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| Map of Alaska printed on a tablecloth shows state's natural resources. |
Alaska Has Always Been A Place Where Natural Resources Are A Major Reason For Being There: Gold, Wildlife, Radium, Platinum, Whales, Wildlife, and Oil...
A tablecloth made in the 1950's (around the same time as statehood) shows an "Alaska" that's full of natural resources.
These include gold, radium and platinum. And also whales, canned salmon, oil derricks, reoindeer herds, McKinley Park, "large herds of reindeer," crab fishing, hyrdaulic mining and -- near Fairbanks -- the midnight sun.
It was obviously a bid to show Alaska as valuable, as America committed to a big, new state, full of volcanoes and bears and mountains. Eventually, of all these things, oil became king, and the state is still largely financed by its oil finds.
