A Bearfoot Travel Magazine Tour: Even Anchorage Still Has "Real" Log Cabins

A log cabin with a stone chimney in Downtown Anchorage, Alaska

The town of Anchorage is technically 100 years old. It was begun, in its current, modern phase, at the site of a Native Athabascan fish camp, at what is now Ship Creek. Ship Creek was so-named because it was near the spot where incoming small ships parked offshore.

The true town of Anchorage didn't take off, though, until around World War II. Right before the War, a highway -- the ALCAN, or Alaska-Canada Highway -- was punched in across Canada, and then to Tok. From there, the Glenn Highway (now the Tok Cutoff) was routed down to what became the town of "Glennallen."

An old Anchorage log cabin near downtown office buildings. 

The road from Glennallen -- now the "Glenn Highway" -- was built, cross-country to the port of Anchorage. This made Anchorage boom, and that boom has never stopped.

At first, Anchorage wasn't a particularly large town. People built log cabins, some of them very nice, like these -- just as they do all over Alaska. The "old part" of Anchorage is right near downtown, and you can cruise the streets near the Park Strip, to see cabins that people still live in, to this day.