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AKAlaska Famous People
In 1927 the territorial government held a flag design contest open to Alaskan schoolchildren. It was won by Benny Benson, a 13-year-old of Aleut and Swedish parentage living at the Jesse Lee Home in Seward, who submitted eight gold stars on a field of blue: the Big Dipper for strength, the North Star for the northernmost territory. He collected a $1,000 prize and an engraved watch, and his design flew over Alaska for 32 years before statehood arrived.
Presidents, senators and a congressman who never left
Nobody born in Alaska has run for president, which is unsurprising for a place that has been a state only since January 3, 1959 and carries the constitutional minimum of three electoral votes. Ted Stevens, born in Indianapolis, held a Senate seat from December 1968 to January 2009, more than 40 years, and Anchorage's international airport carries his name; he died in a plane crash near Dillingham in August 2010. Don Young held Alaska's single seat in the House from 1973 until his death in 2022, making him the longest-serving Republican in the history of that chamber.
Ernest Gruening, appointed territorial governor in 1939 and then elected senator, was one of only two men in the Senate to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in August 1964. Sarah Palin was born in Sandpoint, Idaho, and arrived in Alaska as an infant; she went from the mayor's office in Wasilla to the governor's chair in December 2006, and John McCain put her on the Republican ticket in August 2008.
Wally Hickel governed Alaska twice, from 1966 to 1969 and again from 1990 to 1994, with a spell between as Nixon's secretary of the interior that ended in 1970 when he was dismissed for publicly criticising the president over the treatment of student protesters. Bob Bartlett, raised in Fairbanks, spent fourteen years as the territory's non-voting delegate in Congress arguing the case for statehood, and became one of Alaska's first two senators in 1959.
Elizabeth Peratrovich and the 1945 act
Elizabeth Peratrovich was born in Petersburg on July 4, 1911, and grew up Tlingit in a territory where shop windows carried signs reading "No Natives Allowed". As grand president of the Alaska Native Sisterhood she testified before the territorial Senate in February 1945, closing debate on an anti-discrimination bill by asking whether the lawmakers thought passing laws against larceny had ended theft. The Alaska Anti-Discrimination Act was signed on February 16, 1945, nineteen years before the federal Civil Rights Act. Alaska keeps February 16 as Elizabeth Peratrovich Day, and her portrait appeared on the 2020 one dollar coin.
Howard Rock, an Inupiaq artist from Point Hope, founded the Tundra Times in 1962 and used it to fight the plan to excavate an artificial harbour in northwest Alaska with nuclear explosives. Ada Blackjack, an Inupiaq seamstress from near Solomon, was the sole survivor of a five-person expedition sent to Wrangel Island in 1921 and was found alive in 1923.
Sled dogs, skis and a shot with 2.1 seconds left
Joe Redington Sr. organised the first Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in 1973. Libby Riddles became the first woman to win it in 1985 by driving into a Bering Sea storm that had stopped everyone else. Susan Butcher then took four of the next five, in 1986, 1987, 1988 and 1990. The route honours the 1925 serum run to Nome, in which Leonhard Seppala and his lead dog Togo covered the longest and most dangerous stretch while Gunnar Kaasen and Balto ran the final leg and got the Central Park statue.
Kikkan Randall grew up in Anchorage and, with Jessie Diggins, won the first Olympic gold medal the United States had ever taken in cross-country skiing, in the team sprint at Pyeongchang in 2018. Curt Schilling was born in Anchorage in 1966. Mario Chalmers, also Anchorage-born, hit the tying three-pointer with 2.1 seconds on the clock in the 2008 NCAA final for Kansas. Trajan Langdon, called the Alaskan Assassin at Duke, was the eleventh pick of the 1999 NBA draft. Carlos Boozer, born in West Germany to a military family, played his high school basketball in Juneau.
Jack London was not an Alaskan
The most persistent misattribution in the state belongs to London, who was born in San Francisco in 1876 and spent his gold rush winter of 1897 on the Klondike in Canada's Yukon Territory. He walked over Alaskan ground on the way, which is as close as the connection gets.
Jewel Kilcher was born in Payson, Utah, and raised on a homestead outside Homer settled by her Swiss grandfather Yule Kilcher, a delegate to Alaska's constitutional convention; she was singing in Alaskan bars with her father before she was ten. Irene Bedard was born in Anchorage in 1967 and gave Pocahontas her speaking voice in the 1995 Disney film. Ray Mala, an Inupiaq born in Candle in 1906, starred in MGM's Eskimo in 1933, one of the first Hollywood leads taken by a Native American actor.
Forty-nine, then fifty
Alaska and Hawaii both joined in 1959. Statedoku turns that kind of detail into a daily puzzle.
Play today's puzzle →Questions people ask about Alaskans
Has any US president been born in Alaska?
No, and none has come close. Alaska became the 49th state on January 3, 1959. The first sitting president to visit was Warren G. Harding, who drove a golden spike at Nenana on July 15, 1923, to complete the Alaska Railroad and died in San Francisco three weeks later.
Who is the most famous person from Alaska?
Sarah Palin is the best known nationally, though she was born in Idaho and moved north as an infant. Among people actually born in Alaska, Elizabeth Peratrovich, Benny Benson and pitcher Curt Schilling are the names that recur.
Was Sarah Palin born in Alaska?
No. She was born in Sandpoint, Idaho, in 1964 and her family moved to Alaska while she was a few months old. She was mayor of Wasilla, governor from 2006 to 2009, and the first woman on a Republican national ticket in 2008.
Who designed the Alaska state flag?
Benny Benson, a 13-year-old at the Jesse Lee Home in Seward, won the 1927 territorial design contest with eight gold stars on blue, the Big Dipper and the North Star. He received a $1,000 prize and an engraved watch, and the flag flew for 32 years before statehood.
Was Jack London from Alaska?
No. London was born in San Francisco in 1876, and the gold rush winter behind The Call of the Wild was spent on the Klondike in Canada's Yukon Territory, not in Alaska, though he crossed Alaskan ground to get there.