Boats, a lighthouse, churches among sites named as Alaska’s most at-risk historic properties
Eleven sites from Southeast Alaska to the Bering Strait region were named Friday as the state’s most endangered historic properties.
The annual list was released by Preservation Alaska, the nonprofit formally called Alaska Association for Historic Preservation. The organization has been publishing lists of top endangered properties since 1991; usually there are 10 on each year’s list, but this year’s list was expanded.
“This annual list is intended to bring public awareness to Alaska’s threatened historic properties. Heightened awareness often leads to increased support for the conservation of endangered historic properties, which are assets important to tourism, economic development, and the cultural heritage of Alaska,” Preservation Alaska said in its announcement.
Threats to the listed properties include pending development, extreme weather events and the simple ravages of time.
Second on the list is Pilgrim Hot Springs, a popular recreation destination about 60 miles northeast of Nome.
Originally used by the region’s Indigenous people and later used by Gold Rush miners, the hot springs became the site of a Catholic orphanage that housed children who lost their parents to the 1918-19 influenza pandemic.
The site is now owned and operated by Unaatuq LLC, a consortium of seven Bering Strait region organizations. Repairs to time-worn buildings have been underway, and Unaatuq has had to contend with a new threat: flooding caused by beavers that are spreading north and building dams in new places as the climate warms and woody plants proliferate in new areas.
There are now only eight houses standing, and only some of them are still functioning in the traditional way, according to the national organization.
In Tlingit tradition, clan houses are not just dwellings but also cultural gathering sites organized in a matriarchal structure. The Sitka houses have suffered from more than physical deterioration, said Jerrick Hope-Lang, a Kiks.ádi clan member working on restoring the site and its traditions. Church leaders of the past promoted the idea of the nuclear family over the Tlingit matrilineal system, and that influence, along with U.S. inheritance laws and practices created complex ownership with multiple heirs, a situation that needs to be worked out, Hope-Lang said.
The 2024 Preservation Alaska list includes two churches. One, the Ascension Church of Our Lord Chapel at Karluk on Kodiak Island, is threatened by continued coastal erosion, the organization said. The other, the Bishop Rowe Chapel in Arctic Village, has fallen victim to a harsh and rapidly changing Arctic climate.
Another boat on the list is the SS Nenana, a steamship currently housed at Pioneer Park in Fairbanks. The ship fell into such disrepair that it was deemed unsafe and closed to visitors, but restoration work led by the nonprofit Friends of SS Nenana has made enough progress that the ship will be reopened to visitors this summer, Preservation Alaska said.
Elsewhere in the Fairbanks region is another site on Preservation Alaska’s list: the Hi-Yu Stamp Mill, which supported a gold mining operation in the early 20th century and is, despite disrepair and vandalism, “still one of the best and only surviving examples of early underground mining and milling in interior Alaska,” according to Preservation Alaska. The Hi-Yu Stamp Mill is now threatened by planned expansions of the Kinross Fort Knox mining projects, according to the organization.
Other sites on the list are the Chitina Emporium, a now-uninhabitable building that was once a community anchor with a hotel, bar, store and power source; the Eldred Rock Lighthouse near Haines, which was built in 1905 and is the oldest original lighthouse in Alaska; and the Pioneer Hall in Ketchikan, a community landmark that needs significant upgrades to meet safety codes, the organization said.