24 Vintage Photos Of Alaska As You’ve Never Seen It Before

By | January 12, 2017

Frequently we see picturesque photos of Alaska, but seldom do we see photographs that exhibit what it was like when the region was thriving. Behold some incredible images during the late 1800s onwards which shows Alaskan settlers and natives building a life in the wilderness...

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This photograph from 1964 looks practically like it could have been taken 100 years before.
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Note the caption on the bottom part: a sourdough is a settler who has wintered over in Alaska. This comes from the practice of preserving their dough starter from freezing in the extreme cold.
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From the schoolhouses and their churches, to the fisheries, we get to see a sense of what life was like in this unique landscape...
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From the construction of houses in the early 1900s to the sprawling landscapes that became well-known in more recent years, each photograph depicts the story of the beautifully rugged land and the communities that the settlers called home.
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A resettlement effort was launched in the 1930s considered one of FDR’s initiatives. The Gold Rush may have lured several miners and settlers to Alaska, but the settlements didn’t stop thriving once the gold dried up. For decades, the farmers, furriers, and fishermen came to carve out a living among this vast wilderness.
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Part and parcel of the New Deal, by 1930s, families coming from the Midwest were resettled in Palmer, Alaska, to farm the land.
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H/T DustyOldThing