Imagining Anchorage:
a Centennial Symposium, June 2015
In order to celebrate the founding of Anchorage in 1915 and to offer a greater awareness
of the city’s rich history, the Cook Inlet Historical Society (CIHS) is sponsoring a
centennial symposium “Imagining Anchorage” beginning Thursday evening, June 18,
and concluding Saturday, June 20, 2015. All symposium events, except for the John
Bagoy Memorial Cemetery Tour, will be held at the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson
Center (625 C Street, Anchorage, AK 99501; https://www.anchoragemuseum.org). The
Symposium is a community-wide event supported by a Centennial Grant from the
Municipality of Anchorage, the Rasmuson Foundation and the Alaska Humanities
Forum. As part of the project, CIHS hopes to introduce a younger audience to
Anchorage’s history along with long-time residents, visitors, and friends.
The celebration will be followed by the annual John Bagoy Memorial Cemetery Tour at
the Anchorage Memorial Park Cemetery (7th & Cordova Streets) on Sunday, June 21,
2015, where our guides, Audrey and Bruce Kelly, will remember ten key players buried
at the cemetery who undertook critical roles in the development of the community.
This celebration of the community will complement related exhibitions at the Anchorage
Museum at Rasmuson Center, including a presentation on James Cook’s Third Voyage,
Arctic Ambitions: Captain Cook and the Northwest Passage, which opened in late March.
The exhibit is also reflected in an expansive and beautifully illustrated anthology of the
same name featuring eighteen scholarly essays, edited by Jim Barnett and Dave Nicandri,
with a Preface by Robin Inglis, and published through the University of Washington
Press. Copies of the anthology are available for sale at the Anchorage Museum Shop.
The Anchorage Museum is also hosting two exhibits with a specific centennial theme,
City Limits, Home Field Advantage: Baseball in the Far North, and 100: Images from
the Archives, which are complemented by a legacy publication by local author, Charles
Wohlforth, From the Shores of Ship Creek: Stories of Anchorage's First 100 Years,
published by Todd Communications of Anchorage.
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Captain James Cook’s Third Voyage and Visit to Alaska (1778):
Thursday and Friday, June 18-19, 2015
The first part of the symposium will concentrate on British Captain James Cook’s visit to
Alaska in 1778. As he left Cook Inlet in June of that year, Cook was of the opinion that it
could become a center of beneficial commerce, even though he might not have quite
“imagined Anchorage” as it has evolved into the 21st century. But that is what we will be
doing at conference, as we look back at the Alaska of nearly 250 years ago, trace the
more recent history of Anchorage and look ahead to the future of the city as the nation’s
window onto a rapidly changing Arctic region.
On the Thursday evening, June 18, 2015, we will celebrate our relationship - through
James Cook - with our sister city of Whitby in Yorkshire. Both the Mayor of Whitby and
the Mayor of Anchorage will offer keynote remarks. From 6.00 to 7.00 PM
refreshments, a book signing, and registration will accompany these remarks in the
Anchorage Museum Foyer, co-hosted by the Anchorage Sister Cities Commission and
the Cook Inlet Historical Society.
After the mayoral presentations, at 7:30 pm Dr. Sophie Forgan, Chairman of Trustees of
the Captain Cook Memorial Museum, will give the opening symposium lecture, “James
Cook from Whitby,” in which she will explore the various themes of the great captain’s
formative years and experiences that resonated in his later career and particularly during
his three Pacific voyages, including his third voyage to Alaska.
The Friday session will be given over to seven illustrated lectures about Cook and his
voyage to the North Pacific and Arctic in 1778. Two introductory lectures are envisaged:
the first taking off from Dr. Forgan’s presentation the previous evening to look at the
experiences and ideas from the captain’s first two voyages in the South Seas that Cook,
and indeed a number of his companions, brought with them to the north. The second will
present a fresh look at the third voyage itself and the work and achievements of its
commander, particularly in Alaska.
These presentations will be followed by three presentations that will explore, with
reference to Cook’s voyage (and a nod to the work of some of his contemporaries who
sailed in his wake), how the legacy we have received in collections of Native
“curiosities”, charts and artwork complemented the journals to reveal to a wider world
the coastal region of Alaska, its geography, and its peoples.
The day’s final two lectures will examine Cook’s legacy. We will first gain a perspective
of the changes that soon came to dominate the region, from the fur trade and nativevisitor encounters to European powers jockeying for imperial advantage, and then trace
the results of Britain’s continuing interest in the Northwest Passage from Cook to
Franklin, exploring themes that have resonated into our own time from the 19th century,
as the search for the elusive passage continued.
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Thursday, June 18, 2015
Introductory Lecture
Chair: James K. Barnett
President of the Cook Inlet Historical Society
7.30 - 9.00 PM:
Dr. Sophie Forgan
Chairman of Trustees of the Captain Cook Memorial Museum, Whitby
“James Cook from Whitby”
This paper will discuss Cook’s early years: his background - a Scottish father who was
undoubtedly literate and respected education, the sort of mathematical and technical
training he received in Whitby, the inspirational nature of the environment in which he
lived, ship management in a Quaker dominated town, and the fact that he was a
countryman by background and youthful upbringing. This last has particular relevance to
his concern with diet, and to the transport of animals on board and transplantation of
'useful plants' to the South Seas. The paper will explore how these elements of character,
learning and environment shaped and developed Cook as a commander and explorer over
three Pacific voyages.
Friday, June 19, 2015
SESSION ONE
Chair: Dr. Iris Engstrand,
Professor of History, University of San Diego, San Diego, California
9.00 - 9.45 AM:
Dr. Michelle Hetherington
Senior Curator, Australian Society and History program, National Museum of Australia,
Canberra
“James Cook: from the South Seas to the North Pacific”
This paper will discuss Cook’s Pacific voyages, particularly as they related to the South
Seas in the context of the Age of Enlightenment and the role of Cook’s companions officers, scientists and artists – in adding new dimensions to voyages of exploration. The
paper will discuss Cook’s experiences of command, exploration and encounters with
“other” cultures and peoples that he brought with him to the North Pacific on his Third
Voyage.
9.45 - 10.30 AM
Dr. David Nicandri
Director Emeritus of the Washington State Historical Society, Tacoma
"Intimations of Cook's Mortality and other features of his Third Voyage evident
from his earlier voyages"
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This paper will trace the progress of Cook’s voyage in the North Pacific and Arctic to
take a fresh look at the under-appreciated Third Voyage after his two much-heralded
voyages in the South Seas. It will discuss Cook’s substantial achievements in light of the
orthodox view that he should never have undertaken what proved to be his final
expedition.
SESSION TWO
Chair: Jenya Anichenko
Research Fellow, National Natural History Museum, Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, DC, and doctoral candidate at the University of Southampton, Southampton,
England
11.00 - 11.45 AM
Dr. Aron Crowell
Alaska Region Director, Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center, Anchorage, Smithsonian
National Museum of Natural History
“Imagining Alaska in North Pacific America: Native Peoples and their Material
Culture”
This paper by one of Alaska’s pre-eminent scholars of indigenous people will describe
the peoples encountered by James Cook in North Pacific Alaska, the artifacts collected by
the Cook expedition and how these reflected native life and culture in pre-contact Alaska.
It will also refer to the collections of some of the other voyages in the same era – before
and after Cook - that expanded on the picture of cultural similarity yet diversity across
the sweep of the Gulf of Alaska and into the Bering Sea.
11.45 - 12.30 PM
John Robson
Map Librarian, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand
“Imagining Alaska in North Pacific America: Cook and Vancouver’s Cartographic
Contributions to Alaska and the North Pacific”
This paper will look at the vague and misleading picture of Alaska and the Northwest
Coast of America that Cook brought with him to the North Pacific; his remarkable work
over the summer of 1778, and how it was achieved; and the extent to which his student
George Vancouver and his contemporaries in the1780s and 90s (both fur traders and
officer son naval vessels) completed the picture and removed the doubts that the entrance
to a passage to the Atlantic might still be found in the temperate latitudes.
Lunch and exhibit visits on your own.
2.00 - 2.45 PM
Robin Inglis
Former Director of the Vancouver Maritime Museum and Honorary Research Associate
at the Alessandro Malaspina Research Centre, Vancouver Island University, Nanaimo,
British Columbia.
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“Imagining Alaska in North Pacific America - The Visual Record”
This paper will discuss the contribution of Cook’s artists, John Webber and William
Ellis, to the image of Alaska and the Northwest Coast and the people they encountered,
as their work emerged in the public realm in the 1780s. It will also explain how by the
end of the 18th century the works of other artists on both trading and formal naval
expeditions expanded the picture of a dramatic coast and home to nations of widely
diverse native peoples.
SESSION THREE
Chair: Dr. Sophie Forgan,
Chair, Board of Trustees, Captain Cook Memorial Museum, Whitby
2.45 – 3.30 PM
Dr. Barry Gough
Professor Emeritus of History, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario and
Honorary Research Associate, Alessandro Malaspina Research Centre, Vancouver
Island University, Nanaimo, British Columbia.
"Alaska and the Northwest Coast beyond Cook: Russian, British and American
Trade and Encounters"
This paper will discuss what happened in the North Pacific after James Cook had
revealed Alaska and the wider Northwest Coast to the outside world. Led by the
Russians, already active as far east as the Alaska Peninsula, fur traders arrived in earnest
from Europe, Asia and New England, and the Native worlds were changed forever.
Exploration and charting continued through to Vancouver's magisterial and definitive
survey and then political and commercial empires squared off against each other in a
struggle for hegemony that divided the coast between three nations in the 19th century.
3.45 - 4.30 PM
Dr. Ian MacLaren
Professor in the Department of History and Classics, University of Alberta, Edmonton
“Bones of Empire: Imagining Alaska in the North Pacific and Arctic North
America”
In 1779 and again in 1847, the bodies of two of the most famous naval explorers that ever
served Britain’s Royal Navy disappeared. Their bones have never been retrieved. The
eight decades between the death of James Cook and the end of the unsuccessful official
search for Sir John Franklin, mark the zenith of British publishing history, for Britain,
unlike Spain or Russia, laid claim to territory through publication. During these decades,
northern North America underwent intense exploration by the Royal Navy, chiefly by
water but also by land. The vast expanse of today’s Alaska, Yukon, Northwest
Territories, and Nunavut was given form in word and image through publications issued
in the names of Cook, Franklin, and those of their colleagues and successors who made
new geographical discoveries or searched for the missing expedition. Because they
perished on their voyages, the absence of the two most well known explorers in the
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region left books of exploration as the veritable bones of empire.
Dinner on your own—Museum curator tours of the exhibition will be available.
[For the information of registrants, the Mayor and First Lady of Anchorage and the
Centennial Advisory Commission are sponsoring a Centennial Gala this evening at
Anchorage’s Dena’ina Center. The Gala is not related to the Symposium and requires
separate registration.]
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The Anchorage Centennial (1915-2015):
Saturday and Sunday, June 20-21, 2015
Saturday, June 20, 2015
SESSION ONE
Introductory Lecture
Chair: Ayse Gilbert
Treasurer of the Cook Inlet Historical Society
9.00 – 10.00 AM:
Bill Bittner, Esq.
Long time local resident and attorney
“Growing Up in Anchorage”
Explanation
SESSION TWO
9.00 – 10.00 AM:
Complimentary Coffee and Tea Service
10.30 AM – 12.00 PM:
Chair: Judy Bittner Vice President of the Cook Inlet Historical Society
Alaska State Historic Preservation Officer
Jack Roderick, Tom Fink and Rick Mystrom
Former Mayors of Anchorage
“Coffee with the Mayors”
Explanation
SESSION THREE
12.00 – 1.30 PM (includes buffet lunch):
Chair: Museum Representative
Member of the Board of Directors of the Cook Inlet Historical Society
Senior Alaska Gallery Curator, Anchorage Museum
Participant names
Participant titles
“Title”
Explanation
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SESSION FOUR—two Optional Break Out Panels
1.30 – 3.00 PM:
Panel One
Chair: Ian Hartman
Member of the Board of Directors of the Cook Inlet Historical Society
Assistant Professor of History, University of Alaska Anchorage
Jim Blasingame, Former Vice President, Alaska Railroad and Member of the Board
of Directors of the Cook Inlet Historical Society
Steve Haycox, Emeritus Professor of History, University of Alaska Anchorage
and former member, Board of Directors of the Cook Inlet Historical Society
Aaron Leggett, Associate Alaska Gallery Curator, Anchorage Museum and Member
of the Board of Directors of the Cook Inlet Historical Society
Vic Fisher, Author, Statesman, former Member of the Alaska Constitutional Convention
and former member, Alaska State Senate
“Envisioning Early Anchorage: from Fish Camps to Fourth Avenue”
Explanation
Panel Two
Chair: Ayse Gilbert
Treasurer and Member of the Board of Directors of the Cook Inlet Historical Society
Sherri Buretta, Chairman of the Board, Chugach Alaska Corporation and
Treasurer and Member of the Board, Tatitlek Corporation
Eleanor Andrews, President/CEO of the Andrews Group, and former Alaska
Commissioner of Administration
Archana Mishra, Director of the Live Work Play program, Anchorage Economic
Development Corporation
Neil Fried, Economist, State of Alaska, Department of Labor & Workforce Development
“The 61st Parallel in the 21st Century: A Modern and Diverse Community”
Explanation
SESSION FIVE
3.00 – 4.30 PM:
Chair: James K. Barnett
President of the Cook Inlet Historical Society
Mr. Charles Wohlforth
Lifelong Resident, Historian and Author, "From the Shores of Ship Creek: Stories of
Anchorage's First 100 Years," the Centennial legacy publication.
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“Searching for the Heart of Anchorage: Reflections on Writing the
Centennial History”
Local author Charles Wohlforth took a novel approach to the challenge of capturing
Anchorage in an official centennial history: he focused on profiles of individuals and how
their personal stories reflected their times. The result is From the Shores of Ship Creek:
Stories from Anchorage's First 100 Years. In today's talk, illustrated with scores of
photographs from the book, Wohlforth describes the process of finding something
essential about each period of the city's life through the lives of emblematic residents.
After 100 years, what is the true identity of Anchorage?
Dinner on your own—Museum curator tours will be available.
[For the information of registrants, Anchorage and the Centennial Advisory Commission
are sponsoring a Centennial Solstice Concert this evening from 6-10 pm at the Alaska
Railroad Depot—free and open to the public.]
Sunday, June 21, 2015
21st Annual John Bagoy Memorial Cemetery Tour
John Bagoy Gate and Cordova Streets, Downtown Anchorage
7.00 - 8.30 PM
Presented by Audrey and Bruce Kelly
Members of the Board of Directors of the Cook Inlet Historical Society
“From Unruly Boom Town to All-American City”
This years guided walking tour in the downtown cemetery will feature graveside
presentations of ten prominent local leaders whose historic adventures significantly
shaped the transformation of Anchorage from an unruly boomtown to an All-American
city. These men and women who settled in the Cook Inlet area, some before the tent city
was established at Ship Creek, left a legacy still visible today. We will discuss a variety
of notable early business people, politicians, miners, bankers and Native leaders whose
histories provide insight into the early days and the development of Anchorage.
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