Monday, August 25, 2014

Alaska Odds and Ends - The Boneyard

Sure, visiting cemeteries when you travel is morbid.  But when one is in nice morning walk range I sometimes can't resist.  I did not, alas, find any examples of Tree Shaped Tombstones to add some far north specimen to my collection.  But there are always a few little historical teasers to be encountered.


For a major city Anchorage got a very late start.  It was a sprawling bunch of tents in 1915, pretty much on the same disgusting mud flats where we had our Last Chance Fishing success.  Soon they moved up the hill to a more sensible spot.  But they were still on their first Police Chief in 1921 when said individual a John "Black Jack" Sturgis was killed in the line of duty.  The internet has little to say on the matter, he seems to have been shot in the back with his own gun in an Anchorage hotel. Some claim he still haunts the place.


Something tragic happened here.  Two brothers aged 16 and 17 died on September 1st 1925.  The little lambs that top so many children's tombstones have been weathered off in less than a century.


A boneyard in a literal sense.  Whale ribs I think, marking the resting place of a fairly recently deceased Anchorage citizen.

1 comment:

My two cents said...

The boys who died were boating, the boat rolled and only one boy escaped.