Remembering Alaska’s 1st history conference — Part 1

The first Kenai Peninsula local history conference took place at Kenai Central High School on Nov. 7-8, 1974. In the decades since then, speakers and community members involved in that first conference made notable contributions to peninsula communities, Alaska history, and scholarship. In this two-part series, former reporter Shana Loshbaugh looks back on the conference’s significance.

Morgan Sherwood, a leading Alaska historian of the last century, declared the Kenai Peninsula one of Alaska’s most interesting and least understood areas. Speaking about it 50 years ago this month, he said:

“… [O]pportunities this region offers for significant historical research are many. … The Kenai region is an important transitional area between different peoples, different geographies, different resources, different occupations. The peninsula itself is a transitional area for two major geographic-biologic provinces, two Native cultures, two national policies, three ethnic groups, four natural resource industries, and three sociological personalities. Furthermore, it seems to me, because of climate and proximity to the state’s population center, that the Kenai region is the most likely to develop soon.”

Sherwood was keynote speaker for the Kenai Peninsula’s first-ever local history conference. Kenai Central High School hosted the event on Nov. 7-8, 1974. Almost 200 people attended.

Sherwood himself had grown up in Anchorage and, although he moved Outside to pursue a career as professor of history at the University of California at Davis, he and his family kept a summer home at Halibut Cove. He’d just published an anthology he edited of original source material about the region, “The Cook Inlet Collection: Two Hundred Years of Selected Alaskan History.”

At the podium in Kenai that day, Sherwood went on to question why so little was known about the peninsula’s unique and dramatic history.

Fifty years later, that question still resonates. But the 1974 conference contents stand the test of time, and many participants went on to do impressive work preserving local legacies.

When I first moved to the Kenai Peninsula in 1981 and wanted to learn about my new home, I didn’t get much information until I found an obscure-looking publication at the Homer Public Library. Titled “The Native, Russian and American Experiences of the Kenai Area of Alaska,” the ring-bound, 126-page book had been edited by attorney James Hornaday (Homer’s future judge and newspaper publisher), illustrated and typed up by Kenai high school students, and published with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Alaska Humanities Forum, and a group called the “Mayor’s Advisory Committee on History and Tradition.”

It was the book about the 1974 conference. I found it so fascinating that I photocopied sections and came away utterly hooked on Kenai Peninsula history.

In the decades since 1974, speakers and community members involved in that first conference made notable contributions to peninsula communities, Alaska history, and scholarship.

Sherwood wrote other iconic Alaska history books, such as “Big Game in Alaska: A History of Wildlife and People, and Exploration of Alaska, 1865-1900.” Active in academic organizations focused on environmental and western U.S. history, he served in the 1980s as president of the American Society for Environmental History. He died on Halloween in 2000, and requested that his remains be cremated and spread on Kachemak Bay.

Another 1974 speaker whose books and legacy loom large is famous Dena’ina writer, translator and ethnographer Peter Kalifornsky. A couple years before the conference, Kalifornsky and his sisters, Fedosia Sacaloff and Mary Nissen, began working with linguist James Kari and anthropologist Alan Boraas to preserve the endangered upper inlet dialect of Dena’ina, the complex Athabaskan language indigenous to much of the Cook Inlet drainage. Boraas, Kari and the three siblings spoke at the 1974 conference about their work and Kalifornsky family memories of area events.

Sacaloff and Nissen, unfortunately, died young. But Kalifornsky continued working with Kari, Boraas, and the Kenaitze Indian Tribe. Their project culminated in the 1991 publication of “A Dena’ina Legacy – K’tl’egh’i Sukdu: The Collected Writings of Peter Kalifornsky,” which won an American Book Award in 1992. Kalifornsky passed away in 1993.

Boraas (1947-2019), was well known on the peninsula for his career with Kenai Peninsula College, where he taught a landmark class in Cook Inlet Anthropology. A champion for preserving Dena’ina language and traditional knowledge, he became an honorary member of the Kenaitze Indian Tribe. He led numerous archaeological digs, and shared many facets of area history. He wrote columns in the Peninsula Clarion and pieces in the Anchorage Daily News and Redoubt Reporter. His numerous accomplishments included establishing both photo archives in the college anthropology lab and the Tsalteshi Ski Trails south of Soldotna.

A distinctive speaker was Sister Victoria, a Russian Orthodox nun who taught at Alaska’s Russian Orthodox seminary. Called the pastoral school or St. Herman’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, it first opened, briefly, in Kenai, in 1973 in rented space at Wildwood Station. But in 1974, the church purchased land for a permanent site in Kodiak, where the seminary remains as of 2024.

Drawing upon her access to church archives and knowledge of several languages, Sister Victoria created an eye-opening account. She spoke of the region’s Russian colonial period, church roles through the transition to U.S. dominion and 20th-century challenges when the Russian revolution cut Alaska’s Orthodox congregations off from their cultural roots. Decades later, Victoria (Shnurer) lives in southern California. Now known as Mother Victoria, she is abbess in charge of St. Barbara Orthodox Monastery.

Claus Naske (1935-2014), a university professor, was invited to discuss the American experience. His presence led to a lively debate with locals about Alaska’s homesteading program. Was it a colossal giveaway of federal tax dollars or a priceless ticket to the American dream? In the decades following, Naske was known as a provocative teacher, and the Alaska history book he wrote with Herman Slotnick remains a fundamental text for Alaska history courses.

Not all the memorable contributors were academics. Local luminaries who played major roles in the 1974 discussions included Phil Ames (1921-2002, who served as Kenai’s marshal), Dolly Farnsworth (1922-2014, a town founder and future mayor of Soldotna), Alex Shadura (1914-1990, active in church, fishing, and political causes, who served as director of multiple boards), and Stan Thompson (1920-2015, former Kenai commissioner who served as Kenai Peninsula Borough mayor for multiple terms).

High school faculty who planned and executed the conference deserve kudos 50 years later. Peggy Gill Thompson (1931-2017) was its primary organizer. Mary Willets (1908-1992) coordinated the portion about “the American Experience.” In hindsight, credit also goes to Tom Ackerly, who supervised students from his film class, tasked with recording the event. He passed away in 2019.

Shana Loshbaugh is a former reporter for the Clarion and Homer News, now semi-retired and working on peninsula history projects.