The U.S. Census starts its official count today, January 21, in Toksook Bay, Alaska. Since 1960, the first census year after Alaska became a state, the census has started in Alaska.
With 80% of Alaska communities not on the road system, and with many villages without extensive internet service, the census starts early in Alaska. Getting around remote Alaska is much easier when the ground is frozen. Also, it is much more difficult to count people, after many residents of Bush Alaska head out to their fish camps.
Thus the mid-winter start to the counting in Alaska.
I have a friend who was assigned to Toksook Bay as she works for the Census Bureau this season. I hope she has a wonderful experience. The first person interviewed by the Census is always a village elder. That first village varies, with the Alaska Federation of Natives deciding which village will be initially enumerated.
Toksook Bay is a coastal village on the Bering Sea.
This will be the 24th Census taken in the United States, with the first taking place in 1790. The majority of the country will see census forms start to show up in March.
A rather cheeky response to Western Airlines. This was probably a local advert; I spotted it at the Pioneer Air Museum. It certainly would have been a hit in Alaska in the 1970’s.
It had been several years since I ventured into the Air Museum at Pioneer Park. Since they were experimenting with winter hours, I decided it was time to head back over there and see what was new.
Under The Dome: Inside the Air Museum
The Pioneer Air Museum houses a fairly extensive collection of aircraft and other artifacts mainly pertaining to Interior Alaska and Arctic aviation.
Ben Eielson Display
The first major display is on Ben Eielson, the famed aviator and Alaskan bush pilot. Eielson learned to fly in WWI, with the U.S Army Signal Corps. After the war, a chance run-in with Alaska’s territorial delegate to Congress, led to Eielson heading to Alaska to teach. By 1923, Eielson had started the Farthest North Aviation Company. Eielson was the first to fly air mail in Alaska, and the first to fly from North America over the North Pole to Europe.
In 1929, Eielson and his mechanic died in a plane crash in Siberia. The cargo ship Nanuk was frozen in sea ice off North Cape, and Eielson was contracted by expedition leader Olaf Swenson to fly out personnel and furs. The plane crashed in a storm, cruising at full throttle into the terrain. A faulty altimeter is the suspected cause of the crash. Parts of Eielson’s recovered aircraft is on display at the museum.
1935 Stinson SR-JR
This bright red Stinson SR-JR, the Spirit of Barter Island, came to Alaska in 1940, and was flying the Interior out of Fairbanks in 1953 for Interior Airways.
The Stinson in artwork
This SR-JR carries four passengers, has a cruising speed of 110mph, and a range of 450 miles. It was an Interior workhorse, and well known in the Fairbanks area. The image, “I Follow Rivers”, can be found on t-shirts around Fairbanks to this day.
Stinson V77: Peter Pan
The Stinson V77 is the Navy version of the SR-10 Reliant. “Peter Pan” flew the Kuskokwim and Yukon River mail runs. The Stinson Reliant was a favorite of bush pilots, as the aircraft was equally at ease landing on wheels, skis or floats. In 1949, “Peter Pan” made the flight from Bethel, Alaska to Boston, Mass. It is back in Alaska, on loan to the museum, from the bush pilot’s family.
1943 P-39 Wreckage
The P-39 Airacobra was a common sight in Alaska’s Interior during WWII, as it was a mainstay of lend-lease aircraft to the Soviets. This P-39 only made it to Fairbanks in pieces, as it was involved in a mid-air collision with another aircraft 60 miles east of Fairbanks. Both pilots survived the crash.
1942 ST Type Ryan PT-22
The PT-22 was used for flight training all over the globe. Over 14,000 Air Corps pilots trained in the PT-22. This particular PT-22 came to Fairbanks in 1956 after it was retired out of the military.
The “Huey”
Manufactured by Bell Helicopter in 1966, this UH-1H “Huey”, saw combat in South Vietnam. During a mission in 1969, this UH-1H was hit by a rocket propelled grenade while landing. After the war, it came to Alaska, and was transferred around the Alaska Army bases, finally landing at Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks. It was retired in 1993, and is on loan to the museum from the U.S. Army. The “Huey” is still maintained by Army personnel.
Thomas Ackerman photo
A visitor to the museum several years ago, recognized the Huey’s ID number as the one he flew during the Vietnam War. Sgt Thomas Ackerman was a crew-chief and gunman on this UH-1H. He supplied several photos of the Huey, during its time in Vietnam, to the museum, including the one above. Thomas Ackerman died of Agent Orange related cancer in 2004.
Across the state, Alaskan cities and villages saw their warmest year ever recorded. Utqiagvik, Kotzebue, Fairbanks, Anchorage, Bethel, Kodiak and Cold Bay, all saw record warmth in 2019 as a whole. For the first time since recording began, Fairbanks had an average temperature above freezing.
Juneau had a record number of days of 70F or higher, which was enough to give the capital city their third warmest year.
Across the state we set 326 new record highs, as opposed to just 12 record lows.
Graph credit: NOAA, ACCAP, @AlaskaWx
Statewide, Alaska had 87% of its days above normal, with only 13% of days with below normal temps. Normal is based on 1981-2010 averages.
The tail end of December did see a dip in temps, at least in the Interior and northern regions. Sea ice has finally started to extend, although the amount is still lower than what we had at this point in 2019.
The temperature at the Anchorage International Airport fell to -10F on Sunday morning. That is the first time Anchorage has seen minus ten in 3 years.
The fine folks out at Poker Flat Research Range have announced future launch windows. The first one opens on 26 January. Poker Flat does stream the launches of their sounding rockets online. One can receive launch updates by following the instructions above.
The aurora in Venetie, Alaska; Photo credit: PFRR
PFRR also has their nightly All-Sky Camera, which is very sensitive to the aurora. You can find their camera here:
The Shishaldin Volcano on Unimak Island; Photo credit: USGS
Mount Shishaldin, which is one of the most beautiful and perfectly cone-shaped volcanos on the Aleutian Chain, has been restless since July 2019, with several short burst eruptions. At the end of December, temperature elevations were measured at its summit, and seismic activity had increased substantially.
This past Friday morning, Shishaldin erupted, sending ash five miles into the air. Volcanic lightning, and the glow of lava near the summit, could be seen from Cold Bay.
Shishaldin from high; Photo credit: AVO
At an elevation of 9373′, Mount Shishaldin is the highest peak in the Aleutians. Shishaldin is relatively young, with its cone less than 10,000 years old, although remnants of an ancestral volcano can be found on Unimak.
Mount Shishaldin, postcard image, circa 1910; Photo credit: J.E. Thwaites
The first known ascent of Shishaldin happened in 1932, when G. Peterson and two others, made the climb to the summit. It is widely understood, that native Aleuts and visiting Russians certainly made the climb previously, but their ascents were not documented.
Local climbers are known to still make the climb to Shishaldin’s summit, then ski back down its flank.
The Lend-Lease Monument is located in Griffin Park, downtown Fairbanks, near Golden Heart Plaza, alongside the Chena River.
The Lend-Lease Act was originally passed in March 1941, with the Soviet Union being added to the program in October of the same year. The Northwest Staging Route, from the mainland of the U.S. through Canada and into Alaska, was extended into the Soviet Union with the Alaska-Siberian Airway (ALSIB).
Map of ALSIB; cell phone photo
Planes were ferried from locations like Buffalo, NY; Minneapolis, MN; St Louis, MO; and Oklahoma City, OK to Great Falls, MT. Airfields were carved out of the wilderness from Montana through Canada and on to Ladd Field in Fairbanks. Most airfields were built 100 miles apart, with the longest being between Fort Nelson, BC and Liard River, which was 140 miles. The Alaska Highway would soon be completed linking the airfields together by road.
The first Soviet pilots landed in Nome on 14 August 1942. The Soviets took over the aircraft at either Ladd Field in Fairbanks or at Nome, then flew across the Bering Strait to Krasnoyarsk in Siberia.
Over 8000 aircraft flew through Ladd Field in Fairbanks on their way to the Soviet Union. Between October 1941 and the end of May 1945 the U.S. provided the USSR with nearly a half-million vehicles other than aircraft, 2 million tons of gasoline and oil, and close to 4.5 million tons of food. Of the 8000 aircraft, 133 were lost. The average time to ferry an aircraft to the Soviet Union was 33 days.
Some of the aircraft ferried:
The Bell P-39 Airacobra, followed by the P-63 Kingcobra its successor, the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk, and Rebublic P-47 Thunderbolt. Bombers ferried included the Douglas A-20 Havoc and North American’s B-25 Mitchell. Most of the transports ferried were the Douglas C-47 Skytrain.
“The structure of world peace cannot be the work of one man, or one party, or one nation… it must be a peace which rests on the cooperative effort of the whole world.”
