Alaska VIP Club

For residents and visitors alike, the building in the picture above is a familiar site in Anchorage’s downtown area of 4th Avenue. But our story doesn’t begin here. This edition of the Anchorage Memories VIP Club Podcast is really three stories in one. It’s the story of the Wendler family, what would become Anchorage’s Club 25 and how Wendler Junior High School got its name. On July 5, 1915, as th...

Our story begins, one afternoon, long ago. Somewhere between the newsreel and the main movie, I sat there, a young boy in the 4th Avenue Theater, when an ad filled the screen. The first thing I noticed was that it was for a local Anchorage business. I had heard the name, “Snow White Laundry and Cleaners” many times before, but knew nothing about them. I became fascinated as I watched their movie t...

They look peaceful enough, but a moose is still a wild animal and they can be dangerous. Here are some fun stories of moose encounters in and around Anchorage, Alaska. Cindy sent us this one“Adam and the Moose”“It’s hard to believe that anyone who has lived in Anchorage does not have a moose story. Adam had a “Close Encounter of the Moose Kind”. We were going out for a bike ride. I set the bike on...

In 1908, Seldovia’s “main street” was built along the beach and was only accessible at low tide. You’ll find this Alaska town of about 255 people, located on the shores of Kachemak Bay on the Kenai Peninsula, about 246 miles from Anchorage. However, you can only get there by boat or airplane. There are no roads connecting Seldovia with the rest of Alaska. Athabascans, Aleuts, and Eskimos were the...

In 1916, during his first year in Anchorage, the Anchorage Daily Times wrote the following:“Joe Spenard caused considerable excitement Saturday afternoon when he attempted to drive his yellow car through the doors of Robarts Pool Hall. He made the attempt for a box of cigars promised him by Jack Robarts if he accomplished the feat: otherwise, he was to pay the damages. Joe is still smoking his pip...

Alaska has long been a magnet for colorful characters. In its early days, Anchorage had Joe Spenard and Russian Jack. During the Klondike Gold Rush, Skagway had “Soapy” Smith. And you have probably heard of others. Many years ago, the Inuit Eskimo and Tanaina Indians settled about 125 miles southwest of what would become Anchorage, on the Kenai Peninsula. GoldThen, in the late 1800s, a mining comp...

He had no money, and no job prospects on the horizon. So, in 1929, during the Great Depression, he was able to sneak on board the SS Aleutian steamship, headed for Seward, Alaska. Once in Seward, he made his way to Anchorage, where he found work, driving a delivery truck for Standard Oil. Later, he began a fur trading business using dog teams and chartered planes to reach remote Alaska villages. H...

Author Mike Dougherty tells you this story. The Anchorage Film Caper takes you on a spooky but humor-filled adventure through the basement of the deserted and badly damaged McKinley building following the 1964 Alaska earthquake. When you were a teenager, did you ever do anything that you thought about later in life, laughed and said to yourself, “that was dumb.” Well, this story would be one of th...

During the long, cold dark of winter (not shown above), Anchorage movie theaters offered us a relief from the grip of Cabin Fever. For two hours or more, you could enjoy a movie or two, if it was a double feature. In the 1940s, 1950s, and into the early 1960s, you might also see a cartoon, a serial and, or a newsreel just before your movie. Movies (and television) were our window on the world outs...

When Alaska finally made the transition from territory of the United States to becoming the 49th state – it was cause indeed for happy celebrations in Anchorage.“I remember being in the first grade at Denali Elementary. One day, we had to fill out a form. One of the questions asked, “what state do you live in?”. Our teacher told all of us to write “Territory of Alaska”.MaryThe Statehood ActThe man...

Do you like (or would you like) to go camping in Alaska? When Mike of the Anchorage Memories VIP Club was 16 and his brother Tom was 14, the two headed across a lake to a small, wooded island near Cordova, Alaska to camp for the night. But things don’t always go as plannedMike and Tom’s overactive imaginations, ended up turning what should have been the perfect Alaska camping trip, into a night of...