Anchorage centennial: celebrating the past and the present.

• Author: Harrington, Susan
• Position: FROM THE EDITOR - Editorial

From the shores of Ship Creek and Cook Inlet spawned a city, --an anchorage to the last frontier, a construction camp for the railroad named by the US Postal Service, and it is an apt name. Anchorage is the anchor of Alaska.

It's been a staging ground for progress for the last one hundred years and so it will be for the next one hundred. Let's go back a little further in history to 10,000 BC, about twelve thousand years ago; that's when the First Peoples of Alaska discovered Anchorage. As soon as the glaciers from the Ice Age retreated enough to expose the shore lines and allow passage and habitation the Dena'ina Athabascans began living in the area, thriving for thousands of years and joined throughout times by Alaska Natives from other areas of the state whose nomadic migrations and early adventures brought them to Anchorage as well.

A testament to the fact is Cook Inlet Region Inc., the Anchorage-area Alaska Native regional corporation formed as a result of the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act in 1971. CIRI's shareholders are made up of descendants of "Athabascan, Southeast Indian, Inupiat, Yup'ik, Alutiiq/Sugpiaq, and Aleut/Unangax descent-a unique cultural diversity that represents shareholders from all Alaska Native groups, from throughout the state."

Much like CIRI's shareholders came to Anchorage, so have many of the other Alaska...