Alaska's Museums & Libraries – Largely Run By Volunteers – Are Held Useless By U.S. Govt.

The Government Says It's Not Interested In Any American Town's History 

...Including All Over Alaska 

In a shocking announcement to the organization that helps fund many of America's museums, including in Alaska, the federal government has said that assisting in maintaining small community libraries and museums is no longer in the interests of the United States of America. 

Salmon cans at Kasilof Museum
(Photo, Country Journal) 

APRIL, 2025 

"Your grant no longer effectuates the agency's needs and priorities and conditions of the Grant Agreement and is subject to termination." 

"Your grant's immediate termination is necessary to safeguard the interests of the federal government, including its fiscal priorities."

Trail of '98 Miner's Black Spruce Sled at Copper Center Museum
(Photo, Country Journal) 

 

 COUNTRY JOURNAL COMMENTARY 

We Ignore The Past At Our Peril 

You may wonder why the Copper River Country Journal highlights so many stories of the people and traditions of the Copper Valley. 

Wasilla Dorothy Page museum, historic cabin.
(Photo, Country Journal) 

It's because we think it is important to honor our elders, veterans, and citizen-volunteers who have helped build this diverse community. And to recognize that we are a unique part of America that legitimately deserves respect. 

Fairbanks Cultural Center (Photo, Country Journal) 

At the Journal, we are strong believers in the power of history and culture. That's why we regularly reprint stories of interviews we once conducted with people like Walter Charley, Sy Neeley, Joe Goodlataw, Park Kriner, Ruth Johns, Thelma Schrank, Morrie Secondchief, Jim Frey, Fred Ewan and well over a hundred others. 

It's also why we were honored this year to remember local veterans, like Randy Radigan... 

With this in mind, we have printed many historic stories of true tales of ordinary Copper River people who risked their necks to help save others in our difficult environment. In the 13 years of the original printed Country Journal, there was hardly a month that went by without one more tale of someone going out and rescuing another person from a glacier, river or lake, or a car wreck... 

That is our history – and it is remarkable. 

Sullivan Museum in Delta (Photo, Country Journal) 

Labor Of Love At Alaska's Small Museums 

There are at least a hundred small museums and cultural centers in Alaska. Their sole job is to protect our history, too. The museums are a labor of love from local people; a gift to their communities and neighbors. Their purpose is to understand our common past – and the triumphs and struggles and traditions of those who came before us. 

Here at the Copper River Country Journal in Gakona, we place special emphasis in our statewide travel publications (which we have produced since 1986) on highlighting Alaska's many museums. 

Coffee can fishing lure at Homer's Pratt Museum. (Photo, Country Journal) 

The museums across the state's road system celebrate the lives of ordinary people who have lived here and contributed to our communities. 

These include museums like Morris Thompson Cultural Center in Fairbanks, which features displays of beautiful Native artwork, along with real riverboats, cabins, and even a fish smoking camp – all donated to the project by local people. 

Riverboat on display at Morris Thompson Cultural Center in Fairbanks. 
Includes all the gear needed for a hunting trip on the rivers: boxes of Pilot Crackers, oars, buckets...
(Photo, Country Journal)

The Pratt Museum in Homer features a push-button audio tape outside a genuine small cabin. The cabin's owners once loaned that cabin to newcomers when they first arrived in town. The tape tells the stories of how one family after another was welcomed to live in the cabin as they gained their footing in Homer. 

Pratt Museum in Homer (Photo, Country Journal) 

Celebrating Who We Are 

The small museums across America, and in Alaska, are a physical record of each community. The places we all live (for want of a better word) are "diverse." They are not all the same.

For example, there is absolutely nowhere in the world that is like the Copper Valley. Just as there's no place like the smallest little town in Texas. 

Our museum in Copper Center has artifacts in it from the Valdez Glacier terminus that are not like anything you'll find anywhere else, especially as they are so well described, in the museum displays, telling the incredible tales of the 1898 Valdez-Copper Valley Gold Rush. 

Kenai City Cultural Center (Photo,Country Journal) 

The other museums of Alaska have similar uniqueness. The State Trooper Museum in Anchorage is the only one anywhere that shows the uniforms, the badges, and the entire history of how Alaska's Territorial Police became Troopers. 

The Alaska Veterans' Museum, also in Anchorage, describes the way soldiers lost their lives in Alaska, and helped save America in World War II. 

The Alaska Native Heritage Center in Anchorage presents a look at every Native population in the entire state. 

Rika's Roadhouse in Delta Junction, along with the Sullivan Roadhouse – also in Delta – shows exactly what the old roadhouses of the Valdez-to-Fairbanks Trail looked like, along with their barns, and beds, and kitchen implements and wood stoves. 

Copper Center Museum (Photo, Country Journal) 

The Valdez Museum – and the Pioneer Museum in Fairbanks – both have actual historic Orr stagecoaches on display from the early 1900s.  The Orr Stagecoach Line took travelers in the winter on the route up what is now the Richardson Highway. It was operated out of a now-gone lodge on the Gulkana riverbank, opposite Gulkana Village. 

 Those very stagecoaches went past the current homesites of all the Copper Valley people who now live along the Richardson. The stagecoaches in those museums once trundled past what is now the Hub Gas Station and Ahtna Building on their way up the trail to Fairbanks from Valdez. 

And we can still go see those coaches. In museums. 

Our Daily Lives 

The list of various museums across Alaska, including ours in Copper Center, is very long. There are at least a hundred museums in Alaska. 

And the implication that they are unimportant and not in the interest of the United States of America is insulting. 

It hurts not to have an extra $10,000 or so to help keep local culture afloat, of course. 

Over a dozen small museums are arrayed in Pioneer Park in Fairbanks
(Photo, Country Journal) 

But it's a deliberate and uncaring slap in the face to ordinary people across America to have our country turn its back on our communities and people and proclaim that our history and daily lives are  unimportant. 

Smaller museums and libraries represent the diversity of the people and cultures that have built America. They provide a window into the roots that have guided this nation and kept us free. 

Without the light brought by knowledge of the past, the path to the future is dark.