Talk:Anchorage, Alaska

History section incomplete

The history section makes no reference to the indigenous people or anything that happened before the arrival of Europeans.

You know, this has come up before, and personally I would find it more interesting than most of the trivia that fills this article. The problem is, when I went looking for information, there just isn't really anything to be found. Anchorage really sort of begins as this "tent city" in the middle of nowhere, on a sandbar between two river outlets near the railroad tracks. It's amazing that a town ever formed here at all, let alone the largest one in the state, but there were a large number of factors that contributed to that, the largest being WWII and Anchorage's strategic position.

Keep in mind that Alaska is still pretty sparsely populated, and back then even less so. I know there were a few Native villages along the Knik Arm, but I've never heard of any that were in the area of Anchorage proper. The earliest historical references to the area come from Captain Cook, who was searching for the fabled Northwest Passage. He dropped anchor at Ship Creek (hence the name he used on his mapping of the area), and sent Captain Bligh up the Knik, where he met with the Natives in the Eklutna area and found out it was just a river outlet. Then he was a bit annoyed when Cook sent him south to scout the other arm, which he called Turnagain, because once he got all the way to Portage that's what he had to do. He doesn't report meeting any Natives along that direction, and I think to this day the closest village is Crow Creek.

Still I would be interested to know more about the early history of the area, because there may be a lot I just don't know about. The problem is simply one of finding sources. Zaereth (talk) 21:25, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

On a side note, Anchorage did eventually become part of that Northwest Passage, it just became an aerial passage rather than a nautical one. (The quickest way to get to Europe from anywhere on the west-coast is right over the top.) Despite its lack of just about any natural resource except sand and gravel, Anchorage is a lot like Rome in that it's a hub of commerce along many trade and supply routes (all roads lead to Anchorage), and we even have our own holiday to celebrate that; Fur Rendezvous. Zaereth (talk) 01:40, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

I might also add (for those who don't know) is that Anchorage proper is limited to the north by the military bases, which includes much of the coast of the Knik, up to the Nike silos around Eagle River. The military got much of the good land, but that's considered sovereign territory, and is really its own separate city from Anchorage. If anyone has records of what, if anything, was there when they arrived, it would be them. Zaereth (talk) 19:46, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

I think I've managed to cover the major points. Interestingly, I stumbled across this by accident while looking up the etymology of Bootleggers Cove. I think it's good to have some of the very early history. There may have been Thule cultures living here as long as 10,000 years ago, and perhaps even Dorset people going that far back or farther. Not much evidence of the Dorset remain, as they seem to have gone extinct after Inuit expansion during the Viking Age and early Middle Ages. Either way, I don't have any sources that go that far back, and any further detail should go to the History of Anchorage article. Zaereth (talk) 00:03, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Nice work. Arbcom is a harsh mistress and takes up the bulk of my WP time these days, but I have seen your comments here and at the list page, just so you know you aren't just talking to yourself. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:48, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm just glad it answered my own question of why there are no Dena'ina villages all over the place, save Eklutna. They had a very different lifestyle from the Aleut, and lived much more like their Apache cousins. Of course, in the neighborhood where I grew up all my friends were Eskimos from the Nome/Bering Sea area, so I'm more familiar with theirs and the Aleut lifestyle. It turns out that Eklutna only exists because a Russian trading post was placed nearby at Niteh on the Palmer Flats (the delta between the Knik River and the Matanuska) and a church/missionary at nearby Knik. I used to go visit those guys at Eklutna back when they had the couches sitting along the highway. They were a great bunch of guys, and funny as hell (with their sense of humor I don't know why you don't see many Native comedians), but the topic of their history just never came up. Zaereth (talk) 19:30, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

I came across another book my mom had stashed away, which gives a very detailed account of the history(not to mention some wonderful photos that I'm guessing are no longer copyrighted), and so I added quite a lot the History of Anchorage, Alaska article. I tried to give a very good overview of how and why Anchorage formed, which had a lot to do with economic resources ad the town of Knik. It still needs a lot more, from 1915 to present, but I've come to a stopping point for myself. It would be good to get quite a bit more detail than we have here. Maybe RadioKAOS has some sources to add? Personally, I think we could use a little on the hydroelectric dam and the formation of Eklutna Lake (now the city's largest water supply), which I personally find fascinating. I couldn't find much more on the early Native history beyond what we have here, because most of what we know is archaeological. However, I did add more details of Cook's voyage and his crew's accounts of Native life. Zaereth (talk) 22:46, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Anchorage is not the "4TH largest city" (by area) in the U.S.

Jsusky (talk) 00:13, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

First, thanks for the post of the "map" of Anchorage:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchorage,_Alaska#/map/0

The actual developed Anchorage land area - including private holdings and road rights-of-way is likely to be less than 200 square miles - this would put Anchorage below #30 currently on:

List of United States cities by area

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_United_States_cities_by_area&oldid=70638810

Which of the land areas for ANY of the cities listed there include ENTIRE MOUNTAIN RANGES??

At the very least the narrative should be amended to state "mountain ranges and undeveloped land included in the Land Area figure"

The Municipality of Anchorage took over the entire borough, oh ... back in the 1970s. So, technically, the city of Anchorage (which is what a municipality is) includes Chugiak, Peter's Creek, Eklutna, Eagle River, Crow Creek, Girdwood, Portage, etc. (these are just neighborhoods as far as the Muni is concerned), and much of the Chugach National Forest. So, technically, this is correct in terms of where the Muni boundaries are.

Colloquially, Anchorage proper is limited to the north by Government hill, to the east by Muldoon and the Mountains, to the west by the inlet, and south by Potter's Marsh. But the Municipality is much larger than the town proper. (This is not uncommon, as towns like Beverly Hills and Hollywood were originally their own towns, and now are just areas in the greater municipality of Los Angeles.) However, these are physical boundaries and not the city limits which are at Knik and Portage.

If it make you feel any better, all of the top 4 are in Alaska, with the largest town per area being Sitka, with more than double Anchorage's area and a small fraction of its population. Zaereth (talk) 00:26, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Anchorage is incorporated as a unified home rule municipality. That's mentioned for sake of clarification, as someone a while back insisted on edit warring to force the term "consolidated" on this article due solely to the existence of the article Consolidated city-county. Under Alaska Statutes, consolidation and unification are addressed separately. Unified home rule municipalities are legally constituted as boroughs, not cities. The only source I've found which deviates from that is a paper source published by the Alaska Municipal League, which provides an explanation in line with the usual definition of a combined city-county.

It's incorrect to state that Anchorage's corporate limits include "much of the Chugach National Forest". The original boundaries of the forest encompassed all of present-day Anchorage, until that was chipped away by various withdrawals and reservations for settlement and military purposes. The bulk of the forest's boundaries actually lie within the Kenai Peninsula Borough and the Unorganized Borough. Nearly half of Anchorage's corporate limits are taken up by Chugach State Park, with JBER also occupying substantial acreage.

The common term for the notion of Anchorage the OP is referring to would be the "Anchorage bowl". It appears you go out of your way to avoid using that term. The infobox has long contained an area field labeled "Urban" and containing 78 square miles. I've never seen it accompanied by a source explaining what it means, its composition or who is claiming this to be a fact of some sort. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 13:38, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Correct. It's not something people normally say to each other. ("You live in the Valley? I live in the Anchorage Bowl.") Mostly, I think it's a 1960s term you might hear on the news occasionally, but locally people just call it Anchorage. On Wikipedia, I always assume people from all over the world are reading, in which case "bowl" doesn't make much sense when looking at it from a map or satellite photo. (It's the alluvial coastal-plain at the base of the mountains where the two arms meet.) From the ground, though, it's easy to see when you've crossed the threshold. Anchorage is one of the few Alaskan towns where you don't actually have to add the word "proper" because the physical limits are so obvious to anyone driving through, with the military (including Arctic Valley) on one end and the fjords on the other. Anyone driving through knows you haven't entered Anchorage until you pass the George Sullivan Power Plant and haven't left it until you pass the weigh station just beyond Potter Valley Road. (Unlike towns such as Wasilla or Houston, where you'd better know where the town proper is, because that's where the cops will be sitting at their speed traps.) But to anyone reading this article, we have to describe it from a global perspective and in formal language, so I try to avoid as many local colloquialisms as possible. Zaereth (talk) 20:00, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

I might clarify also, for all the map readers out there, that what we call the Turnagain Arm also begins right around that weigh station at the south end of town, because this is a boundary which you can actually see as a change in the water, both in color (turbidity and salinity) and in the form of a powerful rip tide slicing right across the mouth. (Sailboarders and windsurfers have been lost and never found after accidentally crossing that line into the Inlet.) So I would more-correctly say that the Anchorage Bowl is the alluvial coastal-plain along the headwaters of the Cook Inlet, between the mouths of the two arms. They often use the term on the weather reports to distinguish it from the Hillside (ie: "It'll be rainy and windy in the Anchorage Bowl but real f---in' windy on the Hillside and upper elevations.") The north is really bounded by the Ship Creek basin, for the most part, of which the headwaters is where that old power plant is (Also called ML&P Plant 2, whereas the old, defunct Plant 1 still sits downstream along Viking Drive). Zaereth (talk) 01:40, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Almost the exact same spot, I consider the Potter Section House the southern border of Anchorage proper. I often stop there and eat lunch on my way home from your urban death maze. I also enjoy yelling "so long StinkTown" out the window of my car when crossing under that last overpass right before the marsh. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:26, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

I believe the politically correct term is "Stank-orage", (as opposed to Square-banks, Val-disease, or Wa-syphilis). You know, I've never heard a bad word said about Kenai. By the way, what maze? Nearly all roads run due north/south and east/west. Have you ever been to Fairbanks? I was driving 50 mph down a road that suddenly ended in a Carrs parking lot! That's the craziest laid-out city I ever saw north of Seattle... but, I digress. Zaereth (talk) 02:47, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Jsusky (talk) 00:51, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Zareth wrote:

"technically, the city of Anchorage (which is what a municipality is) includes Chugiak, Peter's Creek, Eklutna, Eagle River, Crow Creek, Girdwood, Portage, etc. (these are just neighborhoods as far as the Muni is concerned), and much of the Chugach National Forest."

Zareth also wrote:

"On Wikipedia, I always assume people from all over the world are reading, in which case "bowl" doesn't make much sense when looking at it from a map or satellite photo."

From these it's clear that Zareth is aware that many (nearly all) readers do not witness the Chugach Mountains on a daily basis and that to "technically" call Anchorage the "4th largest city in the U.S. is utter HOR$E$#!T"

(or to be "genteel" - NONSENSE)

to add that the figure includes:

"mountain ranges and undeveloped land included in the Land Area figure"

helps the careful reader to understand where the city lies in the context of the usual flat-land cities (Jacksonville, Oklahoma City, Houston, et al)

see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_area

(Butte and Anaconda also stink in that list)

More Zareth:

"all of the top 4 are in Alaska, with the largest town per area being Sitka, with more than double Anchorage's area"

Thanks for pointing this out. Those cities in "southeast" do even more violence to common sense and commonly understood juxtapositions of "city" and "area". Note that Wrangell (with fewer than 2500 - really?) may not count as a "city" in America-at-large (or the rest of the world).

All this is obvious - by "reverting" you:

1) make this entry marginally more deceptive

2) help the credulous to remain so - GOOD JOB!!

Hello again Jsusky. First, some general Wikipedia ettiquette: It's normally a good idea to sign your posts at the end rather than the beginning, because that's where people look for it. Although I can see you're upset by your tone, it is rarely helpful to rant about it to the very people you're trying to convince. That's just counterproductive.

Likewise, your edit was reverted not so much because of what you were trying to say, but because of how you said it. If you had made that clarification more factual and less editorial, then it likely would have stayed.

That said, I think that you may be making "mountains out of molehills" here, no pun intended. (Ok, maybe just a little intended.) What this comes down to is the many different definitions of the word "city". To focus on only one definition as being "correct" is a form of etymological fallacy. Many cities include parkland in their areas, as well as lakes and waterways. Far more include suburban areas outside what would be formally defined as a "city", yet lie within those city limits.

This is why, since the 14th century, people have added the word "proper" to towns and cities, meaning "exact". The city proper is an area within the city limits that represents the older, archaic definition of "city", excluding outlying areas that fit within the city limits under newer definitions.

The true city limits of Anchorage encompasses all of that parkland and wilderness, so under this definition of the word, the area is correct, albeit the city proper is far smaller. Zaereth (talk) 01:20, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

To help clarify what I mean, when my mom first came here, the city limits were at Government Hill/Ship Creek and 9th ave. When my dad moved here, they were at Ship Creek and Tudor rd. When I was a kid they were at Dimond blvd, and shortly thereafter moved to Rabbit Creek rd. Not long after that, the city limits moved all the way from the Knik River to Portage Lake. The reason of course is that the muni wanted all the tax money from the surrounding communities (past and future) but without giving them the typical benefits of paying those taxes. (My neighborhood was a really nice place until Anchorage moved in.) The city proper is now defined only by its physical limitations; everything north of Ship Creek is military and south are fjords. There are no oficial "city-proper limits". But mark my words, it won't be long until the park shrinks and houses fill every valley, and towns like Wasilla and Willow will just be neighborhoods in Anchorage, consumed like Spenard and Mountain View were. Zaereth (talk) 01:56, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Oh, and in all that over-explaining (which I'm often prone to on talk pages; it's all a part of my own internal process more than anything), as you can see with this edit, I do agree that this article could use some clarification, but at the moment I haven't really considered the best place to put it or how best to word it. If you have some ideas on how to say it in a more encyclopedic way, you're more than welcome to give it another shot, or, better yet, post your ideas here so others can give their feedback. If you can find good sources (which shouldn't be too hard) then those would go a long way toward helping you achieve your goal. Zaereth (talk) 03:14, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

I have to agree with Zareth that ranting on the talk page and inserting your opinion into the article are not good ways to make your point. I think we probably all agree that this should be explained, but not by just saying it is "misleading" because you find it to be so. (Incidentally we have the opposite issue here in Homer. Diamond Ridge, Fritz Creek, Kachemak City and even stuff way out by Fox River, Alaska is all generically considered part of Homer. Kachemak City was created specifically to avoid being annexed by Homer, but nobody who isn't from here even knows it exists.) Beeblebrox (talk) 19:26, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

I'd love to come here and just rant. Like my biggest problem with Anchorage is that people come here from ... wherever, because it's the rough, Alaskan wilderness (as long as they have comfortable hotels, cable TV, restaurants, and king-sized motorhomes), and then they spend the rest of their lives turning it into wherever they came from. Hence the local term "Los Anchorage" (which is not used in a flattering way; California may as well have annexed it, because once there it's not like being in Alaska anymore). But as good as it would feel to gripe about it here, that's really not helpful to the goal of making a good, coherent article about Anchorage. But I do understand the urge. I'd just like Jsusky to know that we encourage them to help, but there are better ways to accomplish their goals. Zaereth (talk) 21:30, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

• Done. Hopefully that will satisfy everybody. Zaereth (talk) 00:52, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

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Symmetry of the US Army

This must be a typo. What is meant here by “symmetry”? 69.138.14.233 (talk) 23:57, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

became a symbol of residents' contempt

Not clear what residents were contemuous of. Another typo? 69.138.14.233 (talk) 00:02, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

Population comparison in lede

The phrase "and has more people than all of Northern Canada and Greenland combined" might be interesting, but I don't see why such a comparison is needed in the lede. The lede is supposed to be a short summary of the most important points. I'd suggest removing it from there as an inappropriate tangent. (I have no objection to moving the phrase somewhere down in the article if context is appropriate.) -- Infrogmation (talk) 02:55, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Opening image

As of December 27, 2024, the opening image of this page is of a place on the Kenai Peninsula, nowhere near Anchorage. Perhaps someone can find a public domain image of the city proper. 152.117.104.206 (talk) 17:33, 27 December 2024 (UTC)