"Scenic Doorway to Real Alaska" a Seward Travel Page by AlbuqRay

The town of Seward, Alaska, has an interesting history. It was built on an alluvial fan formed by Lowell Creek and the Resurrection River. Archeological surveys in the Kenai Fjords National Park have uncovered several Unixkugmiut settlements used during both prehistoric and early historic times. The first European contact with Alaska occurred in the 1741, when Vitus Bering led an expedition for the Russian Navy. A Russian settler from Kodiak, Alexander Baranov, chose the inlet for a shipbuilding site in 1793 and named it, "Voskrensenskaya Gavan," or Resurrection Bay. William H. Seward, the U.S. Secretary of State, engineered the Alaskan purchase in 1867 for $7.2 million.

Frank and Mary Lowell, and their children, settled on Resurrection Bay in 1884. Frank abandoned Mary in 1893, moved to Kodiak and remarried. Mary, who was of Russian and Native heritage, stayed. She and several children (and their spouses), had homes in what became part of the original Seward townsite. Nothing of the Lowell homesite remains, but sites such as Lowell Point, Lowell Canyon, Lowell Glacier, Mt. Alice and Mt. Eva commemorate their place in Seward's history. Be sure to read my tip on "Remembering Mary Lowell". She was a very special woman.

One of the routes to the Turnagain Arm gold fields at Sunrise and Hope, which were founded in 1895, began at the head of Resurrection Bay. Mail and supplies for the gold fields were landed in the area that became Seward. Although the official founding of Seward is dated from the August 28, 1903, landing party headed by the Ballaine brothers, the founders of the Alaska Central Railway, clearly there were earlier settlers.

Mail and supplies for the gold fields in the Hope-Sunrise area were landed at this site as early as the 1890's. Later the mail and supplies also went to Nome and Iditarod. This is the same location where the Ballaine brothers arrived on August 28, 1903, on the steamer, Santa Ana, to found the ocean terminus for the Alaska Central Railway and lay out a township now called Seward. Thus the location of the Seward Founders' Monument.

Seward is Mile 0 of the Iditarod National Historic Trail System. An old sleigh marks the original trailhead near the Founders' Monument at the south end of Waterfront Park. The bike path that starts at Fourth Avenue and Ballaine Boulevard and continues along the shoreline was the original beginning of the Iditarod Trail. The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race first ran from this trailhead to Nome in 1973, after two short races on part of the Iditarod Trail in 1967 and 1969. However, the race has started in downtown Anchorage since 1983.

There is a really interesting paper, "An Analysis of Resurrection Bay and a 50 Year Plan to Improve our Marine Ecosystem," written by Seward High School students for the 2001 Alaska Ocean Sciences Bowl. It looks at the enormous impact of tourism on the ecosystem of the Seward area and Resurrection Bay. As always in life, there are tradeoffs between good and bad.

It's a little dated now, but there is also a nice 2002 article on "Seward: A big-time port with a small-town heart," which tells cruise passengers what things to see and do, and how to get around in Seward.