The Way We Were

April 14, 1921

Richard Suratt, Wrangell’s movie photographer, sent recently to the company he represents an interesting group of pictures which were taken on his recent trip to see construction of the Alaska Railroad. The one that will no doubt excite the most interest wherever shown was taken at the end of steel along the construction of the railroad, and shows passengers, alighting from a modern railroad coach, being transferred to dog sleds. The coach is standing at the extreme end of the finished portion of the railroad, the ends of the rails being left unprotected in anticipation of the immediate continuance of construction. Mr. Suratt received a cable of congratulations this week from his company for the excellence of his pictures.

April 15, 1946

At a special meeting of the city council last Monday evening, Miss Frank Barnes, Alaska’s first woman mayor, along with three new council members, was sworn into the town’s highest office. New council members are Lee Ellis, Andrew Barlow and Lenny Engstrom, replacing former council members Miss Barnes, Charles Moore and C. Don Miller. In taking over her new duties as mayor, Miss Barnes said she deeply felt honored for being chosen as Wrangell’s first woman mayor and it is not to be taken lightly. She said she is determined to uphold the trust in which voters had placed in her and complimented retiring mayor F. G. Hanford for his untiring work in the mayor’s office the past three years.

April 15, 1971

Formation of a port commission to administer Wrangell’s shoreline and harbor areas — and presumably a city dock, should Wrangell buy or build one — has been recommended by a mayor’s harbor study committee. Jim Nolan, spokesman for the committee, told the city council in a report Tuesday that such a commission should have “absolute authority”rather than functioning only as an advisory body. On the question of whether the city should buy the private Wrangell Wharf and maintain it as a tourship landing facility, Nolan said more study is needed. Nolan said the city could purchase the privately owned dock for about $100,000. He called the $100,000 price tag “pretty attractive.”

April 18, 1996

Some serious fundraising is taking place in the final few days before eight Wrangell High School Close-Up students climb the steps of a jet to fly to Washington, D.C., as part of a national program to see the Capitol “up close and personal.”The high school students will be on the shores of the Potomac from April 26 to May 5 to watch Congress and its staff in action, and to tour the big city. Each student has had to work toward the $1,800-per-person cost with a variety of fundraising events. These have included a raffle, pizza sales, and a rent-a-kid program in which kids chop wood or babysit.

 

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