Brooke Marston - turnagain pioneer.

• Author: Gerhart, Clifford
• Position: Real estate broker and developer

In his office building on Turnagain Boulevard, an old hardware store remodeled into an office, developer and real estate broker Brooke Marston reflects on over four decades of change in Anchorage. During his career, he says he has sold "thousands - maybe tens of thousands - of homes."

In 1995, Marston sold two real estate offices in Anchorage and the Mat-Su Valley to Vista Real Estate. He still owns and operates a property management firm. But he remembers Anchorage as a close-knit community in the days he was developing Turnagain and other projects around town.

"Anchorage was a different place. I would go down on Fourth Avenue to do business with Dan Cuddy or Elmer Rasmuson and I'd know 85 percent of the people I met on the street," he says.

"Actually, if you had come to visit me in 1959, I'd have jumped up and said, 'It's low tide!' and gone off to catch fish. There would often be 70 nets between Point Woronzof and Ship Creek in those days."

Brooke Marston first came to Alaska from Muskegon, Mich., in 1941. His father was an American gold prospector in Quebec, Canada, when Canadian mining was shut down by the coming of World War II. He was assigned to stage the transport of planes to England, and when America joined the war, he was reassigned to Alaska as a major in the U.S. Army.

"Muktuk" Marston, as Marston senior was known, conceived the idea of training Alaska Natives as soldiers. He interested territorial governor Ernest Gruening in the plan, and the famous Eskimo Guard was born.

Brooke Marston attended Anchorage High School, which stood where the Anchorage Center for the Performing Arts is now. After graduation, he started his working career as a teacher, teaching in the same room where he had been a student.

"I had a good time for four years teaching. It was a privilege to be able to teach," Marston says. He has often thought about going back to teaching, and has worked as an adjunct professor at Alaska Pacific University from time to time.

Marston's father had invested in two homesteads, and became involved in the development of the Turnagain area in midtown Anchorage. The younger Marston fell into the business...