SFEC, 7/18/99, Par p.7)
Athabaska Indians are native to Alaska.
(SFC,10/20/97, p.A5)
The Yup’ic are native to southwestern Alaska.
(AM, 7/97, p.72)
The city of Nome was named for a misspelling of a nearby cape on a map, which was referred to as "no name." Nome was founded as a result of a gold strike on nearby Seward Peninsula.
(HN, 9/17/01)
State Motto: "North to the Future."
State flower: the Forget-Me-Not.
State bird: Willow Ptarmigan
State fossil: Wooly Mammoth
State mineral: Gold
State gem: Jade.
State tree: Sitka Spruce
State sport: Dog Mushing
100Mil BC Land masses collided about this time and created Alaska.
(SFC, 4/27/99, p.A2)
70Mil BC In 2005 a Univ. of Alaska Fairbanks student found a track from a three-toed dinosaur believed to be about 70 million years old in Denali National Park, the first evidence that the animals roamed there.
(AP, 7/6/05)
69Mil BC A plant-eating duck-billed dinosaur roamed northern Alaska about this time. Fossils of the hadrosaur were reported as a new species in 2015.
(SFC, 9/23/15, p.A8)
20000BC Some scientists believe that ancient people from Siberia crossed the Bering land bridge to Alaska about this time and began their southward migration into the Americas. In 2001 skull measurements indicated that members of the Jomon-Ainu of Japan made the first crossings.
(SFC, 5/23/98, p.A13)(SFC, 7/31/01, p.A4)
16000BC The west coast of North America deglaciated by this time allowing people, who had crossed the Bering Strait land bridge, to move south.
(SFC, 4/4/08, p.A4)
12000BC The last ice age ended about this time flooding the land bridge between Alaska and Siberia.
(SFC, 4/4/08, p.A4)
c12000BC The Broken Mammoth settlement in central Alaska dated to this time.
(SFC, 7/25/03, p.A1)
9500BC In 2011 scientists identified the cremated bones, dating to about this time, of a 3-year-old child buried in the Tanana lowlands of central Alaska.
(SFC, 2/25/11, p.A8)
1728 Vitus Bering (47), Danish explorer, discovered the Bering Strait between Asia and North America.
(PCh, 1992, p.286)
1741 Jul 15, George Steller, an observer with Vitus Bering (1680-1741), claimed to see the American mainland (Alaska). Bering, a Danish-born mariner, was on an exploratory mission on behalf of Russia.
(WSJ, 9/12/00, p.A24)(SFEC, 3/23/97, p.T5)(ON, 2/06, p.2)
1741 Jul 16, Vitus Bering (1680-1741) first sighted Mt. St. Elias, the second highest peak in Alaska at 18,008 feet.
(AAM, 3/96, p.84)(WUD, 1994 p.140)
1741 Dec 8, Vitus Bering, Danish-born explorer and commander in the Russian navy, died on an island off the Kamchatka Peninsula, later named Bering Island.
(ON, 2/06, p.4)
1778 Aug 9, Captain Cook reached Cape Prince of Wales in the Bering straits.
(MC, 8/9/02)
1778 Oct 3, Capt. Cook anchored off Alaska.
(MC, 10/3/01)
1780 A Japanese whaling ship ran aground near the western end of the Aleutian Islands. Rats from the ship reached the nearest island giving it the name Rat Island. The incident introduced the non-native Norway rat, also known as the brown rat, to Alaska. The rats terrorized all but the largest birds on the island. In the Fall of 2008 poison was dropped onto the island from helicopter-hoisted buckets for a week and a half. By mid 2009 there were no signs of living rats and some birds had returned.
(Econ, 1/20/07, p.43)(Reuters, 6/12/09)
1784 Aug 14, The 1st Russian settlement in Alaska was established on Kodiak Island. Grigori Shelekhov, a Russian fur trader, founded Three Saints Bay.
(MC, 8/14/02)
1796 An Aleutian island named Bogoslof first appeared after an underwater eruption. Its base lay 5,500 down on the floor of the Bering Sea. By 2017 it measured 169 acres with a peak at 490 feet.
(SFC, 2/7/17, p.A6)
1799 Sitka, Alaska, was founded by Alexander Baranof of the Russian American Company.
(AH, 6/07, p.69)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitka,_Alaska)
1807 Aug 11, The Eclipse, a Yankee fur trading vessel, sank in the Shumagin Islands, south of the Alaska Peninsula. It is the oldest known American shipwreck in Alaska and as of 2007 had not been found.
(AP, 10/8/07)
1820 Sep 4, Czar Alexander declared that Russian influence in North America extended as far south as Oregon and closed Alaskan waters to foreigners.
(HN, 9/4/98)
1825 Feb 22, Russia and Britain established the Alaska/Canada boundary.
(HN, 2/22/98)
1844 The Cathedral of St. Michael the Archangel was built in Sitka, Alaska. It was destroyed by fire in 1966 and painstakingly rebuilt.
(AH, 6/07, p.69)
1856 In Alaska the Russian occupants of the Batzulnetas outpost were massacred by natives.
(AH, 6/07, p.69)
1864 Herbert Liebes opened a fur salon which grew to become H. Liebes & Company. Liebes ran sailing schooners from Alaska to SF with cargoes of furs.
(SFC, 6/29/04, p.B6)
1865 Jun, The Confederate ship Shenandoah under Capt. James Waddell attacked Yankee whalers off the coast of Alaska firing the last shots of the US Civil War. From 1864 to 1865 the Shenandoah captured, sank or ransomed 38 Union ships, mostly whalers, in the Indian, Pacific and Arctic oceans.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSS_Shenandoah)(SFC, 8/4/18, p.C4)
1865 Nov 6, The Confederate ship Shenandoah under Capt. James Waddell surrendered in Liverpool, England, after attacking Yankee commercial shipping off the coast of Alaska. It had sunk of captured 38 vessels, mostly New Bedford whaleships. The surrender of the Shenandoah was the last act of the US Civil War.
(SFC, 1/3/15, p.C2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSS_Shenandoah)
1865 US Coast Guard services began in Alaska when the cutter Shubrick led a 6 vessel expedition coastwise to Bering Straits.
(www.ak-prepared.com/vetaffairs/byerslake)
1867 Mar 30, US Secretary of State William H. Seward signed an agreement with Russia’s Baron Edouard de Stoeckl to purchase the territory of Alaska for $7.2 million, two cents an acre, a deal roundly ridiculed as "Seward's Folly," "Seward's icebox," and President Andrew Johnson's "polar bear garden."
(AP, 3/30/97)(HN, 3/30/01)(Reuters, 5/24/11)
1867 Apr 9, The treaty authorizing the purchase was ratified. Alaska became a state in 1959.The per-acre purchase price for Alaska paid by the U.S. to Russia in 1867 was two cents. Through the negotiations of Secretary of State William H. Seward the purchase of the 591,000 square miles (more than 375 million acres) of Russian America territory cost $7.2 million.
(HNQ, 9//98)
1867 Jun 20, Pres. Andrew Johnson announced the purchase of Alaska.
(MC, 6/20/02)
1867 Aug 12, The 1st US official, a coast guardsmen, arrived in Sitka, Alaska.
(www.ak-prepared.com/vetaffairs/byerslake)
1867 Oct 9, The Russians formally transferred Alaska to the US. The U.S. had bought Alaska for $7.2 million in gold.
(MC, 10/9/01)
1867 Oct 18, The United States took formal possession of Alaska from Russia.
(AP, 10/18/97)
1867 Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner popularized the name Alaska for the territory that had been known as Russian America in a famous Senate speech supporting the treaty to purchase Russian America.
(HNQ, 9/28/98)
1868 Jul 15, The Torrent sank in Alaska’s Cook Inlet after tidal currents, among the world's most powerful, rammed it into a reef south of the Kenai Peninsula. About 130 Army soldiers had come north on the Torrent to build the first US military fort in south-central Alaska. About 20 sailors and 15 of the soldiers wives and children were also on board. All 155 people on board survived. Remnants of the wreckage were found in 2007.
(AP, 10/8/07)(www.adn.com/life/story/9364436p-9278126c.html)
1868 Riggs National Bank supplied the $7.2 million in gold bullion for the purchase of Alaska.
(WSJ, 4/7/04, p.A1)
1869 Gustave Niebaum and others in San Francisco incorporated the Alaska Commercial Company with offices at Sansome and Halleck. Its plan was to consolidate Alaskan fur-trading and natural resources operations under a single umbrella.
(SFEM, 10/31/99, p.26)
1870 The US government granted exclusive rights for fur-trading and natural resource operations in Alaska to the Alaska Commercial Company in SF.
(SFEM, 10/31/99, p.26)
1871 A whaling fleet of 32 ships was abandoned off Icy Cape in the Chukchi Sea. Seven other vessels escaped with all the crew members saved. In 1998 an attempt was made to locate the shipwreck site.
(SFC, 7/24/98, p.A3)
1873 The Alaska Packers organized in San Francisco to transport workers for seasonal salmon canning work in Alaska. The Alaska Packers' Association (APA) was a San Francisco based manufacturer of Alaska canned salmon founded in 1891 and sold in 1982.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Packers%27_Association)(SSFC, 3/21/21, p.A2)
1880 Juneau, Alaska, was born when prospectors hit a mother lode on Gastineau Channel. Juneau was settled soon after a gold strike nearby by Richard Harris and Joe Juneau.
(SFEC, 2/6/00, p.T10)(HNQ, 2/6/00)
1880 A US census found 435 non-native residents in Alaska.
(Econ, 8/26/06, p.27)
1882-1884 Norwegian adventurer Johan Adrian Jacobsen collected some 200 Chugach items from graves in caves on Chenega Island, Alaska, for Germany's Royal Museum of Ethnology. In 2018 a Berlin museum returned ancient wooden masks, an idol and other spiritually significant artifacts plundered from graves to indigenous Alaskans.
(AP, 5/16/18)
1884 May 17, Alaska became a US territory. US Congress did not provide for an Alaskan government until this year. Administration of the territory was done in succession by the War Department, the Treasury and the Navy.
(SFEM, 10/31/99, p.26)(MC, 5/17/02)
1887 In Alaska William Moore, a former steamboat captain, homesteaded 160 acres with his son in a settlement he called Mooresville, where the Taiya River meets the Skagway. He anticipated a gold rush that arrived in 1897. His settlement was overrun and became Skagway.
(SSFC, 9/18/05, p.E13)
1890 Israel C. Russell, sponsored by the National Geographic Society, returned from an expedition to Mt. St. Elias with fossil bearing rocks.
(NG, 12/97, p.1)
1892 A Marine Corp. barracks was established in Sitka, Alaska.
(www.ak-prepared.com/vetaffairs/byerslake.htm)
1894 The Cape Fox Tlingit Indians moved to Saxman after smallpox reduced their population from some 1000 to 200.
(WSJ, 8/31/01, p.W13)
1895 Captain Michael A. Healy (b.1839) was stripped of his command in the US Revenue Cutter Service and his position with the Arctic Patrol, in which he served for 21 years. During his service he ferried reindeer across the Bering Strait to Alaska provide a food source for the Inuit.
(SFC, 4/15/05, p.E15)
1896 Aug, 16, A white man from California named George Carmack, a fellow not employed at anything in particular, was hiking around northwest Canada’s Yukon River area with his two Indian brothers-in-law "Skookum Jim" Mason and "Tagish Charley." The three found gold on Rabbit Creek, a stream that feeds the Yukon River near Dawson, Alaska.
(CFA, '96, p.88)(HN, 8/19/01)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klondike_Gold_Rush)
1897 Jul 15, The gold-laden ship Excelsior from Alaska landed in San Francisco. Seattle mayor W.D. Wood was visiting and immediately resigned his job, hired a ship, and organized an expedition from SF to the Yukon territory.
(WSJ, 7/17/97, p.A20)
1897 Jul 17, The Steamer Portland arrived into Seattle from Alaska with 68 prospectors carrying more than a ton of gold. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer announced that men with gold from Alaska were landing. This unleashed the Klondike gold rush and tens of thousands headed for the Yukon. The Klondike gold rush gave America and Canada a psychological boost in getting the economy moving again after suffering through the terrible depression that followed the 1893 crash.
(CFA, ‘96, p.88)(Hem., 7/95, p.79)(CFA, ‘96, p.89)(WSJ, 5/1/97, p.A16)(WSJ, 7/17/97, p.A20)
1897 Sep, Eight whaling ships with 273 men became trapped in ice off Point Barrow in an early freeze. Lt. David Henry Jarvis of the Revenue Cutter Service, the forerunner of the US Coast Guard, led a 1500-mile expedition overland from Nelson Island Point Barrow with a herd of reindeer to the stranded men.
(ON, 1/01, p.1)
1897-1902 The Jesup North Pacific Expedition was made to study the biological and cultural connections between peoples on each side of the Bering Strait. It was one of the first instances where a camera was used in such a study.
(WSJ, 12/30/97, p.A8)
1898 Mar 26, Lt. David Henry Jarvis of the Revenue Cutter Service reached Point Franklin, after a 1500-hundred mile trek, with a herd of reindeer to rescue 273 iced-in whalers stranded here and at Point Barrow.
(ON, 1/01, p.1)
1898 May, Construction began on the White Pass & Yukon railroad. It was led by Big Mike Heney, a Canadian Railway contractor, and Sir Thomas Tancred, who represented the British financiers.
(SFEC, 2/8/98, p.T3)
1898 The Klondike gold rush was in full swing. Gold was found on the Naotuk River in what later became the Gates of the Arctic National Park.
(SFEC,11/16/97, p.T5)(SFEC, 2/6/00, p.T6)
1899 The White Pass & Yukon railroad, which led to the goldfields, was completed.
(SFEC, 2/7/99, p.T4)
1899 Edward H. Harriman, chairman of the Union Pacific RR, led a survey expedition along the Alaska coast with 126 passengers aboard a luxury steamer. The 2-month, 9,000 mile journey from Seattle to Siberia included a stop at Cape Fox where the visitors gathered up items from what looked like an abandoned Tlingit Indian settlement. Much of the plunder was returned in 2001.
(WSJ, 8/31/01, p.W13)
1900 The 110-mile White Pass & Yukon narrow-gauge railroad from Skagway to Whitehorse, the Alaska-British Columbia border, was completed.
(SFEC,11/16/97, p.T5)(SFEC, 2/8/98, p.T3)
1900 Clarence Warner and "Tarantula Jack" Smith staked a claim for copper. They later sold it to Stephen Birch, who found financial backing for a company that eventually became Kennecott Copper.
(AH, 10/01, HT p.30)
1901 E.T. Barnette opened a trading post on the Chena River. A town formed that came to be called Chenoa City and was later renamed Fairbanks.
(SFEC, 2/8/98, p.T7)
1902 Felix Pedro, an Italian miner, discovered gold northeast of Chenoa City. Miners surged in from the Fortymile and Klondike goldfields.
(SFEC, 2/8/98, p.T7)
1903 Jan 24, U.S. Secretary of State John Hay and British Ambassador Herbert created a joint commission to establish the Alaskan border.
(HN, 1/24/99)
1903 Oct 20, A joint commission ruled in favor of the United States in a boundary dispute between the District of Alaska and Canada.
(AP, 10/20/97)
1906 Sep 7-1906 Sep 19, Dr. Frederick Cook (1865-1940) and Ed Barrill explored the foothills of Mt. McKinley, Alaska. Cook soon claimed to have taken a picture of his companion, Edward Barrill, from the summit of Mt. McKinley. In 1909 his book “To the Top of the Continent" was published. In 1923 Cook was convicted of mail fraud for selling worthless oil stocks to unsuspecting investors. In 1998 it was reported that the photo was a fake, and that the 2 men never reached the summit.
(SFC, 11/27/98, p.A3)(ON, 3/06, p.6)
1906 The capital was moved from Sitka to Juneau.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, Z1 p.2)
1906 The Alaska Packers Assoc. bought the square-rigged Balclutha ship and renamed it Star of Alaska. It carried workers to the Chignick Cannery and transported them back after the salmon season.
(SFEC,11/23/97, p.D3)
1906 A fire burned down most of downtown Fairbanks.
(SFEC, 2/8/98, p.T7)
1907 Sep 10, Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, the largest US National Forest, was established as part of the National Forest System in a presidential proclamation made by Theodore Roosevelt. In 1908 it was joined with the Alexander Archipelago Forest Reserve, established in 1902.
(SFEC, 8/29/99, Z1 p.6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongass_National_Forest)
1909 Jan 18, Robert Stroud (1890-1963), who later gained fame as the Birdman of Alcatraz, killed a bartender in Alaska. Barman F. K. "Charlie" Von Dahmer had viciously raped and beat his friend, Kitty O’Brien (36), a prostitute and dance-hall entertainer. Stroud later knifed a fellow prisoner and was transferred to Leavenworth prison where he murdered a guard in the prison dining hall.
(SSFC, 4/15/12, DB p.42)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Stroud)
1909 California became its own Jesuit province becoming fully independent from Turin. The Province boundaries expanded to encompass all of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.
(GenIV, Winter 04/05)(www.jesuitscalifornia.org/Page.aspx?pid=272)
1910 Apr 3, Alaska's Mt. McKinley, the highest mountain in North America, was climbed.
(HN, 4/3/98)
1911 Jun 4, Gold was discovered in Alaska's Indian Creek.
(HN, 6/4/98)
1912 Jun 6, In Alaska the Novarupta volcano began erupting 6 miles from Mount Katmai. When the eruption stopped on June 9th, the ash cloud had spread across southern Alaska. This was later recognized as the most powerful volcanic eruption of the 20th century. Crops withered across Canada and the US that summer under skies shrouded with volcanic ash.
(http://geology.com/novarupta/)(Hem, 4/96, p.78)
1912 Aug 24, By an act of Congress, Alaska was given a territorial legislature of two houses.
(HN, 8/24/98)
1913 Jun, Rev. Hudson Stuck led a team in the 1st ascent to the summit of Mt. McKinley, Alaska.
(ON, 3/06, p.8)(www.themilepost.com/major_attractions/mt_mckinley.shtml)
1915 Jun 27, In Fort Yukon, Alaska, a state record 100° F (38° C) was recorded.
(SC, 6/27/02)
1916 Fairbanks, Alaska, caught fire. The town's bacon supply was burned as fuel to keep the steam powered water pump running. The event was later covered by Margaret Murie (d.2003) in her 1962 autobiography "Two in the Far North."
(SFC, 10/24/03, p.A16)
1917 In Alaska the territorial Legislature created the Univ. of Alaska in Fairbanks and specified that it include a museum. In 1978 the state Legislature paid for a building designed to hold exhibits. In 1980 a 39,000-square-foot space opened as the Univ. of Alaska Museum of the North.
(SSFC, 5/6/07, p.G7)
1917 Denali National Park in Alaska was established. It covered 9,300 square miles. Denali was the native name for Mt. McKinley.
(SFEC, 2/9/97, p.T6)(SSFC, 3/28/04, p.D9)
1918 Oct 25, The Canadian steamship Princess Sophia foundered off the coast of Alaska; some 350 people perished.
(AP, 10/25/08)
1918 The flu epidemic began at Fort Riley, Kansas, in March where 48 men died. 72 of 80 residents at Brevig Mission, Alaska died from the flu in a 5 day period. In 1997 Dr. Johan Hultin recovered tissue in Brevig Mission with frozen virus and submitted it for gene sequencing.
(WSJ, 2/9/98, p.A16)(HNPD, 7/21/98)(SFC, 2/26/01, p.A9)(WSJ, 9/7/01, p.A1)(SFCM, 2/17/02, p.8)
1920s In 1989 Tooru Joe Kanazawa (d.2002 at 95) authored "Sushi and Sourdough," a glimpse into the world of Japanese immigrants in Alaska’s salmon canneries in the 1920s.
(SFC, 10/22/02, p.A16)
1922 Feb 6, The Washington Disarmament Conference came to an end with signature of final treaty forbidding fortification of the Aleutian Islands for 14 years.
(HN, 2/6/99)
1923 Jul 15, President Warren G. Harding tapped the golden spike of the $60 million Alaskan Railway at Nenana.
(SSFC, 2/3/02, p.C9)
1923 Aug 2, President Warren G. Harding died suddenly of an embolism in San Francisco on August 2, 1923, during a return trip form Alaska. Born November 2, 1865, in Corsica, Ohio, Harding was elected the 29th U.S. president in 1920.
(HNQ, 12/7/98)
1923 US Pres. Warren Harding authorized a 22-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve as an emergency oil supply for the US Navy near Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. In 2015 ConocoPhillips became the first company to draw from the reserve.
(Econ, 12/11/04, p.28)(SFC, 3/4/16, p.A9)
1924 Margaret Murie (b.1902) became the 1st woman to graduate from the Univ. of Alaska.
(SFC, 10/24/03, p.A16)
c1924 The railroad made it to Fairbanks.
(SFEC, 2/8/98, p.T7)
1925 Jan 27, Anchorage, Alaska, delivered a diphtheria antitoxin to Nenana. Dr. Curtis Welch in Nome had begun diagnosing cases of diphtheria. An emergency delivery of serum against the disease was arranged by dogsled. 20 mushers rushed the serum 674 miles from Nenana to Nome in 5 days. The last leg of the journey was run by Gunnar Kaasen (1882-1964) and his lead dog Balto (d.1933). An animated film on Balto was made in 1995 by Stephen Spielberg. The longest segment of the journey, 260 miles, was run by Leonhard Seppala and his lead dog Togo. The events were later described by Bill Sherwonit in his book: "Iditarod: the Great Race to Nome."
(SFC, 3/16/98, p.A3)(ON, 11/06, p.1)
1925 Feb 27, Glacier Bay National Monument was dedicated in Alaska.
(HN, 2/27/98)
1935 The Federal Emergency Relief Administration created an experimental farming community known as the Matanuska Valley Colony as part of the New Deal resettlement plan. Palmer, Alaska, was founded during the Great Depression, when 203 Midwestern farm families were relocated here and given 40-acre tracts as part of the Matanuska Colony Project.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matanuska_Valley_Colony)(LAT, 7/2/05)
1935 Aug 15, Humorist Will Rogers (55), American comedian and "cowboy philosopher," and aviation pioneer Wiley Post (36) were killed when their airplane crashed near Point Barrow, Alaska. Rogers once said: "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."
(AP, 8/15/97)(HN, 8/15/98)(MC, 8/15/02)
1936 Mar 26, Mary Joyce ended a 1,000 mile trip by dog in Alaska.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1939 Augie Hiebert went to Alaska to help build the first radio station in Fairbanks.
(WSJ, 9/22/07, p.A8)
1941 The Alaska Territorial Guard was formed.
(www.ak-prepared.com/vetaffairs/byerslake.htm)
1942 Mar 9, Construction of the Alaska Highway began.
(MC, 3/9/02)
1942 Jun 6, Japanese troops landed on Kiska, Aleutians.
(MC, 6/6/02)
1942 Jun 7, The Japanese invaded Attu and Kiska in the Aleutian Islands.
(HN, 6/7/98)
1942 Sep 16, The Japanese base at Kiska in the Aleutian Islands was raided by American bombers.
(HN, 9/16/98)
1942 Oct 29, The Alaska highway was completed. [see Nov 21]
(MC, 10/29/01)
1942 Nov 21, The Alaska-Canadian Highway across Canada was formally opened.
(HFA, '96, p.42)(AP, 11/21/97)
1943 May 11, During World War II, American forces landed on Japanese-held Attu island in the Aleutians; the Americans took the island 19 days later.
(AP, 5/11/02)
1943 Aug 15, Allies landed on Kiska in the Aleutians.
(MC, 8/15/02)
1946 Apr 1, Two large earthquakes shook the Scotch Cap Lighthouse on Unimak Island, Alaska. A resulting tsunami washed away the lighthouse. The Aleutian Islands earthquake also triggered a Pacific-wide tsunami that killed 165 people and caused over $26 million in damages. Tidal waves struck the Hawaiian islands, resulting in more than 170 deaths. 91 people were killed in Hilo.
(AP, 4/1/98)(Ind, 6/8/02, 5A)(SSFC, 8/25/02, p.C14)(SFC, 4/1/09, p.D8)
1946 Universal Services was formed in 1946 to provide catering and other support services for the civilian workforce rebuilding defense bases in Alaska. Extensive work was then developed with the oil industry that was expanding its exploration activity in Alaska. As the search for energy moved to other parts of the world, Universal followed. Operations were established in the Gulf of Mexico (1955), South America (1957), North Sea (1964), Africa (1960s), Middle East and Far East. Additional work was developed with the mining and construction industries.
(WWW, 12/19/98)
1948 Mar 12, In Alaska 24 merchant marines and six crewmen were flying from China to New York City, when their DC-4 slammed into Mount Sanford killing all 30. Pilots Kevin McGregor and Marc Millican discovered some mummified remains in 1999 while recovering artifacts to identify the wreckage they had found two years earlier.
(AP, 8/17/08)
1949 The Alaska travel guide “The Milepost" was 1st published as a 72-page guide named after the Alaska Highway mile markers. The 2005 edition was nearly 800 pages and included coverage of Canada’s Yukon and western Northwest Territories.
(SSFC, 4/3/05, p.E4)
1950s-1960s The Fort Greely base was used for biological and chemical weapons testing. The site also housed a nuclear reactor later entombed in a sarcophagus.
(SFC, 11/3/01, p.C3)
1952 Sep 7, The 369-foot passenger liner Princess Kathleen, launched in 1924, ran aground and sank near Juneau, Alaska. There was no loss of life.
(SFC, 2/22/10, p.A6)(www.greatships.net/princesskathleen.html)
1952 Nov 22, A US military plane crashed near Anchorage, Alaska. All 52 crew members were believed killed. Wreckage was spotted on a melting glacier in 2012. By 2014 the remains of 17 were recovered and identified. The remains of 35 others were not yet recovered.
(SFC, 6/19/14, p.A10)
1953 Augie Hiebert (1916-2007) opened Alaska’s first television station in Anchorage.
(WSJ, 9/22/07, p.A8)
1954 Feb 5, A US Air Force C-47 enroute from Fairbanks to Anchorage crashed on Kesugi Ridge near Byers Lake in Alaska. 10 people were killed and 6 survived.
(www.ak-prepared.com/vetaffairs/byerslake.htm)
1954 The Alaska town of North Pole began Operation Santa, a volunteer program to respond to children’s letters sent to Santa Claus. The US Postal Service dropped the program in 2009.
(SFC, 11/20/09, p.A9)
1955 Jun 24, Soviet MIG’s down a lightly armed US Navy patrol plane over the Bering Strait. Russia’s foreign minister V.M. Molotov expressed his country’s regrets the next day.
(HN, 6/24/98)(SFC, 6/24/05, p.F7)
1957 Mar 9, An 8.1 earthquake shook the Andreanof Islands, Alaska.
(MC, 3/9/02)
1958 Jun 30, Congress passed a law authorizing the admission of Alaska as the 49th state in the Union, the first new state since 1912. The Senate passed the Alaska statehood bill by a vote of 64-20.
(HN, 6/30/98)(AP, 6/30/08)
1958 Jul 7, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Alaska statehood bill. Alaska became the 49th state in January 1959.
(AP, 7/7/07)
1958 Jul 10, A largest tsunami on record was caused by the fall of 90 million tons of rock and ice into Lituya Bay, Alaska, following a local earthquake. The wave washed 500 meters up a mountain on the opposite shore.
(CW, Spring ‘99, p.30)
1958 Aug 26, Alaskans went to the polls to overwhelmingly vote in favor of statehood.
(AP, 8/26/08)
1958 Bill Egan became Alaska’s 1st governor.
(AH, 10/04, p.42)
1959 Jan 3, President Eisenhower signed a proclamation admitting Alaska to the Union as the 49th state. Its area is 586,412 sq. mls. Capital: Juneau; bird: willow ptarmigan; flower: forget-me-not; nickname: The Last Frontier.
(TMC, 1994, p.1959)(THM, 4/27/97, p.L5)(AP, 1/3/98)(440 Int'l. 1/3/99)
1959 Jul 4, A 49-star flag was raised for the first time at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., in honor of Alaska which had become the 49th state in the Union on July 7, 1958.
(IB, Internet, 12/7/98)
1960 The Eisenhower administration created the Arctic National Wildlife Range on 9 million acres of Alaska’s coastal plain and mountains adjacent to Canada.
(SSFC, 8/28/05, p.A13)
1960 Sen. John F. Kennedy was presented with a giant cabbage in Palmer, Alaska.
(LAT, 7/2/05)
1964 Feb 11, Sarah Palin, later governor of Alaska, was born in Sandpoint, Idaho. After 3 months her family moved to Alaska. In 2008 Sen. John McCain named her as his vice-presidential running mate.
(SFC, 8/30/08, p.A6)
1964 Mar 27, On Good Friday, Valdez, Alaska, in Prince William Sound was rocked by an 8.6 earthquake, the largest ever recorded in North America. In 1977 seismologists pegged the quake at 9.2. It lasted 4 minutes and was followed by tsunamis and fires and 131 people were killed. Survivors moved 4 miles west to solid bedrock and rebuilt the town.
(AP, 3/27/97)(SFEC, 2/8/98, p.T5)(SFEC, 4/5/98, Z1 p.8)(SFEC, 10/17/99, p.A3)(SFC, 11/26/99, p.C21)(WSJ, 9/13/01, p.B11)(SFC, 2/15/02, p.G8)(AP, 3/11/11)
1966 Walter Hickel (1919-2010) upset 2-term Democratic Gov. William Egan to become governor of Alaska. In 1969 Hickel was named secretary of the interior under Pres. Nixon.
(AH, 10/04, p.42)(SSFC, 5/9/10, p.C8)
1967 Feb 28, Art Davidson, Ray Genet and Dave Johnston completed the first winter ascent of Alaska’s Mount McKinley. On their descent they became trapped by a storm for 6 days at 18,500 feet in an ice-cave. In 1969 Art Davidson authored “Minus 148°."
(WSJ, 4/28/07, p.P8)(www.summitpost.org/parent/150199/mount-mckinley-denali.html)
1967 Jul 15, In Alaska a major blizzard caught 7 climbers high on Mount McKinley (Denali). Five of 12 climbers managed to reach safety, but 7 were caught and froze to death. In 2007 James M. Tabor’s: “Forever on the Mountain: The Truth Behind One of Mountaineering's Most Controversial and Mysterious Disasters," was published.
(WSJ, 1/17/07, p.D6)
1967 Dec 26, Atlantic Richfield oil workers struck oil on Alaska’s North Slope at Prudhoe Bay.
(AH, 10/04, p.42)
1968 Mar 13, Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) and Humble Oil and Refining Company (now Exxon Company, U.S.A.) announced the discovery of oil on Alaska’s North Slope (Prudhoe Bay). The oil companies soon began efforts to construct a pipeline, but work was suspended due to environmental concerns.
(AH, 2/05, p.14)(www.alyeska-pipe.com/Pipelinefacts/Chronology.html)
1968 May 15, A tornado at Jonesboro, Arkansas, killed 34 people. Another near Anchorage, Alaska, killed one person.
(SFC, 5/15/09, p.D8)
1968 The Anchorage Museum of History and Art opened.
(WSJ, 7/17/97, p.A20)
1968 Ted Stevens began representing Alaska in the US Senate.
(SFC, 12/20/05, p.A1)
1968 Following the disocvery of oil in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, the Eskimos were given 44m acres of land, $1 billion and shares in regional and village corporations so that the government could build a pipeline to the oil.
(Econ, 8/30/14, p.27)
1969 Ben Metcalfe (d.2003 at 83) coordinated the initial campaigns of the Winnipeg-based Don't Make a Wave Committee (later Greenpeace) against planned nuclear tests in the Aleutian Islands.
(SSFC, 10/19/03, p.A31)
1970 Feb 12, Dean Arthur Schwartzmiller (28) was convicted in Juneau, Alaska, of 2 charges of lewd conduct after being accused of molesting 2 boys. Over the next 35 years he was arrested in 6 more states on molestation charges. In 2005 police in San Jose found notebooks at his home that documented over 36,000 sex acts with young boys. In 2006 a jury in Santa Clara, Ca., convicted Schwartzmiller (64) of molesting 2 San Jose boys.
(SFC, 6/17/05, p.A1)(SFC, 9/19/06, p.A1)
1970 Nov 25, Walter Hickel (1919-2010), former governor of Alaska and US Secretary of the Interior, was fired by Pres. Nixon after sending Nixon a letter critical of how the president handled student protests following the National Guard shootings at Kent State.
(AH, 10/04, p.42)(SSFC, 5/9/10, p.C8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wally_Hickel)
1971 Sep 4, An Alaska Airlines jet crashed near Juneau, killing 111 people.
(AP, 9/4/97)
1971 Sep 15, A group of activists set sail on the Phyllis Cormack for Alaska from Vancouver, Canada, to stop a US nuclear weapons test in the Aleutian Islands. Panels reading Green and Peace dangled from the bridge. Bob Hunter (d.2005), one of the activists, became the 1st president of Greenpeace (1973-1977).
(HFA, '96, p.38)(GQ, summer ‘96, p.18)(SFC, 4/30/97, p.A9)(Econ, 5/14/05, p.89)
1971 Nov 6, The US Atomic Energy Commission exploded a 5-megaton bomb beneath Amchitka Island, Alaska, just 87 miles from the Petropavlovsk Russian naval base. It registered as a magnitude-7 earthquake.
(SFC, 12/17/01, p.A4)
1971 Dec 18, Pres. Nixon signed into law the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA). It gave large portions of prime bear habitat to the Alutiiq people, who had hunted and fished on the island for 7,000 years. 10% of the state, 44 million acres of land, was ceded to native tribes.
(http://tinyurl.com/3xjb8w)(SFC, 2/2/00, p.A7)(AH, 10/04, p.42)
1971 Walter Hickel (1919-2010), former governor of Alaska (1966-1969) and former US secretary of the interior (1969-1970) under Pres. Nixon, authored “Who Owns America."
(AH, 10/04, p.42)(SSFC, 5/9/10, p.C8)
1972 Sep 26, Richard M. Nixon met with Emperor Hirohito in Anchorage, Alaska, the first-ever meeting of a U.S. President and a Japanese Monarch.
(HN, 9/26/99)
1972 Oct 16, A small plane disappeared during a flight from Anchorage to Juneau. On board were Thomas Hale Boggs Sr. (b.1914), US Congressman from Louisiana, Representative Nick Begich of Alaska, Begich’s aide Russell Brown and the pilot, Don Jonz. House Resolution 1 of January 3, 1973, officially recognized Boggs's presumed death and opened the way for a special election. Boggs’s wife, Lindy Boggs, (1916-2013), won the special election and served to 1991.
(SSFC, 7/28/13, p.A10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hale_Boggs)
1972 The Alaska Continental Development Corp. merged with the financially troubled Alaska Airlines. The airline soon became profitable in part due to the Alaska oil pipeline.
(WSJ, 1/7/07, p.A4)(http://tinyurl.com/6obvr7)
1973 Nov 16, President Nixon signed the Trans Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act into law. Oil companies formed a consortium that gave British Petroleum 50.1% control of the pipeline.
(www.alyeska-pipe.com/Pipelinefacts/Chronology.html)(AH, 10/04, p.43)
1973 The Alaskan 1,159 mile Iditarod dog-sled race was first run in commemoration of the 1925 dog-sled relay for diphtheria vaccine to Nome.
(Nat. Hist., 3/96, p.34,41)(SFEC, 3/7/99, p.D3)
1974 Apr 29, Work officially began on the trans-Alaska oil pipeline. Prudhoe Bay to Yukon River road construction began.
(AH, 10/04, p.40)(www.alyeska-pipe.com/Pipelinefacts/Chronology.html)
1975 Mar 27, The 1st pipe of the Alaska oil pipeline was laid at Tonsina River.
(www.alyeska-pipe.com/Pipelinefacts/Chronology.html)
1975 Alaska’s Supreme Court ruled that what a person does in his home is protected under a strong privacy provision in the state’s Constitution. Justices concluded that cultivating small amounts of cannabis was harmless. Marijuana remained illegal under federal law.
(SFC, 5/24/10, p.A1)
1976 The Alaska Permanent Fund was created after oil was discovered on the North Slope. Residents of over a year received an annual dividend from the fund.
(SFC, 9/27/02, p.A7)
1977 May 31, The trans-Alaska oil pipeline, formally proposed in 1969, was completed after three years of work. Alaska's Senator Mike Gravel (1930-2021) had seized the issue in 1973 by proposing legislation that would exempt the project from any further court intervention under the National Environmental Policy Act.
(AP, 5/31/97)(NY Times, 6/27/21)
1977 Jun 20, The 1st oil of the Alaska pipeline began to flow south 799 miles from Prudhoe Bay to the port of Valdez. It reached Valdez on Jul 28.
(www.alyeska-pipe.com/pipelinefacts.html)
1977 Jun 28, The 1st Prudhoe Bay oil of the Alaska pipeline reached the port of Valdez as construction of the Trans-Alaskan pipeline was completed.
(www.alyeska-pipe.com/pipelinefacts.html)
1978 Jan 7, In Alaska the body of Shelley Connolly (16) was found next to the train tracks just south of McHugh Creek at milepost 109 of the Seward Highway; she had been sexually assaulted and murdered. The last time she was seen alive was earlier that evening inside Chilkoot Charlies talking to four men. In 2019 police in Oregon arrested Donald F. McQuade following a DNA match from cigarette butts discarded in public.
(http://tinyurl.com/yxza6u32)(SFC, 9/5/19, p.A5)
1978 Pres. Jimmy Carter declared permanent national monuments on 56 million acres in Alaska. Sec. of Interior Cecil Andrus ordered protection of an additional 52 million acres of Alaskan public land.
(SSFC, 3/27/17, p.C3)
1978 Vandals blew up a section of the Alaska pipeline, opened in 1977, spilling 700,000 gallons of oil. No one was arrested.
(SFC, 3/11/06, p.A4)
1980 Oct 4, Some 520 people were forced to abandon the cruise ship “Prisendam" in the Gulf of Alaska after the Dutch luxury liner caught fire—no deaths or serious injury resulted. The ship capsized and sank a week later.
(AP, 10/4/08)
1980 Dec 2, Pres. Carter signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act and protected 104 million acres of wilderness. The size of Denali National Park was tripled to 6.2 million acres. Motorized access to the land was given for traditional activities such as hunting, fishing and camping. Peggy Wayburn’s book: "Alaska the Great Land" was credited with helping persuade Congress. The law directed the Interior Dept. to assess oil potential in 1.5 million acres of the coastal plain. A ban was put on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In 2002 Pres. Bush pushed to overturn the ban. Estimates on oil there ranged from 3.2 to at least 5.7 billion barrels.
(http://alaska.fws.gov/asm/anilca/intro.html)(WSJ, 5/13/99, p.B1)(SFC, 3/28/02, p.A24) (SFC, 9/30/06, p.B6)(Econ, 12/20/03, p.38)(SSFC, 2/24/02, p.A9)(SSFC, 8/28/05, p.A13)
1982 Alaska began issuing oil royalty annual checks to all residents.
(SFC, 9/22/00, p.A10)
1982 The White Pass & Yukon railroad closed after a highway opened between Skagway and Whitehorse, and a slump in metal prices shut down mines.
(SFEC, 2/8/98, p.T3)
1983 The Alaska Veterans Memorial at Byers Lake was erected. It was dedicated by Gov. Bill Sheffield in 1984.
(www.ak-prepared.com/vetaffairs/byerslake)
1985 Mar 20, Libby Riddles of Teller, Alaska, became the first woman to win the Iditarod Trail Dog Sled Race.
(AP, 3/20/05)
1986 Mar 12, Susan Butcher won the 1,158 mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Alaska.
(www.newmorningtv.tv/dailyalmanac_031204.jsp)
1986 The Tatitlek tribe sold timber rights on Prince William Sound and heavy logging resulted.
(WSJ, 9/3/99, p.A1)
1987 Aug 7, Lynne Cox became the 1st to swim from US to Russia across the Bering Strait.
(http://tinyurl.com/lal2h)
1988 Oct 16, Rescue workers near Point Barrow, Alaska, continued their efforts to save three California gray whales trapped in Arctic Ocean ice [see Oct 26].
(AP, 10/16/98)
1988 Oct 26, US-Soviet effort freed 2 gray whales from frozen Arctic near Barrow, Alaska [see Oct 16].
(www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1988/102688j.htm)
1988 The White Pass & Yukon railroad opened for tourists visiting the state from cruise ships and the new road to Skagway.
(SFEC, 2/8/98, p.T3)
1988 Alaskan oil production peaked.
(Econ, 8/23/14, p.23)
1989 Mar 24, Good Friday. The nation's worst oil spill occurred as the supertanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on a reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound and began leaking 11 million gallons of crude. The Exxon Valdez struck ground in Alaska’s Prince William Sound and spilled 10.6 million gallons of oil. It was later renamed the Mediterranean and operated between Europe and the Middle East. Exxon then spent some $2.5 billion to clean up the spill and filed suit against Lloyd’s of London for reimbursement under a $210 million insurance policy. In 1996 a jury in Houston voted that Lloyd’s and some 250 other underwriters should compensate Exxon $250 million. The Exxon Valdez oil spill fouled approximately 1,000 miles of Alaska shoreline. The oil tanker ran aground in Prince William Sound, spilling some 11 million gallons of crude oil. An estimated 250,000 seabirds were killed. The Exxon Valdez spilled 240,000 barrels of oil in Alaska's Prince William Sound.
(AP, 3/23/97)(TMC, 1994, p.1989)(SFC, 5/5/96, p.A-11)(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A10)(SFEC, 2/8/98, p.T5)(HNQ, 8/14/99)
1989 Mar 25, In the wake of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska's chief environmental officer, Dennis Kelso, criticized cleanup efforts as too slow.
(AP, 3/25/99)
1989 Mar 28, President Bush sent three high-ranking officials to Alaska to "take a hard look" at the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound. '
(AP, 3/28/99)
1989 Mar 30, The Anchorage Daily News won the public service award for its reports on alcoholism and suicide among native Alaskans.
(AP, 3/30/99)
1989 Mar 31, The FBI announced it would conduct a criminal investigation into the massive oil spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound.
(AP, 3/31/99)
1989 Apr 1, Alaska Gov. Steve Cowper announced that a "strike force" of state officials and local fishermen were taking over some of the cleanup operations following the massive Exxon Valdez oil spill.
(AP, 4/1/99)
1989 Dec 13, In Alaska Mt. Redoubt began erupting. Nearly every one of the volcanic events during the 1989-90 eruption of Redoubt Volcano generated lahars in the Drift River Valley.
(http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/About/What/Monitor/Hydrologic/AFMRedoubt.html)
1989 Dec 15, Mt. Redoubt erupted in Alaska and sent baseball-sized pieces of pumice over 20 miles from the volcano. A 747 jet flew into its ash cloud, lost all four engines and dropped 4,000 feet before it recovered. No one was hurt but the plane sustained $80 million in damage.
(AAM, 3/96, p.84)(PacDisc. Spring/’96, p.31)
1990 Jan 2, A lahar from the Mt. Redoubt volcano in Alaska flooded part of the oil terminal in Cook Inlet.
(http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/About/What/Monitor/Hydrologic/AFMRedoubt.html)
1990 Jan 29, Former Exxon Valdez skipper Joseph Hazelwood went on trial in Anchorage, Alaska, on charges stemming from the nation's worst oil spill. Hazelwood was acquitted of major charges and convicted of a misdemeanor.
(AP, 1/29/98)
1990 Jan, Mt. Redoubt again erupted in Alaska and sent baseball-sized pieces of pumice more than 20 miles from the volcano.
(AAM, 3/96, p.84)
1990 Feb 27, Exxon Corp and Exxon Shipping were indicted on 5 criminal counts for the oil spill at Valdez, Alaska.
(www.epa.gov/history/topics/valdez/02.htm)
1990 Mar 22, A jury in Anchorage, Alaska, found former tanker captain Joseph Hazelwood innocent of three major charges in connection with the Exxon Valdez oil spill, but convicted him of a minor charge of negligent discharge of oil.
(HN, 3/22/97)(AP, 3/22/00)
1990 Mar 23, Former Exxon Valdez Captain Joseph Hazelwood was sentenced by a judge in Anchorage, Alaska, to help clean up Prince William Sound and pay $50,000 in restitution for his role in the 1989 oil spill.
(AP, 3/23/00)
1990 Dec 3, Walter Hickel (1919-2010), former governor of Alaska (1966-1969) and US Interior chief (1969-1970) under Pres. Nixon, took office as Alaska’s 8th governor. He served to Dec 5, 1994.
(SSFC, 5/9/10, p.C8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wally_Hickel)
1991 Mar 13, Exxon pleaded guilty to criminal charges and agreed to pay $100 million fine in a $1.1 billion settlement of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
(www.epa.gov/history/topics/valdez/02.htm)(HN, 3/13/98)
1991 Jun, Alaska Airlines began the 1st regularly scheduled service from the US to the Soviet Far East.
(WSJ, 1/7/07, p.A4)
1991 Oct 8, A federal judge in Anchorage, Alaska, approved a five-billion-dollar settlement against Exxon for the Valdez oil spill.
(www.explorenorth.com/library/weekly/aa032499.htm)
1992 Aug 18, Christopher McCandless (b.1968), a former student from Harvard, starved to death in the wilderness of Alaska. His story was later told by Jon Krakauer in the book “Into the Wild." In 2007 Sean Penn directed a film of the same name based on the book. In 2020 an abandoned bus that was used by McCandless was removed for public safety.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_McCandless)(Econ, 11/17/07, p.102)(SFC, 6/20/20, p.A4)
1994 Aug 11, A US federal jury awarded $286.8 million to some 10,000 commercial fishermen for losses as a result of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.
(AP, 8/11/99)
1994 Sep 16, A federal jury ordered Exxon Corp. to pay $5.3 billion in punitive damages to commercial fishermen and others harmed in the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska. A US Court of Appeals threw out the punitive damages in 2001.
(AP, 9/16/99)(SFC, 3/27/99, p.A7)(SFC, 11/8/01, p.A17)
1994-2002 Tony Knowles served as governor of Alaska.
(Econ, 8/26/06, p.27)
1995 Sep 22, An AWACS plane carrying US and Canadian military personnel crashed on takeoff from Elmendorf Air Force Base near Anchorage, Alaska, killing all 24 people aboard.
(AP, 9/22/00)
1995 Alaska’s halibut fisherman decided to privatize their fishery by dividing up their annual quota into “catch shares," that were owned in perpetuity by each fisherman.
(Econ, 9/20/08, p.24)
1996 May 4, In Alaska Jessica Baggen was raped and murdered after she celebrated her 17th birthday. Her body was found two days later. On August 3, 2020, suspect Steve Branch (66) died by suicide after state police investigators traveled to his home in Austin, Arkansas, to interview him about Baggen’s murder in the city of Sitka.
(NBC News, 8/11/20)
1996 Sarah Palin (b.1964) was elected mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, and served for 2 terms until 2002 when term limits forced her from office.
(SFC, 8/30/08, p.A6)
1996-2006 In Alaska per-capita federal spending rose from 38% above the national average to 71% above. Much of this was later attributed to Sen. Ted Stevens, who had begun representing Alaska in 1968.
(Econ, 9/6/08, p.34)
1997 Feb 19, In southwestern Alaska Evan Ramsey (16) opened fire with a 12-gauge shotgun as students assembled in a high school lobby, killing a principal and 16-year-old classmate in Bethel, a town of 6,000. Ramsey was sentenced to a 198-year prison term.
(AP, 4/25/06)(www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/weird/kids1/index_1.html)
1997 Nov 9, A family of 7 and the pilot of a commuter plane died in a crash in Barrow.
(SFEC,11/10/97, p.A4)
1997 Nov 26, In the Aleutian Islands 800 miles southwest of Anchorage, Alaska, the freighter, Kuroshima, ran aground off Dutch Harbor in heavy winds. Two crewmen were reported dead and 10,000 gallons of oil was reported to have leaked. As much as 240,000 gallons was reported on board. Emergency workers removed 57,000 gallons on Dec 5 and 30,000 gallons still remained.
(SFC,11/28/97, p.B9)(SFC, 12/1/97, p.A3)(SFC,12/897, p.A12)
1997 Dr. Johan Hultin (72) of San Francisco found remnants of the 1918 Spanish flu in the lungs of a corpse buried in the permafrost of a cemetery in Alaska. An earlier effort at Brevig Mission in 1951 had failed.
(SFC, 10/6/05, p.A14)
1998 Mar 17, In Alaska Jeff King battled through blowing snow and poor visibility to earn his third victory in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
(AP, 3/17/08)
1998 Bob Kaufman, SF venture capitalist, met with Richard Goldman to ask for money to buy 10,539 acres of wilderness for public trust. The Goldman fund provided some $5 million over the next 3 years.
(SSFC, 7/29/01, p.A6)
1998 John V.R. Evans of Alaska’s Matanuska Valley set a Guinness world record by growing an 18-pound, 13 ounce carrot.
(SFC, 7/6/05, p.A2)
1999 Feb, The snowmobile was banned from all but 7,000 of the 2 million acres of Denali National Park designated as the Denali National Wilderness.
(WSJ, 5/13/99, p.B1)
1999 Mar 21, In Alaska an avalanche killed at least 4 snowmobilers at the Turnagain Pass in Chugach National Forest.
(WSJ, 3/23/99, p.A1)
1999 Jun 10, A sightseeing helicopter crashed near Herbert Glacier and all seven people onboard were killed.
(SFC, 6/10/99, p.A3)
1999 Aug, Alfred Reumayr of British Columbia was arrested in a joint operation by the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. In 2008 he pleaded guilty to plotting to blow up the Trans-Alaskan oil pipeline on New Year's Day 2000. He had planned to buy energy securities at low prices before the attack, and hoped to profit by selling them at a higher price amid market turmoil afterward.
(AP, 3/14/08)
2000 Jan 20, The 2000 US census began in Unalakleet, Alaska.
(SFC, 1/21/00, p.A1)
2000 Jan 31, Alaska Airlines Flight 261, an MD-83 jet with 88 people bound for Seattle from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, crashed about 2.7 miles north of Anacapa Island, Ca. There were no survivors. A stop had been scheduled in SF.
(SFC, 2/1/00, p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Airlines_Flight_261)
2000 Mar 14, Defending champion Doug Swingley drove his dog team to victory in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
(AP, 3/14/01)
2000 Sep 2, In Alaska Joshua Alan Wade killed Della Brown (33), a native Alaskan, by smashing her head with a rock in Anchorage. Wade was acquitted in 2003 in her killing, but was convicted of tampering with her body and served several years in prison. In 2010 Wade acknowledged her murder.
(SFC, 2/17/10, p.A6)(http://www.ktva.com/iteam/ci_14413092)
2000 Oct, The annual oil royalty checks from the Alaska Permanent Fund totaled nearly $2000 per resident.
(SFC, 9/22/00, p.A10)
2000 In Haines, Alaska, Dave Pahl created his Hammer Museum, a tribute to the oldest human tool. In 2007 he struggled to retain the name as the Armand Hammer Museum of Art changed its name to the Hammer Museum of Art and applied for a trademark to the name.
(WSJ, 10/5/07, p.A1)
2001 Jan, A rare tundra blaze burned across 15,000 acres in the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge.
(SFC, 1/6/01, p.D8)
2001 Mar 14, Doug Swingley won the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Alaska for the third straight year.
(AP, 3/14/02)
2001 May 7, Four Anchorage school children were stabbed by Jason Pritchard (33). Pritchard was shot with rubber bullets and taken into custody.
(WSJ, 5/8/01, p.A1)(SFC, 5/8/01, p.A2)
2001 Jul 30, A sightseeing plane crashed near Glacier Bay National Park and all 6 people aboard were killed.
(WSJ, 8/1/01, p.A1)
2001 Oct 5, In Alaska Daniel Carson Lewis (37) was arrested for shooting a hole into the oil pipeline, which cause the leakage of up to 280,000 of gallons. Some 285,600 gallons spewed out for 3 days until the leak was plugged Oct 6. The cleanup cost was $7 million.
(SFC, 10/6/01, p.A11)(SSFC, 10/7/01, p.A17)
2001 Oct 10, A small plane crashed following takeoff from Dillingham. 10 people were killed in the Cessna 208 Caravan.
(SFC, 10/11/01, p.A21)
2002 Jan 24, In Juneau, Alaska, Joseph Frederick (18) displayed a banner reading “Bong Hits 4 Jesus" as the Olympic torch passed by. The head teacher at his high school suspended him and Frederick sued in return. The case moved up to the US Supreme Court. In 2007 the US Supreme Court ruled 5-3 that schools may punish youths for statements that might promote drug use.
(Econ, 3/24/07, p.35)(SFC, 6/26/07, p.A8)
2002 Feb 16, Pres. Bush departed on a 6-day Asia trip. Enroute to a three-nation tour of Asia, Bush stopped off at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska, where he told hundreds of cheering US soldiers that "America will not blink" in the fight against terrorism and Osama bin Laden.
(SFC, 2/16/02, p.A3)(AP, 2/16/07)
2002 Mar 12, Martin Buser captured his fourth victory in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
(AP, 3/12/07)
2002 Apr 8, California mountaineers, Aaron Martin (32) and Reid Sanders (30), died on Mount St. Elias while trying to reach the summit in order to ski down.
(SFC, 4/18/02, p.A2)
2002 May 24, Japan led a successful move to deny Alaska and Siberian native peoples a renewal of permission to hunt whales after a failed bid to end a 20-year moratorium on commercial whaling.
(SFC, 5/25/02, p.A17)
2002 Jul 1, A Canadian climber who had scaled Alaska's Mount McKinley alone died after he fell about 1,000 feet (300 meters) while descending from the peak's upper reaches.
(Reuters, 7/1/02)
2002 Sep 25, The annual Alaska oil dividend was announced to be $1,540.76.
(SFC, 9/27/02, p.A7)
2002 Nov 3, A 7.9 earthquake hit Alaska 90 miles south of Fairbanks.
(SFC, 11/4/02, p.A2)
2002 Nov, Frank Murkowski, former Republican senator, was elected governor of Alaska.
(Econ, 3/13/04, p.32)
2003 Mar 13, In Alaska Robert Sorlie of Norway won the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog race in nine days, 15 hours, 47 minutes.
(AP, 3/13/04)
2003 Oct 6, Timothy Treadwell (46) and Amie Huguenard (37) were found fatally mauled by a bear near Kaflia Bay in Katmai National Park, Alaska.
(SFC, 10/8/03, p.A3)
2003 Dec 23, The Bush administration reversed a 2001 Clinton policy and opened some 300,000 acres of Alaska's Tongass National Forest to possible logging or other development. The plan affirmed a Clinton plan from 1997.
(SFC, 12/24/03, p.A4)
2003 Alaska resumed limited aerial wolf hunting. In 1996 and 2000 Alaska voters turned down proposals to resume aerial predation control.
(Econ, 3/26/05, p.36)
2004 Jan 20, Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski called for a constitutional amendment to limit future spending growth.
(ADN, 1/21/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 16, Mitch Seavey won the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in nine days, 12 hours, 20 minutes and 22 seconds.
(AP, 3/16/05)
2004 Nov 3, In Alaska Lisa Murkowski won the US Senate seat she inherited from her father.
(Econ, 11/6/04, p.30)
2004 The federal government owned two-thirds of Alaska.
(Econ, 10/23/04, p.30)
2005 Jan 21, The US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) posted a decision to open thousands of acres on Alaska’s North Slope for exploratory oil drilling.
(SFC, 1/22/05, p.A5)
2005 Feb 5, Gregg Renkes, Alaska’s attorney general, resigned after months of battling criticism for alleged ethics breaches while shaping an int’l. trade deal.
(SSFC, 2/6/05, p.A3)
2005 Mar 16, The US Senate voted 51-49 to drill for oil in Alaska.
(WSJ, 3/17/05, p.A1)
2005 Jun 7, A Univ. of Alaska Fairbanks student found a track from a three-toed dinosaur believed to be about 70 million years old in Denali National Park, the first evidence that the animals roamed there.
(AP, 7/6/05)
2005 Jul 25, In Virginia 4 adult Scout leaders from Alaska were killed on the opening day of their Jamboree when a tent pole apparently struck a power line.
(AP, 7/26/05)
2005 Oct 20, Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, vowed to resign from the Senate if his fellow lawmakers followed through on threats to cancel spending on a $230 million "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska that was stuck into a pork-filled highway bill earlier this year. On Nov 16. lawmakers scuttled plans for the bridge from Ketchikan to Gravina Island.
(KRN, 10/20/05)(SFC, 11/17/05, p.A7)
2005 Oct 28, The Alaska Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional to bar benefits to the same-sex partners of public employees.
(SFC, 10/29/05, p.A3)
2005 Dec 21, The US Senate stopped a bid by Ted Stevens, Alaska’s Republican Sen., on a measure for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the US military spending bill. Senators also forced through a 5-month extension of key provisions of the Patriot Act. The move effectively killed a compromise that would have made permanent 14 of 16 provisions. The next day Senators cut the extension to 5 weeks.
(SFC, 12/21/05, p.A1)(SFC, 12/22/05, p.A5)(SFC, 12/23/05, p.A1)
2005 In Alaska the Chiginagak Volcano in the early summer discharged acidic ash and water into the King Salmon River killing all the fish there.
(SFC, 9/17/05, p.B8)
2006 Jan 11, The US Interior Dept. agreed to open some 400,000 acres on Alaska’s North Slope for exploratory oil drilling.
(SFC, 1/12/06, p.A6)
2006 Mar 2, An oil spill in Alaska curtailed Prudhoe Bay production. At least 265,000 gallons spilled onto the tundra from a British Petroleum (BP) line handling 100,000 barrels per day. The spill of 5,000 barrels was the largest in the field’s 29-year history. In 2011 a $25 million settlement was reached with a BP subsidiary for the spill.
(WSJ, 3/3/06, p.A1)(SFC, 3/11/06, p.A4)(SSFC, 8/13/06, p.A18)(SFC, 5/4/11, p.A6)
2006 Mar 10, In Alaska another oil leak was detected on a 2nd North Slope transmission pipeline. This followed the recently plugged leak discovered on Mar 2.
(SFC, 3/11/06, p.A4)
2006 Mar 15, Veteran musher Jeff King drove his dog team into the Bering Sea town of Nome, Alaska, to capture the 1,100-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, the world's premier dog-sled event, for the fourth time.
(AP, 3/15/06)
2006 Apr 22, In Alaska 6 seventh-graders were arrested in North Pole, just outside of Fairbanks, for conspiracy to commit murder during an assault on their school. Authorities found weapons in their homes.
(AP, 4/25/06)
2006 Apr 23, In Alaska 2 small planes collided midair and crashed about 20 miles north of Anchorage, killing five people.
(AP, 4/24/06)
2006 Jul 6, A US federal rule was published designating some 36,750 square miles in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska as critical habitat for right whales. The rule takes effect Aug. 7.
(AP, 7/7/06)
2006 Jul 23, The 654-foot Singapore-flagged Cougar Ace, a cargo ship carrying 4,813 cars from Japan to Canada, began tilting to its port side late at night hundreds of miles off Alaska's Aleutian Islands. 23 crew members were rescued the next day. The ship was owned by Tokyo-based Mitsui O.S.K. Lines and listed on its side for several weeks before being righted. 4,703 of the cars were new Mazdas valued at about $100 million. After a year of planning Mazda scheduled all the cars for complete reduction to scrap in Portland, Ore.
(AP, 7/25/06)(SFC, 7/25/06, p.A2)(WSJ, 4/29/08, p.A9)
2006 Jul 24, Rescuers from the US Coast Guard and Alaska Air National Guard saved 23 crew members from a cargo ship taking on water south of the Aleutian Islands.
(AP, 7/24/07)
2006 Aug 5, Susan Butcher (51), four-time Iditarod champion, died in Seattle, Wa. In 1986 she became the Alaska race's second female winner and brought increased national attention to its grueling competition.
(AP, 8/6/06)
2006 Aug 6, Oil giant BP announced an indefinite shutdown of the biggest oilfield in the US, at Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, after finding a pipeline leak. BP was able to maintain partial operations.
(AP, 8/6/07)
2006 Aug 7, Oil company BP scrambled to assess pipeline corrosion in Alaska that will shut shipments from the nation's biggest oil field, removing about 8% of daily US crude production and driving oil and gasoline prices sharply higher. BP said it would have to replace 16 miles of pipeline at the Prudhoe Bay field.
(AP, 8/7/06)(AP, 8/7/07)
2006 Aug 11, BP PLC announced it would keep one side of the Prudhoe Bay oil field open as it replaced corroded pipes, averting a larger crimp in the nation's oil supply.
(AP, 8/11/07)
2006 Aug 23, In Alaska Republican Gov. Frank Murkowski finished last in a 3-day primary election. Sarah Palin, a former Wasilla mayor, won with over 50% of the vote.
(SFC, 8/24/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 7, BP America, the US arm of British energy giant BP, said it will spend more than 550 million dollars (432 million euros) over the next two years on improvements to its Alaskan oil fields, including pipeline repairs.
(AP, 9/7/06)
2006 Sep 21, In NYC Venezuela’s Pres. Chavez visited the Mount Olive Baptist Church in Harlem and promised to double the amount of discounted heating oil his country is shipping to needy Americans. His offer included 100 gallons of heating oil for each of 12,000 households in rural Alaska.
(SFC, 9/22/06, p.A3)(SSFC, 10/8/06, p.A27)
2006 The population of Alaska reached 665,000.
(Econ, 8/26/06, p.27)
2007 Jan 9, Pres. Bush lifted a ban on oil and gas drilling in Alaska’s Bristol area.
(SFC, 1/10/07, p.A5)
2007 Jan 17, Alaska’s newly elected Gov. Sarah Palin (42) delivered her 1st state speech.
(http://community.adn.com/?q=adn/node/104605)
2007 Mar 13, In Alaska Lance Mackey won the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, in nine days, five hours, eight minutes.
(AP, 3/13/08)
2007 Apr 24, At a conference in Moscow titled “Megaprojects of Russia’s East," supporters proposed a 68-mile tunnel under the Bering Strait. The tunnel linking Alaska and Siberia would cost $65 billion and take some 20 years to build.
(SFC, 4/25/07, p.A6)
2007 May 4, An Alaska lawmaker and two of his former colleagues were arrested for allegedly soliciting and accepting bribes from VECO Corp., a private oil services company, to pass a new oil-tax system.
(Reuters, 5/4/07)
2007 May 28, In Alaska officials from 75 nations began talks critical to whale conservation amid pressure, notably from Japan, to lift a 20-year ban on commercial whale hunting.
(AFP, 5/28/07)
2007 Jun 28, Bruce Kennedy (b.1938), former CEO of Alaska Airlines (1979-1991), was killed when his Cessna 182 crashed in Cashmere, Wash.
(WSJ, 1/7/07, p.A4)
2007 Jul 9, Alaska’s former state Rep. Tom Anderson was convicted of taking thousands of dollars from a corrections company consultant in exchange for his help in the Legislature.
(AP, 7/10/07)
2007 Jul 25, In Alaska a sightseeing plane crashed leaving a pilot and 2 couples from a visiting cruise ship dead.
(WSJ, 1/25/07, p.A1)
2007 Jul 31, A US government watchdog group called for the removal of GOP Sen. Ted Stevens from his Senate committees, less than 24 hours after the FBI and IRS raided the senator’s Alaska home in connection with a public corruption probe centered in the state.
(www.cqpolitics.com/2007/07/ethics_flaps_could_stir_compet.html)
2007 Aug 3, In Alaska Mindy Schloss (52), a nurse practitioner, was last seen alive in Anchorage. Her body was found on Sep 13 near Wasilla. In 2010 Joshua Alan Wade (29) acknowledged that he had shot and killed Schloss, who lived next door to him.
(SFC, 2/17/10, p.A6)(www.amw.com/missing_persons/recovered.cfm?id=47985)
2007 Sep 13, Bill Allen (70), former head of VECO Corp., testified in a federal corruption trial in Anchorage, that he had bribed 3 Alaska legislators, including the son of US Sen. Ted Stevens.
(SFC, 9/14/07, p.A9)
2007 Nov 1, A federal jury convicted Vic Kohring, a former Alaska lawmaker, of corruption charges involving tax protections sought by oil companies as part of plans for a multibillion-dollar natural gas pipeline.
(AP, 11/1/07)
2007 Nov 18, The Jesuit order of the Roman Catholic Church agreed to pay $50 million to 110 Eskimos to settle claims of sexual abuse in Alaska.
(SFC, 11/19/07, p.A3)(Reuters, 11/19/07)
2007 Dec 7, Former Alaska House Speaker Pete Kott was sentenced to six years in a federal prison for accepting $9,000 in bribes from the founder of an oil field services company.
(AP, 12/7/07)
2008 Jan 5, In Alaska a small plane crashed at the end of a runway off Kodiak Island killing 6 people enroute to celebrate Eastern Orthodox Christmas.
(SFC, 1/7/08, p.A3)
2008 Jan 21, Marie Smith (89), a resident of southeastern Alaska, died. She was the last speaker of her native Eyak language.
(Econ, 2/9/08, p.92)
2008 Mar 12, In Alaska Lance Mackey won his second consecutive Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, completing the 1,100-mile journey in just under 9 1/2 days.
(AP, 3/12/08)
2008 Mar 23, The Alaska Ranger, a 189-foot fishing vessel, sank off the Aleutian Islands, killing the captain and 4 crew members. 42 crew members were rescued. State environmental regulators were notified that the ship was carrying 145,000 gallons of diesel when it sank in deep seas.
(AP, 3/24/08)(SFC, 10/1/09, p.A6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FV_Alaska_Ranger)
2008 Jun 25, The US Supreme Court overturned the $2.5 billion in punitive damages that Exxon Mobil Corp had been ordered to pay for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska. Punitive damages were reduced to $507.5 million.
(AP, 6/25/08)(Econ, 5/22/10, p.68)
2008 Jul 9, A grand jury in Anchorage indicted Sen. John Cowdery, an Alaska legislator, on bribery and conspiracy counts in a federal investigation of corruption that already has led to convictions against three former state lawmakers. Federal prosecutors allege that Cowdery conspired with executives of oil field services company VECO Corp. to bribe another unnamed state senator for votes to support oil and gas legislation.
(AP, 7/10/08)
2008 Jul 29, Alaska Senator Ted Stevens (84), the longest-serving Republican in the US Senate, was indicted for making false statements concerning gifts he received from an oil-services firm.
(AFP, 7/29/08)
2008 Jul, In Alaska Gov. Palin’s chief of staff told Walter Monegan, the state public safety commissioner, that he was being fired because the governor wanted “to go in a different direction." Monegan, hired by Palin shortly after she took office in 2006, said his firing was connected to his failure to remove Mike Wooten, Palin’s former brother-in-law, from the state police force.
(SFC, 9/1/08, p.A7)
2008 Aug 4, Alaska sued the US government saying its listing of polar bears as a threatened species will hurt oil exploration and tourism.
(WSJ, 8/6/08, p.A1)(www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/49694/story.htm)
2008 Aug 29, John McCain, on his 72nd birthday, tapped little-known Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (44) to be his vice presidential running mate.
(AP, 8/29/08)(SFC, 8/30/08, p.A1)
2008 Sep 1, The GOP convention opened at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minn., in an abbreviated session due to Hurricane Gustav. Alaska’s Gov. Palin, GOP candidate for the vice-presidency, disclosed that her daughter, Bristol (17), is 5 months pregnant. Over 250 demonstrators were arrested as splinter groups smashed department store and police car windows. On March 11, 2009, Levi Johnson (19) announced he and Bristol Palin had decided to end their relationship.
(SFC, 9/2/08, p.A1,5)(WSJ, 9/2/08, p.A4)(SFC, 3/12/09, p.A6)
2008 Oct 2, US vice presidential candidates held their only debate prior to elections. Alaska’s Gov. Sarah Palin often spoke in generalities. Delaware Sen. Joe Biden was generally focused and forceful, and seemed to take painstaking care not to appear disrespectful in the least.
(AP, 10/3/08)
2008 Oct 10, Alaska released a report in which a legislative investigator found that Gov. Palin had violated state ethics laws and abused her power by trying to have her former brother-in-law fired as a state trooper.
(AP, 10/11/08)
2008 Oct 17, The Bush administration named the beluga whale in Alaska’s Cook Inlet an endangered species, despite opposition from Gov. Palin. Only 375 beluga whales remained there as opposed to some 1,300 in the 1970s. In 2011 a US federal judge upheld the listing.
(SFC, 10/18/08, p.A3)(SFC, 11/22/11, p.A6)
2008 Oct 22, The fishing vessel Katmai sank off Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. 4 crew members were rescued after spending some 15 hours in a life raft. 5 bodies were recovered with 2 men missing.
(SFC, 10/24/08, p.A10)
2008 Oct 27, A Washington DC jury found Alaska’s Sen. Stevens guilty on seven counts of trying to hide more than $250,000 in free home renovations and other gifts from a wealthy oil contractor. Stevens, who first entered the Senate in 1968, faced Alaska's voters in upcoming elections as a convicted felon. On April 1, 2009, the US Justice Dept. dropped charges against Stevens, saying prosecutors’ mistakes forced the move.
(AP, 10/28/08)(WSJ, 4/2/09, p.A1)
2008 Nov 4, In Alaska voters ousted Republican Sen. Ted Stevens. Democrat Mark Begich claimed a narrow victory on Nov 18, after a tally of remaining ballots showed him holding a 3,724-vote edge.
(AP, 11/19/08)
2008 Dec 16, NASA said satellite data indicated that more than 2 trillion tons of land ice have melted in Alaska, Antarctica and Greenland since 2003. The satellite data showed the latest signs of what scientists say is global warming. A scientist from America’s National Snow and Ice Data Center said the shrinking of Arctic ice (and exposure of extra sea to radiation) was warming the world at an accelerating pace.
(http://tinyurl.com/uxl8tm8)(Econ, 12/20/08, p.109)
2009 Mar 18, In Alaska lance Mackey won his 3rd consecutive Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
(WSJ, 3/19/09, p.A6)
2009 Mar 23, Alaska's Mount Redoubt volcano erupted five times overnight, sending an ash plume more than 9 miles into the air in the volcano's first emissions in nearly 20 years.
(AP, 3/23/09)
2009 May 21, Alaska’s Gov. Sarah Palin became the only governor to turn down federal stimulus money for energy efficiency, a move that legislators called "disappointing" for a state with some of the country's highest energy costs.
(AP, 5/22/09)
2009 Jun 18, The US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that William Osborne, a prisoner convicted in Alaska in 1994, has no constitutional right to DNA testing to prove his innocence. In April 2008, a three-judge panel of US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit had held that Osborne should be allowed to obtain new DNA tests. The court said that it is up to the states and Congress to decide such rights.
(SFC, 6/19/09, p.A7)(Econ, 8/1/09, p.25)(http://tinyurl.com/mkmte2)
2009 Jun 22, The US Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to allow a mining company to dump waste from an Alaskan gold mine into a nearby 23-acre lake, although the material will kill all of the lake's fish. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin called the decision "great news for Alaska" and said it "is a green light for responsible resource development." The Kensington gold mine 45 miles north of Juneau will produce as many as 370 jobs when it begins operation.
(AP, 6/22/09)
2009 Jul 3, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin announced her decision to leave office more than a year early, effective July 26. The announcement left open the possibility of a presidential run. Palin was replaced by Sean Parnell.
(AP, 7/4/09)(SSFC, 11/16/14, p.A9)
2009 Jul 15, In Alaska Anthony Rollins, a 13-year decorated Anchorage police officer, was arrested after being indicted for assaulting multiple women while on duty.
(SFC, 7/16/09, p.A6)
2009 July 26, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin stepped down and was replaced by Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Parnell)(SSFC, 11/16/14, p.A9)
2009 Oct 21, Federal court documents linked Alaska Rep. Don Young to a wide-ranging investigation of corruption in Alaska. It was alleged that the 19-term Republican had received gifts totaling nearly $200,000 over 13 years from Veco Corp., a defunct oil field services company run by former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens.
(SFC, 10/24/09, p.A10)
2009 Oct 22, The Obama administration said it is designating over 200,000 square miles in Alaska and off its coast as critical habitat for polar bears.
(SFC, 10/22/09, p.A7)
2009 Oct 28, In Anchorage Bill Allen, an oil services executive at the heart of a federal investigation of corruption in Alaska, was sentenced to 3 years in prison and fine $750,000.
(SFC, 10/29/09, p.A6)
2009 Nov 24, In Alaska the Catholic diocese of Fairbanks and representatives of almost 300 alleged victims of sex abuse by clergy agreed on a settlement of almost $10 million.
(SFC, 11/25/09, p.A4)
2009 Dec 21, In Alaska an oil spill was discovered coming from a 6-inch pipeline in the Prudhoe Bay oil field.
(SFC, 12/23/09, p.A8)
2009 Dec 23, In Alaska a 123-foot tug boat hit Bligh Reef, the same reef that damaged the Exxon Valdez in 1989. Over the next few days 49,000 gallons of diesel fuel were salvaged from the tug. It was unknown ho much fuel was spilled.
(SSFC, 12/27/09, p.A10)
2009 Sarah Palin, former governor of Alaska (2007-2009), authored “Going Rogue: An American Life."
(SFC, 9/29/09, p.A6)
2010 Jan 11, Fox News announced that Sarah Palin, former Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential candidate, would become a regular commentator on its cable channel.
(SFC, 1/12/10, p.A4)
2010 Jan 18, It was reported that Alaska corporations and a multinational firm are planning to build the first fiber optic cable between Asia and Europe through the Arctic. The project estimated at $1 billion, involved laying 10,000 miles of undersea fiber optic cable from Tokyo, along the Alaska coast, through the Northwest Passage, past Greenland to London.
(SFC, 1/18/10, p.D3)
2010 Feb 9, Phil Harris (53), the fishing boat captain whose adventures off the Alaska coast were captured on the television show "Deadliest Catch", died in Anchorage following a massive stroke on Jan 29.
(AP, 2/10/10)
2010 Feb 13, In Alaska an avalanche near Seward buried Jim Bowles, head of Conoco Phillips Alaska and Alan Gage, part of the company’s capital projects team. They were among a party of 12 snowmobilers.
(SFC, 2/15/10, p.A6)
2010 Mar 8, In Alaska the body of rural teacher Candice Berner (32) was found a mile outside of Chignik Lake. Wolf tracks surrounded the body.
(SFC, 3/12/10, p.A8)
2010 Apr, In Alaska Kip Lynch, a former army soldier, shot and killed his wife Racquell (19) and their 8-month old baby, Kyirsta. Their bodies remained in the family's Anchorage apartment for a weekend before they were discovered. Lynch had shot himself but recovered. He was found guilty in June 2011 and in 2012 was sentenced to 80 years in prison.
(Reuters, 1/20/12)
2010 May 7, Walter Hickel (b.1919), former governor of Alaska and US Interior chief (1969-1970) under Pres. Nixon, died in Anchorage.
(SSFC, 5/9/10, p.C8)
2010 May 25, In Alaska several thousand barrels of crude spilled from the trans-Alaska pipeline and overflowed a storage tank. The spill was in a containment area with an impermeable liner.
(SFC, 5/27/10, p.A8)
2010 May 28, In Alaska a backpacker shot and killed a grizzly bear with his handgun in Denali National Park. A man and woman reported that they were hiking when the bear emerged from trailside brush and charged the woman.
(AP, 5/31/10)
2010 Aug 1, In Alaska a Fairchild C-123 registered to All West Freight of Delta Junction crashed in Denali National Park killing all 3 people on board.
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100802/ap_on_re_us/us_alaska_plane_crash)
2010 Aug 9, In Alaska a small plane crashed killing former US Sen. Ted Stevens (86) and 4 others at a mountainside on Bristol Bay. 4 others survived the crash of the 1957 De Havilland DHC-3T.
(SFC, 8/11/10, p.A4)
2010 Aug 21, In Alaska a float-plane carrying 4 people went missing 285 miles southwest of Anchorage. The passengers included 3 Katmai National Park rangers.
(SFC, 8/23/10, p.A5)
2010 Nov 17, Alaska election officials confirmed that Rep. Senator Lisa Murkowski won her US Senate seat as a write-in candidate.
(SFC, 11/18/10, p.A1)
2011 Jun 10, The state of Alaska has released more than 24,000 pages of printed e-mails from former governor Sarah Palin. The e-mails include some from her government account and some from two personal accounts, and are said to shed light on how she did business while she was in office. Individuals who want to read them will have to pay a $725 charge for copying and several hundred dollars more to have them delivered. Interest in Palin remains high amidst rumors that she plans to run for president, and several newspapers were already making plans to scan and publish the e-mails.
(Reuters, 6/10/11)
2011 Jun 11, Brian Young of Kodiak, Alaska, suddenly stopped breathing after he completed the 20-hour climb up to the summit of Mt. McKinley and then back to camp. Young was the fifth climber this season to die at Mt. McKinley, which is North America’s tallest peak.
(Reuters, 6/11/11)
2011 Jul 30, In Alaska two small planes collided. One managed to land in Anchorage, the other crashed killing at least 2 people on board.
(SSFC, 7/31/11, p.A10)
2011 Sep 20, Alaska announced that the Permanent Fund Dividend for residents this year would be $1,174. the fund was created in 1976.
(SFC, 9/21/11, p.A6)
2012 Mar 6, Ten US states voted in the Super Tuesday Republican primaries. Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney edged out conservative rival Rick Santorum in the vital battleground of Ohio and won five of the night's other contests. Romney also notched victories in Alaska, Idaho, Vermont, Virginia and his home-state of Massachusetts, while Santorum won North Dakota, Oklahoma and Tennessee, and Newt Gingrich carried his home state of Georgia.
(SFC, 3/7/12, p.A6)(Econ, 3/10/12, p.18)
2012 Apr 16, In San Francisco the annual Goldman Environmental Prizes were presented 6 individuals. They included Sofia Gatica of Argentina work on diseases related to agrochemicals; Caroline Canon of Alaska for her village efforts against oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean; Ma Jun of China for his efforts on air and water violations by major manufacturers; Ikal Angelei of Kenya for her efforts to protect Lake Turkana; Evgenia Chirikova of Russia for her efforts to protect the Khimki Forest; and Father Edwin Gariguez of the Philippines for advocating against mining developments on indigenous lands.
(SFC, 4/16/12, p.A10)
2012 Jun 14, In Alaska 5 Japanese climbers on an expedition to scale Mt. McKinley were caught up in the avalanche. One managed to escape and 4 were left missing.
(AFP, 6/16/12)
2012 Jul 18, In Alaska 2 visitors from Australia were killed in a fiery small plane crash about 39 miles north of Fairbanks.
(Reuters, 7/19/12)
2012 Aug 13, US Interior Sec. Ken Salazar announced the first comprehensive plan to manage the national petroleum reserve in Alaska, allowing new drilling on half of the nearly 23-million-acre reserve, while putting the rest off limits.
(SFC, 8/14/12, p.A4)
2012 Dec 2, In Alaska Israel Keyes (34), who had also confessed to killing a Vermont couple, was found dead in his jail cell in Anchorage. Investigators later said Keyes had confessed to killing 8 people before he committed suicide.
(AP, 12/3/12)(SFC, 12/8/12, p.A4)
2013 Mar 8, A commercial Beechcraft 1900 cargo plane crashed in southwestern Alaska. The bodies of the pilot Jeff Day (38) and co-pilot Neil Jensen (20) were found the next day.
(SSFC, 3/10/13, p.A8)
2013 Mar 15, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the US is deploying 14 new ground-based missile interceptors in Alaska to counter renewed nuclear threats from North Korea and Iran. Hagel also said the US would shift some "resources," which he didn't specify, from the delayed Aegis anti-missile program in Europe.
(http://tinyurl.com/almlalu)
2013 Mar 31, An Alaska State Trooper helicopter crashed overnight during a mission to rescue a stranded snowmobiler. All three onboard were believed killed.
(SFC, 4/1/13, p.A5)
2013 Jul 7, In Alaska an air taxi crashed after takeoff from Soldotna killing the pilot and all 9 passengers.
(SFC, 7/8/13, p.A4)
2013 Sep 23, British adventurer Sarah Outen arrived at Adak in the Aleutian Islands becoming the first woman to row solo from Japan to Alaska. She had left Choshi, Japan, on April 27.
(SFC, 9/25/13, p.A6)
2013 Nov 29, In southwest Alaska a Hageland Aviation Cessna 208 turboprop crashed near St. Marys. 4 people were killed and six injured. Melanie Coffee (25) left her 5-month-old baby to reach St. Marys and direct rescuers back to the crash site. Her baby died.
(SSFC, 12/1/13, p.A15)
2013 Dec 30, The US FAA selected six states (Alaska, Nevada, New York, North Dakota, Texas and Virginia) to test how drones can be more widely used in US airspace. 24 states had competed for selection.
(SFC, 12/31/13, p.A6)
2014 Jan 30, Royal Dutch Shell said it will suspend drilling in offshore Alaska after a US court decision and as the oil major streamlines operations following a slump in annual profits.
(AFP, 1/30/14)
2014 May 1, Alaska state troopers Gabriel Rich and Sgt. Patrick Johnson were killed in Tanana. Suspect Nathaniel Lee Kangas (19) was arrested.
(SFC, 5/3/14, p.A5)
2014 May 25, A wildfire in Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula grew to almost 218 square miles. Mandatory evacuations were underway.
(SFC, 5/26/14, p.A9)
2014 Jun 10, The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it has granted the first permission for commercial drone flights over US land. The BP energy corporation and drone maker AeroVironment of California have been given permission to use a Puma drone to survey pipelines, roads and equipment at Prudhoe Bay in Alaska. The first flight took place on June 8.
(AP, 6/10/14)
2014 Aug 25, In Alaska a rocket carrying an experimental Advanced Hypersonic Weapon exploded as the flight was terminated following the detection of an anamoly near a Kodiac lauch pad shortly after liftoff.
(SFC, 8/26/14, p.A4)
2014 Aug, The US Forest service gave the go-ahead for the so-called Big Thorne timber sale in the Tongass National Forest of Alaska. Environmental groups soon filed three separate suits to stop the sale.
(SFC, 8/29/14, p.A9)
2014 Oct 7, A US federal appeals court in San Francisco struck down Nevada and Idaho’s bans on same-sex marriage. The ruling also applies to all nine states in the court’s territory and will overturn marriage bans in Montana, Alaska and Arizona.
(SFC, 10/8/14, p.A6)
2014 Oct 12, A US federal judge struck down Alaska’s first-in-the-nation ban on gay marriages.
(SFC, 10/13/14, p.A8)
2014 Nov 4, Alaska voters elected independent candidate Bill Walker to replace incumbent Gov. Sean Parnell. Results were only made final on Nov 14.
(SSFC, 11/16/14, p.A9)
2014 Nov 4, Alaska’s statewide initiative legalized marijuana, but allowed local governments to ban pot businesses within their borders. In 2017 voters in and around Fairbanks and on the Kenai Peninsula rejected efforts to ban commercial marijuana cultivation and retail sales.
(SFC, 10/5/17, p.A7)
2015 Feb 24, Alaska became the first red state to legalize the smoking, growing, and owning of small amounts of marijuana, bringing the decriminalization movement to a conservative stronghold.
(Reuters, 2/24/15)
2015 Mar 21, In Alaska a nearly yearlong search for a missing came to a grim end with the discovery of four bodies - Rebecca Adams (23), her boyfriend, Brandon Jividen (38), and her children, Michelle Hundley (6) and Jaracca Hundley (3) - a dead dog and a handgun just off a trail in a rural area near the family's home on the outskirts of Kenai.
(AP, 3/23/15)
2015 Jun 24, Alaska reported 278 active fires following record heat in May.
(SFC, 6/25/15, p.A6)
2015 Jun 25, In Alaska 9 people aboard a sightseeing airplane were killed when it crashed near Ketchikan.
(SFC, 6/26/15, p.A6)
2015 Jul 22, The Obama administration issued permits with conditions clearing the way for Royal Dutch PLC to begin limited exploratory drilling in Chukchi Sea off Alaska’s northwest coast.
(SFC, 7/23/15, p.A5)
2015 Aug 18, In Alaska 3 men were believed buried by a landslide at a construction site in Sitka. Six landslides hit the city following 2.5 inches of rain over the last 24 hours.
(SFC, 8/20/15, p.A7)
2015 Aug 30, The Obama administration announced its decision to bestow the traditional Alaska Native name of Denali for what has been known as Mt. McKinley on the eve of Pres. Obama’s 3-day visit to the state.
(SFC, 9/3/15, p.A12)
2015 Sep 1, Pres. Obama visited the Exit Glacier in Alaska, which has receded 1.25 miles since 1815 and 187 feet since last year alone, and called it a signpost of climate change.
(SFC, 9/2/15, p.A8)
2015 Oct 2, A report released by the Alaska Department of Labor showed that about 7,500 more people moved out of the state than arrived in fiscal year 2014.
(AP, 10/3/15)
2015 Oct 16, The US Interior Department announced it is canceling future oil lease sales and will not extend current leases in Arctic waters off Alaska's northern coast.
(AP, 10/17/15)
2015 The US federal government owned 60% of the land in Alaska. The state owned 28%.
(Econ, 9/5/15, p.36)
2016 Jan 24, In south-central Alaska a magnitude-6.8 earthquake knocked items off shelves and walls in and jolted the nerves of residents in this earthquake-prone region. There were no immediate reports of injuries.
(AP, 1/24/16)
2016 Jan, In Alaska thousands of dead common murres, a type of seabird also known as a guillemot, washed ashore near Homer and along the state’s vast coastline. The birds appeared to have starved. Researchers later pinned the die-off on warm ocean temperatures that affected the tiny fish eaten by the birds.
(Econ, 1/30/16, p.24)(SFC, 2/11/17, p.A9)
2016 Mar 26, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, breathed fresh life into his campaign for the White House with a clean sweep in caucuses in the western US states of Alaska, Hawaii and Washington.
(AFP, 3/27/16)
2016 Mar 27, In southwestern Alaska the Pavlof Volcano erupted sending ash 20,000 feet into the air.
(SFC, 3/29/16, p.A14)
2016 Nov 13, In Alaska David Grunwald (16) was killed near the Knik River. Four teens were later convicted in the murder. Dominic Johnson (16) had instigated a brutal beating of Grunwald before the murder and 19 days later led authorities to the area where they laid the teen's body. In 2021 Johnson was sentenced to serve a total of 99 years in prison.
(https://tinyurl.com/tdzh7rc8)(Tribune Publ., 5/6/21)
2016 Nov 25, In Alaska four people including an infant were shot and killed at a hotel in Fairbanks. McKay Hutton (22) was identified as the gunman in the murder-suicide.
(SSFC, 11/27/16, p.A8)
2016 Dec 14, Alaska Airlines completed its purchase of Virgin America.
(SFC, 12/15/16, p.C1)
2017 Apr 1, In Alaska workers of Hilcorp Alaska LLC discovered an oil sheen and bubbling from under the company’s Anna platform on the west side of Cook Inlet. It was not clear how much oil had spilled into the inlet southwest of Anchorage.
(SFC, 4/3/17, p.A4)
2017 Apr 3, Pres. Donald Trump signed into law legislation HJ69, undoing Obama-era rules that restricted the hunting of bear in Alaska. This soon led to an increase in orphan bear cubs in the state.
(SFC, 8/12/17, p.A9)
2017 May 3, Ten environmental and Alaskan Native groups filed suit to maintain the ban on oil and gas exploration, a key part of former Pres. Obama’s environmental legacy.
(SFC, 5/4/17, p.C4)
2017 May 11, US environmental regulators cleared the path for a stalled copper and gold mine in Alaska by agreeing to settle current lawsuits and other issues over the project, which had drawn environmental concerns over its potential impact on the world's largest sockeye salmon fishery.
(Reuters, 5/12/17)(SFC, 5/13/17, p.A6)
2017 Jul 25, Kenneth Manzanares of Utah killed his wife as the family was on a vacation on the Emerald Princess after Kristy Manzanares told him in their cabin that she wanted a divorce and she wanted him to get off the ship at Juneau. He was sentenced on June 3, 2020, to a 30-year federal prison term after pleading guilty to the killing. On July 14, 2021) Manzanares (43) was found dead at the Lemon Creek Correctional Center in Juneau.
(https://tinyurl.com/5rcrssx5)(AP, 7/17/21)
2018 Jan 22, US Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke signed a land trade agreement that could lead to construction of a road through Alaska’s Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. The road would connect the King Cove fishing community to an all weather airport at Cold Bay.
(SFC, 1/23/18, p.A6)
2018 Jan 23, A magnitude-7.9 earthquake struck in the Gulf of Alaska, sending the state's coastal residents inland to seek shelter from possible tidal waves. Tsunami alerts were soon lifted.
(Reuters, 1/23/18)
2018 Mar 14, In Alaska Norwegian musher Joar Ulsom was the first to reach the finish line in Nome after traveling nearly a thousand miles across rugged terrain.
(AP, 3/14/18)
2018 Aug 4, In Alaska a small sight-seeing plane crashed on Thunder Mountain in Denali National Park. 4 people were killed and a fifth was missing.
(SFC, 8/7/18, p.A4)
2018 Oct 16, Alaska's Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott resigned for making unspecified innappropriate comments, imperiling the re-election of Gov. Bill Walker.
(SFC, 10/18/18, p.A6)
2019 Mar 13, Pete Kaiser became the latest Alaska Native to win the 1,000-mile Iditarod dog sled race.
(AP, 3/13/19)
2019 May 13, In Alaska at least four people were killed when two sightseeing planes carrying cruise ship tourists collided in midair near Ketchikan. Two people remained missing.
(SFC, 5/14/19, p.A6)
2019 Mar 29, In Alaska US District Judge Sharon Gleason ruled that an executive order by Pres. Donald Trump that lifted an Obama-era ban on drilling in the Arctic Ocean and parts of the North Atlantic coast was unlawful.
(SSFC, 3/31/19, p.A8)
2019 Jul 4, Temperatures in Alaska reached record highs with Anchorage recording 90 degrees. The city's previous record was 85 degrees on June 14, 1969.
(SSFC, 7/7/19, p.A10)
2019 Jul 13, It was reported that over the course of 10 days this month, Alaskan wildfires burned an area of land the size of Rhode Island. This is way above normal — though this doesn't match Alaska's extreme burning of 2015. The UN The World Meteorological Organization noted that over 100 intense fires burned in the Arctic Circle alone over the past six weeks, releasing more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than Sweden does in an entire year.
(Mashable, 7/14/19)
2019 Jul 24, A strike by Alaska's ferry workers halted traffic for the Alaska Marine Highway System, the state-operated ferry system that serves 35 coastal towns, most of them without outside road access.
(Reuters, 7/27/19)
2019 Jul 26, It was reported that the Arctic is suffering its worst wildfire season on record, with huge blazes in Greenland, Siberia and Alaska producing plumes of smoke that can be seen from space.
(The Guardian, 7/26/19)
2019 Jul 27, Alaska ferry workers and state officials sought a federal mediator's help to end a strike that has disrupted travel during the peak summer tourist season as the labor dispute surfaced in the 2020 presidential campaign.
(Reuters, 7/28/19)
2019 Jul 28, Israel's defence ministry said tests of the Arrow-3 system were carried out in the US state of Alaska and it successfully intercepted targets above the atmosphere. The Arrow system, partly financed by the United States, was developed and produced by Israeli Aerospace Industries in partnership with Boeing.
(AFP, 7/28/19)
2019 Aug 2, Alaska officials and the union for striking boat workers said they have reached a deal to end a walkout that has shut down the state's ferry system for 10 days at the peak of the summer tourist season.
(Reuters, 8/2/19)
2019 Sep 6, The Alaska Department of Corrections agreed to policy changes to accommodate Muslim inmates who wish to practice their religion, settling a lawsuit brought last year.
(AP, 9/6/19)
2019 Sep 21, The Alaska Republican Party passed a rule canceling the holding of a presidential primary in 2020. Earlier this month, Republican leaders in Nevada, South Carolina and Kansas voted to scrap their presidential nominating contests in 2020, erecting more hurdles for the long-shot candidates challenging President Donald Trump.
(AP, 9/21/19)
2019 Oct 9, Alaska police said Brian Steven Smith (48) has been arrested in Anchorage after videos were found on a digital memory card depicting a woman being assaulted and killed.
(SFC, 10/10/19, p.A5)
2019 Oct 17, In Alaska a commuter plane carrying 42 people overshot a runway in Unalaska. One of two passengers, who suffered critical injuries, soon died.
(SFC, 10/19/19, p.A6)
2019 Nov 18, Projects to protect Texas marshes from erosion and an Alaskan village from the Bering Sea got help from some of the 44 grants awarded today by the National Coastal Resilience Fund, a public-private partnership assisting communities threatened by storms and flooding from rising and warming seas.
(AP, 11/18/19)
2019 Nov 26, Pres. Donald Trump signed an executive order creating a White House task force on missing and slain American Indians and Alaska Natives.
(SFC, 11/27/19, p.A5)
2019 Dec 31, Two crew members of the Scandies Rose were rescued after the 130-foot crab fishing vessel from Dutch Harbor, Alaska. A search for the five crew members lasted 20 hours before it was called off.
(AP, 1/1/20)
2020 Jan 3, In Alaska Shishaldin Volcano in the Aleutian Islands, one of Alaska’s most active volcanoes, shot a cloud of ash more than 5 miles high, triggering a warning to aviators and putting on a show that was captured in satellite imagery.
(Reuters, 1/3/20)
2020 Jan 15, Four coastal Louisiana tribes and one in Alaska that say the US government violated their human rights by failing to take action on climate change have submitted a formal complaint to the United Nations in Switzerland.
(AP, 1/17/20)
2020 Feb 6, In southwestern Alaska a pilot and four passengers were killed in a commuter plane crash.
(SFC, 2/8/20, p.A6)
2020 Feb 14, The Alaska Supreme Court cleared the way for a campaign seeking to oust the state's embattled governor to proceed with plans to collect enough signatures to place a recall initiative on the 2020 ballot. A lower-court judge had ruled that allegations of misconduct lodged against Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy met the legal requirements for placing a recall question on this year's election ballot.
(Reuters, 2/14/20)
2020 Mar 18, In Alaska Thomas Waerner of Norway arrived first at the finish line in Nome to win the Iditirod Trail Sled Dog Race.
(SSFC, 3/22/20, p.A5)
2020 Apr 9, Pantheon Resources PLC reported the discovery of an oil field in Alaska's North Slope region with a potential of 1.8 billion barrels of oil.
(SFC, 4/10/20, p.A3)
2020 Apr 11, Alaska held its presidential primary. Joe biden bet Bernie Sanders 55.3% to 44.7%. A total of 19,759 votes were cast.
(SFC, 4/13/20, p.A4)
2020 Apr 24, Alaska's Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy began allowing the limited reopening of restaurants, stores, hair and nail salons and other businesses. It was not until April 26 that Anchorage allowed those businesses to open.
(AP, 4/25/20)(AP, 4/27/20)
2020 Apr 29, It was reported that BP is donating 3 million gallons of jet fuel to FedEx and Alaska Airlines to help with the distribution of personal protective equipment in the battle against the new coronavirus.
(Reuters, 4/29/20)
2020 May 1, Alaska Airlines and Southwest became the latest airlines to announce they will require passengers wear face coverings as of May 11. This means all major US airlines have made that a requirement for passengers.
(Good Morning America, 5/1/20)
2020 Jun 4, US federal court documents released early today showed that Alaska man Kenneth Zong, accused of laundering $1 billion held in South Korea for Iran, funneled nearly all the money through the United Arab Emirates. Zong allegedly created fake invoices to help Iran draw cash held by South Korea in lieu of payment for oil shipments.
(AP, 6/4/20)
2020 Jul 31, In Alaska 7 people, including state lawmaker Rep. Gary Knopp (67), died when two small airplanes collided in midair near the airport in Soldotna, a small community on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula.
(AP, 7/31/20)
2020 Aug 7, Officials in Anchorage, Alaska, won a key ruling in favor of a ban on indoor restaurant dining after a standoff over COVID-19 restrictions moved to court.
(Reuters, 8/7/20)
2020 Aug 17, The Trump administration issued final approval to allow oil and gas drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a 19 million acre (7.7 million hectares) refuge that has been off-limits to drilling for decades.
(Reuters, 8/17/20)
2020 Sep 14, Alaska dentist Seth Lookhart (35), convicted on 46 counts of defrauding the federal Medicaid program, was sentenced to 12 years in prison. The state requested that the court order Lookhart to pay more than $2 million in restitution for the Medicaid fraud.
(Today, 9/17/20)
2020 Sep 16, If carbon emissions continue at current rates, so much mercury will leach from thawing permafrost that fish in the Yukon River could become dangerous to eat within a few decades, according to a study published in the journal Nature Communications.
(Reuters, 9/16/20)
2020 Sep 20, In Alaska a grizzly bear mauled and killed a moose hunter in a first-of-its-kind attack in the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve.
(Good Morning America, 9/23/20)
2020 Oct 28, It was reported that President Trump will open up more than half of Alaska’s Tongass National Forest to logging and other forms of development, stripping protections that had safeguarded one of the world’s largest intact temperate rainforests for nearly two decades.
(NY Times, 10/28/20)
2020 Nov 11, US Republican Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska won re-election, leaving control of the Senate to be determined in January by two runoff elections in Georgia.
(Reuters, 11/11/20)
2020 Nov 16, The Trump administration announced that it would begin the formal process of selling leases to oil companies in a last-minute push to achieve its long-sought goal of allowing oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.
(NY Times, 11/16/20)
2020 Nov 25, The Army Corps of Engineers denied a permit for the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska, most likely killing the project. Opponents of the mine said it would have irreversibly harmed salmon breeding grounds.
(NY Times, 11/25/20)
2020 Nov 30, In Alaska a shooting spree north of Anchorage left four people dead. Malachi Maxon (18), just out of jail for assault, was soon charged with killing four members of his family, including two cousins ages 7 and 10.
(AP, 12/1/20)
2020 Dec 2, In Alaska six people were missing after a mudslide measuring an estimated two football fields across slammed into a neighborhood in the southeastern community of Haines.
(AP, 12/2/20)
2020 Dec 3, Alaska's state official overseeing elections said personal data such as driver’s license numbers and birth dates for tens of thousands of Alaskans was breached in an online voter database. Election results were not compromised because the online registration and vote tabulation systems are not connected. He became aware of the breach on Oct. 27.
(AP, 12/3/20)
2020 Dec 18, In a last-minute change, the Trump administration cut about 30 percent of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge territory that it plans to auction off for oil exploration.
(Reuters, 12/21/20)
2020 Dec 18, Alaskan race officials announced that the famed Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race across the state will not run to Nome in 2021, a drastic change called necessary to protect the mushers from the COVID-19 pandemic and reduce its spread in rural Alaska. The new route will take racers and dogs to the halfway point, the abandoned gold-mining town of Iditarod for which the trail is named, then they will double back to the starting point.
(Reuters, 12/18/20)
2020 Dec 31, A Pacific storm of record proportions swept a remote stretch of Alaska's Aleutian Islands chain, battering a region used heavily by commercial shipping with hurricane-force winds and seas five stories high.
(Reuters, 12/31/20)
2021 Jan 4, US President Donald Trump's administration announced that it has made final its plan to open up vast areas of once-protected Arctic Alaska territory to oil development.
(Reuters, 1/4/21)
2021 Jan 6, The US government held its first oil and gas lease sale for Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Major oil companies stayed on the sidelines and the sale garnered bids on just half the tracts that were listed. The state of Alaska and two small local companies were the only bidders.
(SFC, 1/7/21, p.A3)(Econ., 1/9/21, p.56)
2021 Feb 2, In Alaska an avalanche slide near Anchorage claimed the lives of three men hiking near Bear Mountain. The bodies of Thomas Devine (54) of Chugiak; Matthew Nyman (43) of Colorado Springs, Colorado; and Edward Watson (50) of Miami, were found the next day.
(AP, 2/4/21)
2021 Feb 6, US District Court Judge Sharon Gleason issued an order barring ConocoPhillips from starting planned gravel mining and gravel-road construction at its Willow project on Alaska's North Slope.
(Reuters, 2/7/21)
2021 Feb 20, The US Department of the Interior said plans for seismic surveys to help find oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge have fizzled due to a lack of protection for polar bears.
(Reuters, 2/21/21)
2021 Feb 23, Andy Teuber (52), head of the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, resigned from the health care organization and as a member of the University of Alaska Board of Regents. Soon after allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced against him. On March 2 he disappeared while piloting a helicopter to Kodiak Island.
(AP, 3/3/21)
2021 Mar 9, Alaska became the first US state to make COVID-19 vaccines available to anyone age 16 or older, eliminating eligibility requirements for people who work or live in the state.
(Reuters, 3/10/21)
2021 Mar 19, US and Chinese officials wrapped up their talks in Alaska without reaching any diplomatic breakthroughs. That was to be expected, but both sides suggested that, despite a contentious start to the high-profile meeting, there were some positives.
(Reuters, 3/19/21)
2021 Mar 28, In Alaska five people were killed on a heli-skiing excursion when their chopper crashed. Czech billionaire, Petr Kellner (56), whose net worth has been estimated at $17.5 billion by Forbes, was aboard the Airbus AS350 B3 helicopter when it went down near Knik Glacier. One survivor was listed in serious but stable condition.
(NY Times, 3/29/21)
2021 Apr 24, Alaska Airlines banned Alaska state Senator Lora Reinbold for refusing to follow mask requirements. Reinbold has been a vocal opponent to COVID-19 mitigation measures.
(AP, 4/25/21)
2021 Apr 30, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy ended the state's disaster declaration for COVID-19, saying the decree is no longer necessary.
(SFC, 5/3/21, p.A5)
2021 May 1, A cyberattack caused the Alaska Court System to disconnect most of its operations from the internet, an act expected to block electronic court filings, disrupt online payments and prevent hearings from taking place by videoconference for several days. Only a "handful" of about 3,000 court system computers were affected.
(Tribune Publ., 5/2/21)
2021 May 26, The Biden administration defended a huge Trump-era oil and gas project in the North Slope of Alaska designed to produce more than 100,000 barrels of oil a day for the next 30 years, despite President Biden’s pledge to pivot the country away from fossil fuels.
(NY Times, 5/26/21)
2021 May 28, The Alaska Supreme Court upheld the legality of a state law that allows young Alaskans to face trial as adults for misdemeanor drunken-driving crimes.
(Tribune Publ., 6/2/21)
2021 Jun 1, The Biden administration suspended oil drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
(NY Times, 6/1/21)
2021 Jun 25, The US Supreme Court ruled that federal COVID-19 relief funds can go to specially created corporations for Native Alaskans even though they are not officially recognized as tribal governments.
(Reuters, 6/25/21)
2021 Jul 21, Pavel Tsurkan (33), an Estonian man, pleaded guilty to two federal charges of computer fraud and abuse in a complex scheme that compromised roughly 1,000 routers globally. Among the victims were dozens of Alaskans who faced hundreds or thousands of dollars of increased charges for internet service as a result. Tsurkan pleaded guilty last week to separate criminal charges in Connecticut's federal court.
(Anchorage Daily News, 7/23/21)
2021 Jul 28, A powerful 8.2-magnitude earthquake struck off the southern coast of Alaska late today, prompting a tsunami warning for parts of the state and a tsunami watch as far as Hawaii. They were lifted within hours.
(NY Times, 7/29/21)
2021 Aug 3, The Biden administration said it would conduct a new environmental review of oil and gas leasing in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
(Reuters, 8/3/21)
2021 Aug 5, In Alaska a sight-seeing plane crashed in the area of Misty Fyords National Monument near Ketchikan, killing all six people on board.
(SFC, 8/7/21, p.A5)
2021 Aug 10, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy said that state law enforcement agencies had failed to collect the DNA of more than 21,000 people arrested for a variety of crimes, contrary to Alaska law.
(Anchorage Daily News, 8/11/21)
2021 Aug 14, A 6.9 earthquake struck off the coast of the Alaska Peninsula early today. no tsunami warnings were issued.
(AP, 8/14/21)
2021 Sep 9, The Biden administration said it will relaunch a process that could permanently protect a vital Alaskan watershed from the development of the contentious Pebble Mine project.
(Reuters, 9/9/21)
2021 Sep 22, Alaska, which led most US states in coronavirus vaccinations months ago, took the drastic step of imposing crisis-care standards for its entire hospital system, declaring that a crushing surge in COVID-19 patients has forced rationing of strained medical resources.
(Reuters, 9/22/21)
2021 Oct 2, Alaska activated emergency crisis protocols that allow 20 health care facilities to ration care if needed as the state recorded the nation''s worst COVID-19 diagnosis rates in recent days.
(SFC, 10/4/21, p.A5)
2021 Oct 3, It was reported that Alaskan king and chum salmon have dwindled to almost nothing for the first time in memory. The state has banned salmon fishing on the Yukon.
{Alaska, USA, Fish}
(SSFC, 10/3/21, p.A11)
2021 Dec 26, At the island community of Kodiak, the air temperature at a tidal gauge hit 67 F (19.4°C) degrees, the highest December reading ever recorded in Alaska.
(Reuters, 12/28/21)
Go to http://www.timelinesdb.com
Subject = Alaska
End of file.
