A history of Anchorage aspersions: A ‘veritable mud flat’ and ‘a place to die in, but not much of a place to live in’

Part of a continuing weekly series on Alaska history by local historian David Reamer. Have a question about Anchorage or Alaska history or an idea for a future article? Go to the form at the bottom of this story.

My last column told the tale of Raymond Lentzsch and his disastrous 1957 trip to Fairbanks. As Lentzsch declared, Fairbanks was “the most depressing town I’ve ever visited” and “a flat, barren, dusty mudhole.” In his defense, he only spent three days in Fairbanks, and at the peak of spring breakup, but every Alaska city, no matter how seemingly perfect and picturesque, has its detractors. So, in the spirit of fairness, here is a sample of insults to Anchorage across history.

Anchorage in its earliest years deserved every snide comment, every bit of disdain from visitors. The cemetery was well designed and cared for, but the town itself featured few creature comforts or other positive attributes against a lengthy list of shortcomings. There was mud, prominent vice, mosquitoes, harsh working conditions, prejudice, open sewage, and overpriced shops. As one 1917 visitor said, “Anchorage has been figured to be a place to die in, but not much of a place to live in.”

[‘The most depressing town I’ve ever visited’: One tourist’s Fairbanks experience and the war of words it inspired]

An incident from 1916 is telling about the state of the newly founded railroad hub. That August, the Anchorage Daily Times claimed steamship passengers were advised to stay onboard during stops at Anchorage. The reputation: “Anchorage was no place to visit, there being nothing of interest in the city and the whole place was a veritable mud flat.” The newspaper further declared, “This matter of knocking should be brought to the attention of local steamship companies and any future attempts to hurt the fair name of Anchorage frustrated and the party or parties summarily reprimanded.”

One week later, another steamship was in town. As the deepwater dock here was not completed until 1919, the steamers anchored offshore, and lighters carried passengers and crews to shore. On this day, one of the small boats carried a load of passengers to the small railroad dock. The men clambered up the ladder, but the women struggled to pull themselves up its length. The boat crew tired of the delay and tossed the women into the water, near the mouth of Ship Creek.

The newspaper noted, they “had to wade through the mud and filth to reach the shore proper. Two of the women lost their shoes in the struggle to get to dry land.” Suffice it to say, no one could blame these tourists if they thought Anchorage was little more than a “veritable mud flat.”

In 1939, Anchorage was on the brink of massive expansion. That year, the town was selected to house a new Army base, what is today the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. Construction began in 1940, but a year earlier, many residents still carried a deeply rooted civic inferiority complex. For example, if Fairbanks had a winter festival, then so should Anchorage, thus the Fur Rendezvous.

That 1939 summer, the Daily Times ran an advertisement to publicize the city’s untapped potential. It was meant to be complimentary but was more damning with faint praise. Among a long list of features, the advertisement stated, “Anchorage has 450 automobiles. More than 200 homes are equipped with automatic stokers, electric ranges and refrigerators. Venetian blinds are common ... Anchorage, the city that will grow to be the ‘Minneapolis of the North.’ ” The presence of Venetian blinds in town was a low bar.

During the Anchorage population boom of the 1940s and 1950s, few businesses prospered more than bars. In 1942, comedian Joe E. Brown proclaimed Fourth Avenue was the “longest bar in the world,” a backhanded compliment used repeatedly by Bob Hope in his later visits. When Minneapolis Star reporter Keyes Beech visited Anchorage in 1951, he “counted 25 saloons and liquor stores in two blocks and found that I had missed three nestled in basements or upstairs.”

In 1957, the Juneau Independent newspaper asked, “We wonder when Juneau is going to grow up big enough so that we can have all the charms of Anchorage. We look forward to when we can have teen-age hoodlums, B-girls, prostitution, gambling and dope.” B-girls are women employed by bars to work undercover, seducing and otherwise cajoling men into spending more than they would have, a practice banned across Alaska in 1959.

As the older city by nearly 35 years, Juneau had consistently enjoyed the “charms” of vice and crime for about 35 years more than Anchorage. In some ways, midcentury Anchorage still had much to learn from debauched Juneau residents, like gambling on guinea pig races, an alleged feature of the Snake Pit Downs during its brief 1949 to 1950 existence.

Some insults hurt more because of who said them. In 1969, Oklahoman Bill Tandy of Tandy Industries announced his intention to build an all-indoor city across the Knik Arm from Anchorage and connected by an aerial tram system. The plan was essentially an immediate failure, the oversized dream of an outsider.

To support the new site, project documents denigrated Anchorage at every opportunity. For example, “When the city was incorporated the zoning and planning was by a grid system exactly the same as any Midwestern American town. No consideration for the muskeg, the natural drainage areas, or the ground cover was given ... The result of this practice is an arctic city built to look like Lima, Ohio in a manner that assures its total population constant mud, dust or snow (and at times, all three at once).” The original Anchorage townsite was indeed laid out in a grid without any concern for the landscape, but it stings to be reminded of the fact by the planners of a doomed domed city.

In 1975, Michael Rogers visited Alaska during the heyday of pipeline construction and wrote an extensive account of his experience for Rolling Stone magazine. While he was less than impressed with Alaska entire, Anchorage was the only location that prompted disgust. As in, “Anchorage, in the far south, is Alaska’s largest city, a sprawling and ugly burg that shows hardly any evidence of intelligent urban planning. If you like, say, Sacramento, you’ll love Anchorage.”

Rogers also claimed, “Anchorage has managed to locate its prostitution/pawn shop/massage parlor district right in the heart of town. Only a block or so from the log cabin Chamber of Commerce; just a quick dash from City Hall and the big ‘All-American City’ sign; right on the tourist path to souvenir mukluks and Eskimo yoyos — anything vaguely male and over nine years of age is likely to be propositioned at least twice a block.” If he thought the local redlight district was downtown, he never bothered to visit the rest of the city, especially Spenard.

No list of complaints about Alaska is complete without John McPhee’s 1976 book “Coming Into the Country.” He wrote, “Anchorage is sometimes excused in the name of pioneering. Build now, civilize later. But Anchorage is not a frontier town.” He explained, “It is virtually unrelated to its environment. It has come in on the wind, an American spore. A large cookie cutter brought down on El Paso could lift something like Anchorage into the air. Anchorage is the northern rim of Trenton, the center of Oxnard, the ocean-blind precincts of Daytona Beach. It is condensed, instant Albuquerque.”

But mid-1970s Anchorage was not designed in the mid-1970s. In this, McPhee blamed the Anchorage residents of the 1970s for the failures of previous generations, city leaders who were constrained by their time’s geographic and political limitations. In the 1950, the Anchorage bowl included Elmendorf Air Force Base, Fort Richardson, Mountain View, Eastchester (now Fairview), Spenard, and Anchorage, all independent of each other, a complex context of which McPhee was surely ignorant.

Lastly, there is a visual Anchorage insult. In Green Arrow issue number 8, cover-dated September 1988, the titular hero rides a ferry from Seattle to Anchorage to see the start of the Iditarod. Circumstances intervene, and he breaks up a smuggling operation peddling powdered rhinoceros horn, a supposed aphrodisiac. In the end, one of the mushers is using the race as cover for smuggling the powder. After the criminal musher is captured, Green Arrow drives the dog team back to Anchorage.

Capable artist Paris Cullins portrays Anchorage as a vile, lawless town. He introduces the city with a two-page spread featuring drunks in the street, a man standing on a taxi and urinating on its front window, strip clubs, massage parlors, and some seemingly poor driving. Elsewhere in the comic, there is also gambling, an automobile chop shop, and public brawls. I offer this example less to critique it than to give readers a chance to say, “But that’s what it was like then.”

Key sources:

“3,000,000 on Deposit in the Banks And No Place to Go.” Anchorage Daily Times, June 3, 1939, 7.

Beech, Keyes. “Alaska Strikes It Rich Again in Military Boom.” Anchorage Daily Times, May 23, 1951, 7.

Kederick, Bob. “All Around Alaska.” Anchorage Daily Times, October 31, 1957, 7.

“Knockers Seek to Injure Town of Anchorage.” Anchorage Daily Times, August 20, 1916, 9.

Rogers, Michael. “The Dark Side of the Earth. Rolling Stone, May 22, 1975, 52-58, 72-77.

“Total Disregard for Passengers’ Comfort.” Anchorage Daily Times, September 7, 1916, 6.