VALDEZ

ALASKA

The port of Valdez was named in 1790 by the Spanish explorer Salvador Fidalgo after the Spanish naval officer Antonio Valdés y Fernandez Bazán. Because of a scam to lure prospectors off the Klondike Gold Rush trail, a town developed there in 1898. Some steamship companies promoted the Valdez Glacier Trail as a better way to reach the Klondike gold fields and discover new ones in the Copper River country of interior Alaska. This was a better route, they said, than from Skagway. The prospectors who believed the promotion found that they had been deceived. The glacier trail was twice as long and steep as reported and many died attempting the crossing and by contracting scurvy during the long cold winter. It wasn't gold that caused the town to flourish, but rather the building of the Richardson Highway in 1899 that connected Valdez and Fairbanks. With a new road and its ice-free port, Valdez became permanently established as the first overland supply route into the interior of Alaska. The highway was a summer-only highway until 1950, when it became a year-round route.

In 1907, a shootout between two rival railroad companies ended Valdez’s hope of ever becoming the railroad link from tidewater to the Kennicott Copper Mine. The mine, located in the heart of the Wrangell-St.Elias Mountains, was one of the richest copper ore deposits on the continent. The exact location of the right-of-way dispute, in which one man was killed and several injured, is located at the southern entrance of the canyon on the Valdez side. A half-completed tunnel in the canyon marks the end of railroad days in Valdez. A rail line to Kennicott was later established from the coastal city of Cordova.

The city of Valdez was badly shaken but not destroyed in the 1964 Good Friday Earthquake. Liquefaction of the glacial silt that formed the city's foundation led to a massive underwater landslide causing a section of the city's shoreline to break off and sink into the sea. The underwater soil displacement caused a local tsunami 30(9.1 m) high that traveled westward, away from the city and down Valdez Bay. Thirty-two men women and children were on the city's main freight dock to help with and watch the unloading of the SS Chena, a supply ship that came to Valdez regularly. All 32 people perished as the dock collapsed into the ocean with the violent landslide. There were no deaths within the town itself. Residents continued to live there for an additional three years while a new site was being prepared on more stable ground four miles (6) away. The new construction was under the supervision of the Army Corps of Engineers. Fifty-four houses and buildings were transported by truck to the new site, reestablishing the new city at its present location. The original town site was dismantled and abandoned.

From 1974-1977, the Trans-Alaska pipeline was built to carry oil from the Prudhoe Bay oil fields in northern Alaska to a terminal in Valdez, the nearest ice-free port, where the oil is loaded onto tanker ships for transport. The construction and operation of the pipeline and terminal boosted the economy of Valdez.

During the pipeline construction a Fairbanks company, Certified Mint, designed and minted a series of twelve .999 fine silver coins commemorating the event. The first of the series was minted in 1974 and a new coin depicting recent events was minted each three months. The final and twelfth coin depicted the first tanker ship in the Valdez harbor filling with oil for transport.

The series was also minted in solid bronze and in solid gold. The gold series was very limited with some being minted in 18k and some in 22k gold. More information is located at the above link “Coins-A Work of Art”

The first barrel of oil from the North Slope was actually delivered to Valdez from Prudhoe Bay by Dog-Sled-Team before the Trans Alaska Pipeline could be built by a father and his son, who were dog mushers, and lived in Fox Alaska.

The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred as the oil tanker Exxon Valdez was leaving the terminal at Valdez full of oil. The spill occurred at Bligh Reef, about 40(25 miles) from Valdez. Although the oil did not reach Valdez, it devastated much of the marine life in the surrounding area. The clean-up of the oil caused a short-term boost to the economy of Valdez.

This information from Wikipedia: For more info. go to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchorage,_Alaska

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Anchorage, Homer, Valdez, Palmer, Fairbanks, Tok, Glennallen, Chitina, Slana, Fox, Delta Junction, Paxon, Willow, Talkeetna, Sutton, Huston, Eagle River, Kenai, North Slope, Yukon, Chicken, Dawson, Juneau, Platinum, Mt. McKinley, Montana Creek, Seward, Nome, Wales, Prudhoe Bay and other Alaska cities. What can you do in Alaska? You may: Relax in your room; swim in the pool or soak in the Jacuzzi; have a five course dinner; go gold mining or gold prospecting or find gold and stake your own gold mining claim; go hunting or fishing; camp along the thousands of creeks or lakes or miles of beaches; go hiking, bicycling, ATV riding, trail riding or even horse back riding; go on a cruise on one of the hundreds of tour boats or sightseeing from a bush plane; go on a tour of the Wrangle, St. Elias National Park and Preserve - the largest in North America; visit abandoned villages and gold mining camps; see the Yukon River, the midnight sun, cross the Arctic Circle or visit Alaska Native Villages and Eskimo Igloos; see moose, caribou, grizzle and brown bears, black bear, fox, ptarmigan, salmon, wolverine, coyotes, lynx, mink, otters, seals, walrus, geese, ducks and hundreds of other birds including the Bald Eagle, the Raven and the infamous Camp Robber; go on sled dog rides or see Musk Ox and Reindeer; rent 4x4 ATV’s for trail rides or canoes for a ride down the river; see Mt. McKinley, the largest mountain in North America or visit places that have been here since before Alaska became a state such as Duffy’s Roadhouse at mile 63 on the Tok Cutoff Highway or you may visit the hundreds of other historic places that are on the maps; and you could go to Valdez museums, plays, theatres, shopping, antique stores and pawn shops or visit Russian Orthodox Churches built over a hundred years ago or visit fishing villages where the villagers have fished for hundreds of years; and, you could even learn the meaning of the words such as “cheechako”, “sourdough”, “muktuk”, “oogarook” or “cuspuck”.

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