Tourism in Alaska--The First 50 Years.

• Author: LINDGREN, TINA
• Position: Brief Article

Tourists in Fairbanks board a sternwheeler owned by Captain Jim Binkley.

As the world prepares to enter a new millennium, the state's travel and tourism industry is moving into a new era as well--one that is marked with enormous potential and equally serious challenges.

When you look at tourism in Alaska today, you see a thriving industry on the whole, an industry that employs one in eight private-sector workers. Yet for all tourism's benefits to the state's economy and way of life, it is a relatively young business. At the industry's recent convention in Ketchikan, world-renowned tourism researcher Dr. Stanley Plog likened it to being in the "young adult" phase of development.

Tourism, as it is known in Alaska today, really began in the late 1940s. At that time there were few ways to get here. Sea travel was limited to the cargo passenger ships of water carriers, such as Alaska Steamship Co. Pan American Airlines was the only major air carrier serving Alaska, taking two days to get to Fairbanks from Seattle. The Alaska Highway was open to the public, but it was unpaved and very rough. And once visitors were in the state, travel was slow: A one-way bus trip between the Mat-Su Valley and Anchorage took 3.5 hours!

There were few accommodations in Alaska during those days. The first quality hotel, the Baranof in Juneau, opened in March 1939, followed by the Westward in Anchorage. There were also a few roadhouses and hotels, but they dated from a much earlier period.

Most Alaskans were caught up in the frenzy of post-war construction. According to George Sundborg, who worked for the territorial government during this era, there was no noticeable interest on the part of the populace in starting a tourism industry. Anyone who suggested there might be benefits in bringing visitors to Alaska would most likely be met with the question, "And where would we put them if they came?"

There was a common saying that a tourist in those days was someone who came to Alaska with a clean shirt and a $10 bill and never changed either one. Quite simply, most Alaskans at that time weren't interested in expanding an enterprise that wasn't among the extractive industries that had traditionally supported the state.

Chuck West, a bush plane pilot for the now-defunct Wien Air Alaska, was one of the first to recognize the potential of tourism. In 1947 he sold and piloted the first all-tourist air excursion to Nome and Kotzebue, and then started a travel agency. Looking...