Anchorage Tour: The Pioneer’s Trail

Anchorage Tour: The Pioneer’s Trail
A walking tour of historic downtown Anchorage

Discover the hidden sites and stories of downtown Anchorage with this free, self-guided walking tour. This official historic tour was created by Alaska.org, in partnership with the Anchorage Convention & Visitors Bureau and the Municipality of Anchorage. Rare historical images are courtesy of the institutions listed below.

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Fourth Avenue Theatre

Anchorage Hotel

Wendler Building

Loussac Sogn Building

This grand, art-deco theatre was opened in 1947 by Cap Lathrop, a 20th-century media mogul who wanted to establish Alaska as the Hollywood of the North. While Alaska has always captured the world’s imagination as a place of natural majesty and mystery, this grand dame—once outfitted with elaborate murals and velvet curtains—is awaiting a major renovation.

In 1916, this two-story “high rise” was Anchorage’s first wooden building, towering over the tent city that comprised the rest of Anchorage at the time. For decades afterward it was the place to stay for visiting dignitaries, from Will Rogers to Herbert Hoover, but it entered a more notorious period in the mid-20th century, when it increasingly played host to the city’s heavily transient (and overwhelmingly male) population. Today, however, the refurbished hotel is a thriving reminder of the city’s frontier past.

In such a male-centric city, it has often been tough for Anchorage’s ladies to sit down and enjoy a cocktail without—well, being crowded out by the men. This spot, also known as “Club 25,” was a popular café and bar in the 1940s and ’50s—but with a catch. It was for women only. The building was so beloved that it was moved from its original site—now home of the Hotel Captain Cook—to its current location just up the street.

"Zack" Loussac was a Russian immigrant who came to Alaska in the early 20th century, ran a successful drugstore in Anchorage and ultimately had a huge impact on the city’s cultural soul. He opened the Loussac Library and started a foundation to promote education and the arts in this growing city. This 1946 building was originally an office on the ground floor with residential space above, and today houses all commercial space

Federal Building

AEC Cottages and the Leopold David House

Fourth Avenue and the ACVB Log Cabin

Oscar Anderson House

It was huge, bold and smacked of permanence. Anchorage’s first concrete building was built in 1939 by the U.S. government, a sign that federal support was here to stay. Indeed, when World War II broke out shortly thereafter, the federal government added military bases and infrastructure to the Alaskan territory. Many Alaskans have had a love-hate relationship with the federal government ever since.

These simple cottages, housing Alaska Engineering Commission engineers and railroad workers, started dotting the landscape of Anchorage in the late 1910s. Many were ultimately turned into offices, others were moved, and some were even dragged to the dump, where the fire department would set them ablaze just for practice. The remaining homes—such as the Leopold David house, home to Anchorage’s first mayor—offer a window into life in Anchorage during the 1920s and ’30s.

In the 1940s and ’50s, the men working in the coal, oil and lumber industries around Alaska had only one place to come spend their money and blow off steam: 4th Avenue, where the string of drinking establishments became known as “the world’s longest bar” (a nickname, legend has it, given by a visiting Bob Hope).

Also making its home on the street is a log cabin created in Homer during the 1950s, which was immediately taken down and reassembled in Anchorage to hold the visitor’s center. The striking little house—note its completely sod roof—is still the headquarters for the Anchorage Convention and Visitors Bureau, welcoming travelers to Anchorage today.

This 1915 A-frame building was the first actual home built in Anchorage, initially standing out amongst the sea of tents surrounding it. Anderson was a butcher and notable businessman in Anchorage. Later, the house was moved to the western side of the city, at times serving as a museum.

Oscar Gill House

Delaney Park, known as "Park Strip"

Old City Hall

Oscar Gill was a local statesman who played a key role in Alaska gaining statehood, but his house achieved fame all on its own. Gill was Anchorage’s mayor during Prohibition, when bootlegging was big business. Gill denied any involvement himself, but his house clearly acted as someone’s portal for smuggling booze. Window sills could be jerry rigged to send bottles up through the walls and between the studs. Today you can still see pieces of broken bottles inside the walls.

This clearing at the edge of town once functioned as a firebreak between Anchorage and its neighboring forest. At other times, it acted as an airstrip, a golf course and even a makeshift housing development, when people lived here during the 1940s boom in apartments created out of old barracks. Today the Park Strip—just one block wide but 13 blocks long—is home to ball fields, a gym, ice rink and a giant steam locomotive.

When it went up in 1936, this was—for a little while, at least—Anchorage’s biggest building, encompassing every major municipal function from the mayor’s office and firehouse to the phone department. It is an emblem of an era when Anchorage still had a small-town spirit—a community where everyone had to pitch in. Once, when a fire temporarily crippled the city’s phone service, city hall workers pulled people in from the streets to help punch toothpicks into the phone lines to keep them working.

Images:

These historical images are used courtesy of the following institutions: Anchorage Museum of History & Art, University of Alaska at Anchorage Archives, University of Alaska at Fairbanks