Adventure and history await discovery across the Last Frontier State. Several years ago, I was a long-term substitute teacher in the Yup’ik...
Alaska’s Wild West
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Mike Coppock
Sooners and Boomers!
The Land Run of 1891 was one of the most remarkable events in Western history. One needs to understand that Oklahoma is an instant land. There are...
Forgotten Hero of Denali
Alaska native son Walter Harper was the first to ascend North America’s highest peak, but his fame—and life as a physician—were cut short by...
A Toast to Gold: 150 Years Later
Raise your glass to the Sourdoughs in saloons across Alaska this year. Even more visitors are expected to take in Alaska’s frontier charms during...
Road to Gold & Redemption
If a singular word describes the 1897 Klondike Gold Rush, it is audacious. Everything about this rush for riches was audacious; the people, their...
Burning Through Texas
To burn through Texas to the Gulf of Mexico was a vision that came to Chief Buffalo Hump that captured the imagination of his people. During the...
The Buffalo Hunters’ War
Comanche Chief Black Horse stared out across the High Plains of West Texas in December 1876 in disbelief. The grasslands before him looked like the...
A Campaign from Hell
America was celebrating its centennial when word came of George Custer’s destruction by the Lakota Sioux at the Little Big Horn (Northern Cheyennes...
Arrest Those Spies!
With all the pomp the Spanish officer could muster so far from present-day Santa Fe, New Mexico, Lt. Facundo Melgares rode into the sprawling Pawnee...
Scout for Two Continents
The harsh winter of 1882 was finally melting away as both the kid and his horse resembling starved scarecrows made their way down the snow packed...
Jack London’s Alaska
Jack London was only 21 years old when he stepped ashore in Alaska in 1897 to find his fortune in gold. He looked boyish and threadbare, as did many...
Lt. Henry Allen
Twenty-five-year-old Army Lt. Henry Allen stood in the Alaskan wilderness in 1885, staring up at the giant columns of frozen ice draping down from...