Alaska

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Political Developments

In 1906, in response to repeated Alaskan demands, Congress granted residents the right to elect a nonvoting delegate to the House of Representatives. Frank H. Waskey was elected for the rest of the current congressional session, while Thomas Cale won the first full term, to start in 1907.

In 1908 Judge James Wickersham won the election, succeeding Cale. He backed a limited form of territorial government, and in 1912 Congress passed his legislative assembly bill, also called Alaska’s Second Organic Act. It created a new government for Alaska, including a bicameral legislature with limited powers, which was to meet biannually. Earlier, in the case of Rasmussen v. United States (1905) the Supreme Court of the United States had decided that Alaska was “incorporated territory” and therefore bound for eventual statehood.

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World War I and After

When the United States entered World War I in 1917, many Alaskan men left to join the armed services or to work in war industries. After the war, Alaska’s economy was still centered on its natural resources. Mining and fishing were far more important than the fur trade. But the fisheries gave little employment to territorial residents since the salmon packers brought their own crews north each summer. The prospectors’ primitive mining methods had given way to the use of machinery; large dredges now recovered the gold. Copper mining had come to rival gold, but provided jobs for only several hundred. Agriculture had not flourished. Alaska was still very much a colony: it had limited home rule, Congress controlled its natural resources, and it supplied raw materials in exchange for finished goods and investment capital.

The beginning of the air age in the 1920s had a great impact on Alaska. It was difficult to build roads and railroads in the territory because of its rugged terrain, severe climate, and vast distances. However, the airplane made previously remote locations accessible. Alaska played a large role in the early years of aviation and was the scene of important flights. For example, the U.S. Army fliers who made the first round-the-world flight used Alaskan landing fields.

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Alaska experienced an economic slump after the war, residents left, and economic growth slowed well into the 1930s. The 1920 census showed a population of 55,036, a drop of 9,320 from 1910. Employment in the mines declined; in 1938 the Kennecott mine, Alaska’s last great copper mine, closed. Salmon prices also declined. Although Alaska suffered less from the Great Depression of the 1930s than the rest of the United States, its economy was affected. For example, federal appropriations for Alaska, never very high, were cut. Because of its perennial deficits, Congress became increasingly critical of the Alaska Railroad.

Americans looked to Democratic president Franklin D. Roosevelt to solve the misery of the Great Depression. Roosevelt responded with the New Deal, a composite of relief and reform programs. Some actions of the Roosevelt Administration benefited the territory. The devaluation of the dollar that resulted from raising the price of gold stimulated the mining industry: the value of mined gold rose from $10,209,000 in 1932 to $26,178,000 in 1940.

Most notable of all New Deal activities in Alaska was the Matanuska Valley agricultural colony. One of many resettlement projects designed to take people from rural districts mired in poverty and move them where they might lead more productive lives, the Matanuska experiment excited national interest. The cost amounted to $5 million. About 31 percent of the original settlers and 43 percent of the replacements still lived in the colony in 1948.

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Native Reorganization

Alaska’s Natives also participated in the New Deal. In 1934 Congress, on the administration’s recommendation, passed the Wheeler-Howard Act, also called the Indian Reorganization Act. Two years later it was extended to Alaska. The act rejected forced assimilation to white culture and instead fostered preservation of the Natives’ cultural heritage. The act also allowed Native communities to incorporate and draft constitutions for self-government. Business loans extended to villages allowed them to set up canneries. Individual fishermen borrowed money to buy boats and gear.

The most controversial aspect of the act contemplated the creation of reservations. Alaskans protested that applying this policy to Alaska would turn two-thirds of the state, and virtually all of Southeastern, into reservations. In the 1940s, in the face of adamant opposition, the federal government withdrew the reservation plan.

The Natives, for the most part, wanted full political, economic, and social equality rather than separation on reservations. In the 1940s Tlingit and then Eskimo (see Inuit) began to be elected to the state legislature. The 1945 session of the legislature passed an act outlawing what racial discrimination there had been—such as “white only” restaurants and segregation in theaters. Natives were appointed to serve on major territorial boards. Native schools closed and the children were transferred to the general public schools. The question of Native land rights remained open, however, and would eventually have to be resolved.

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World War II (1939-1945)

World War II profoundly changed Alaska. On the eve of the war, Alaska’s only military establishment was Chilkoot Barracks in Haines. The post had been established during the gold rush days and was situated where it could observe traffic bound inland over the Dalton Trail and over Chilkoot, Chilkat, and White passes. Eleven officers and 300 enlisted men manned the post.

Early in 1935 Congress had named six strategic areas for location of U.S. Army Air Corps bases. Alaska was one of these. The shortest distance between the United States and Asia was the great circle route, 3,200 km (2,000 mi) north of fortified Hawaii but only 444 km (276 mi) south of the Aleutians. Brigadier General Billy Mitchell, an advocate of air power, testified before Congress in 1935 that Japan was America’s most dangerous enemy in the Pacific: “They will come right here to Alaska. Alaska is the most central place in the world for aircraft, and that is true either of Europe, Asia, or North America. I believe in the future he who holds Alaska will hold the world, and I think it is the most important strategic place in the world.”

It took Congress several more years to respond; in 1940 it appropriated $4 million to construct a cold-weather testing station for airplanes near Fairbanks. The Navy built air stations at Sitka and Kodiak. The Army’s budget for fiscal year 1941 included a base near Anchorage to cost $12,734,000, but Congress eliminated the item on April 4, 1940. A few days later, on April 9, Germany’s armies invaded and occupied Norway and Denmark. For the first time many members of Congress realized that Norway and Denmark were just over the North Pole from Alaska and that the Germans might soon have bombers that could fly that far. Congress restored the money. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, devastating the U.S. Pacific fleet. Alaska was ill prepared. On June 3, 1942, the Japanese attacked Dutch Harbor and soon occupied the islands of Kiska and Attu in the Aleutians.

In the meantime, the Army and private contractors built the Alaska-Canada Military Highway in little more than nine months. It opened November 20, 1942, a major engineering achievement. The Alaska Highway, as it is now called, connected the landing fields on the air route to Alaska. It started at Dawson Creek, British Columbia, and ran 2,288 km (1,422 mi) to Delta Junction, Alaska. The highway was later extended to Fairbanks.

Armed forces personnel in Alaska increased to 150,000. On May 11, 1943, U.S. troops landed on Attu and after a bitter battle retook the island on May 29. On August 14 a large invasion of Kiska was launched, but, unknown to the Americans, the Japanese had evacuated on July 23. The forces soon discovered that the enemy had left and the war in Alaska had ended.

The war had a profound and lasting impact on the territory. It altered the pace of Alaskan life. Between 1941 and 1945 the federal government spent close to $2 billion in the north. The modernization of the Alaska railroad and the expansion of airfields and construction of roads benefited the war effort as well as the civilian population. Many of the docks, wharves, and breakwaters built along the coast for the use of the U.S. Navy, Coast Guard, and Army Transport Service were turned over to the territory after the war. Most importantly, thousands of soldiers and construction workers had come north, and many decided to make Alaska their home. Between 1940 and 1950 the civilian population increased from 74,000 to 112,000.

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The Drive for Statehood

With the population influx, residents pushed for statehood. James Wickersham had introduced the first statehood bill in 1916, but it did not receive a hearing. In 1943 Senator William Langer of North Dakota and Congressman Anthony J. Dimond of Alaska both introduced Alaska enabling bills. Congress did not consider either measure, but Dimond’s successor, E.L. “Bob” Bartlett, continued introducing statehood bills. In 1946 Alaskans voted on statehood in a referendum, with 9,630 votes in favor and 6,822 against. Congress held the first hearing on an Alaska statehood bill in 1947, and the House passed a statehood measure in 1950. The Korean War (1950-1953) intervened, however, and the measure was set aside. In 1955, impatient with congressional delays, the territorial legislature authorized a convention to draft a state constitution. Alaskan voters ratified the document in 1956.

Alaskan voters elected as U.S. senators Ernest Gruening, who had been territorial governor from 1939 to 1953, and William A. Egan, who had presided over the constitutional convention. For U.S. congressman they elected Ralph J. Rivers, a former territorial attorney general. Although Congress did not seat them, they lobbied hard for statehood. Finally, on May 26, 1958, the House passed the Alaska statehood bill by a vote of 210 to 166; the Senate followed on June 30. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the measure into law on July 7, 1958, and on January 3, 1959, he signed the proclamation admitting Alaska as the 49th state of the union. Under the statehood act, Alaska also received 41,824,000 hectares (103,350,000 acres), to be selected from vacant, unappropriated public lands within 25 years after admission.

In 1959 Egan was elected as Alaska’s first state governor, and Alaska’s first voting delegation was seated in Congress: Gruening, Rivers, and Senator E. L. “Bob” Bartlett. The Alaska delegation soon speeded passage of the Omnibus Bill for the new state, an afterthought to the statehood act. It not only put Alaska on an equal footing with the other states, but also granted $27.5 million in transitional grants over a five-year period.

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