Author Archives: Paul Adasiak

Goldstream bridge. (Woodrow Johansen Papers, UAF-2007-64-178)

When you move from a lush environment to a desert, your first impression is that it is bleak and lifeless — then, as you spend time there, the colors seem to emerge, and you spot life popping up everywhere as you never expected. I’ve been having a similar happy experience with the Woodrow Johansen Papers.

Woody Johansen was an engineer for the Alaska Road Commission, which from 1920 to 1956 built and maintained automobile-accessible roads, including the Richardson, Steese, and Elliott Highways.  (An edited interview with Johansen is part of Project Jukebox’s history of the Dalton Highway.)

At first, I just saw a bunch of dull pictures of bridges, road-graders, and construction sites.  It’s been a pleasure, though, to examine the Johansen photos in preparation for putting descriptive information about them on Alaska’s Digital Archives.  I’m getting an amazing glimpse into the infrastructure of Interior Alaska — heavens, how much work went into making the state accessible! — and a fun look also at what my town of Fairbanks used to be like.  For example, did you know about the Graehl pedestrian bridge across Noyes Slough?  I’m told that it connected Slater St. and Front St., where today there are only dead ends.   It tickles me to see the Minnie St. bridge, connecting to dirt roads where hardly anything was built.

Only 219 photos (out of about 1,100) have full descriptions up, but they’re all online, and I’m working slowly through them.  Take a virtual drive through the history of our roads.  I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I have.

The Koyukuk, Alaska, Album of photographs primarily depicts Athapascan and military communities in the Koyukuk Station region and includes detailed images of military telegraph stations. Individuals in the pictures are well identified.

“Large group of Native Alaskans.” Koyukuk, Alaska, Album, Acc. No. UAF-1992-145-5.

Koyukuk, Alaska, Album.

This collection includes six photographs of the Black Wolf Squadron including images of the early aircraft (biplanes) and the pilots: Capt. St. Clair Streett, 1st Lt. Clifford C. Nutt, 2d Lt. Eric C. Nelson, 2d Lt. C.H. Crumrine, and 2d Lt. Ross C. Kirkpatrick. Also depicted are Generals Pershing, Charles T. Menohar, and Peyton C. March as well as Sergeants Albert Vierra, Joseph English, and Edmund Henriques. Locations shown include Nome, Alaska; Jasper, California; and Bolling Field in Washington, D.C.

The Black Wolf Squadron was one of the earliest units within the U.S. Army Air Service.  In 1920, the Squadron was selected to make the first long-distance flight outside of the contiguous United States.  Nome, Alaska, was selected as the destination because the assistant chief of the Air Service was General Billy Mitchell, who had served in Alaska during construction of the Washington-Alaska Military Cable and Telegraph System (WAMCATS).

The four DeHavilland DH-4 biplanes, painted with the black profile of a wolf’s head against a white background, left Mitchel Field, Long Island, New York on July 15, 1920.  The Squadron arrived in Nome on August 24, 1920, landing on the parade grounds at Fort Davis, an abandoned Army post.  After a brief stay, the crew, led by Capt. St. Clair Street, returned via the same route, arriving at Mitchel Field on October 20, 1920.  In total, the expedition flew 9,000 miles in 112 flying hours without serious incident.

The trip was the first military flight in Alaska and helped to pioneer an air route connecting Alaska to the Lower 48.

They learned their flying in the Army aviation schools. UAF-1990-164-1.

Black Wolf Squadron Photographs

Originally posted in April of this year, this collection of photographs has been much improved.  We have now described every photograph in these albums of the Charles Sheldon Papers, consulting both Sheldon’s own handwritten descriptions in the albums and his narrative The Wilderness of Denali: Explorations of a Hunter-Naturalist in Northern Alaska (available at UAF, FNSB Public, and other libraries.)  The original announcement of this collection follows:

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont, for the loan of the Charles Sheldon albums in order that these images could be digitized and included in Alaska’s Digital Archives.

Naturalist Charles Sheldon (1867-1928) was an authority on big game animals, particularly Alaskan mountain sheep and bear. He participated in a drive which eventually led to the creation of Denali National Park (originally Mt. McKinley National Park).

The Charles Sheldon Papers contain Charles Sheldon’s correspondence, diaries of exploration and hunting trips in Alaska, manuscripts, and miscellaneous other papers. The albums from the Shelburne Museum contain photographs chiefly of landscapes and game animals.

Charles Sheldon Papers, from the Shelburne Museum