1. The original Anchorage, circa 1915, was a group of tents put up to house workers on the Alaska Railroad. The men called their shanty town “The White City,” although it bore little resemblance to its Chicago namesake.
2. This shanty town housed some 2,000 workers…but there was only one bath tent. Well, who wants to take an outdoor bath in the cold, anyway?
3. By 1940 Anchorage’s population had doubled to 4,000 people, but by 2010 it had increased almost 10x to nearly 400,000. This rapid expansion is credited to the Cold War, when Anchorage grew in strategic importance due to its close proximity to the former Soviet Union.
4. About 44 percent of Alaska’s total population today make their homes in Anchorage.
5. Anchorage is the northernmost city in the U.S. with a population over 100,000.
6. Anchorage didn’t get its first hospital until 1937.
7. Alaska’s tallest building is the Conoco-Phillips Building in downtown Anchorage.
8. Anchorage is about the size of Delaware.
9. Anchorage isn’t as quite as cold as you might think. A maritime influence (meaning, it’s close to the ocean) keeps winter temps around the 20 degree mark.
10. That being said, the coldest temperature ever recorded in Anchorage was a brisk 38 below zero, in February of 1947. Brr.
11. Global warming notwithstanding, Anchorage had its snowiest-ever winter in 2011/2012, with over 11 feet of the fluffy stuff.
12. The highest the mercury has ever climbed in an Anchorage thermometer is 86 degrees. Do you feel their pain, Phoenix? Well, cancel the pity party, it’s been over 60 years since things got that sweltering.
13. One of Anchorage’s sister cities is Darwin, Australia, where they’ve never seen a temperature lower than 50 degrees.
14. Another sister city is Whitby, in the U.K., which is famous as one of the settings for Bram Stoker’s horror classic “Dracula.”
15. Anchorage turns out to be where all the real caffeine fiends live—this city has more espresso stands per capita than any other U.S. city.
16. Well, good water makes good coffee, and according to the American Water Works Association, Anchorage is one of the cities with the best-tasting drinking water.
17. Every year in Anchorage, over 100 moose are killed by reckless (or at least luckless) drivers.
18. But they don’t always take this lying down—several people in Anchorage have been stomped to death by retaliatory moose.
19. Anchorage is also home to about 250 black bears and 60 grizzlies, but so far they’ve been less homicidal than the moose.
20. The Alaska, Aleutian Chugach, Kenai, Talkeetna and Tordrillo mountain ranges can be seen from Anchorage, as can Mount McKinley on a clear day.
21. Anchorage experienced North America’s strongest-ever earthquake. The Good Friday earthquake of 1964 measured 9.2 on the Richter scale, and killed 115 people.
22. One of Anchorage’s hardest-hit neighborhoods was never rebuilt after the quake, but was instead turned into a recreation area and renamed Earthquake Park. Because, you know, nothing says “fun” like the memory of large-scale death and destruction.
23. The Wendy Williamson Auditorium at the University of Alaska Anchorage is haunted by at least six different spectres, although it’s not known whether any of them were earthquake victims.
24. Anchorage’s West High School also has a haunted auditorium. I guess Anchorage’s ghoulies and ghosties must all be theater buffs.
25. In the early days of Anchorage’s annual Fur Rendezvous (which has been going on since 1935), the city passed a law that all men had to grow beards in order to participate, and those free of facial fur were fined. Today there are no fines, but there is the Fur Face Beard and Moustache Contest.
26. Also in conjunction with the Fur Rondy, Anchorage hosts the World Ice Bowling Championships.
27. Anchorage actually stockpiles and trucks in the snow that lines its stretch of the Iditarod route.
28. And speaking of the Iditarod route, the time it takes a musher to cover the stretch between the ceremonial kickoff point in Anchorage and the restart in Willow is not counted.
29. Anchorage has no sales tax, and has been named by Kiplinger as the most tax-friendly city in the U.S.
30. A silent movie called “The Cheechakos” was filmed in Anchorage back in 1923. More recent films shot in Anchorage include “Beyond,”“Big Miracle” and “The Frozen Ground”.
31. Anchorage also had its own reality TV show on the History Channel. “Mounted in Alaska” followed the adventures of Knight’s Taxidermy as they battled vampire walruses or whatever your average Alaska taxidermist does all day.
32. There are 60 glaciers within 50 miles of Anchorage.
33. Anchorage is further north than Saint Petersburg, Russia and almost as far west as Honolulu.
34. In midsummer, Anchorage’s days are around 20 hours long—the sun doesn’t even start thinking about setting until it’s almost midnight, and dawn comes just a bit after 4 a.m.
35. In the middle of winter, however, you’ll only see the sun for 5 and a half hours a day. 10 until 3:30 p.m., that’s about the best you can expect.
36. Anchorage’s beaches are no place for beachcombing. Several unwary tourists have been stuck out on the treacherous mudflats when the tide went out.
37. Anchorage is close to several active volcanoes, and there have been eruptions (of ash, not lava) as recently as 2009.
38. You get a free T-shirt if you finish the Kodiak Arrest challenge at Humpy’s Great Alaskan Alehouse: seven salmon cakes, three pounds of Alaskan king crab and a footlong reindeer sausage, with sauteed veggies and mashed potatoes—and a whole pound of ice cream (in 90 minutes or less). Adam Richman of “Man vs. Food” managed it in just 47 minutes.
39. PHOnatik goes one step further, offering actual cash prizes for their Pho Challenge: two pounds of noodles, two pounds of meat, two quarts of broth, 30 minutes or less. Yeah, as if.
40. Students in the Anchorage school district speak almost 100 different languages…well, not simultaneously, I don’t think, although that would make for a helluva YouTube video if they did.
41. Anchorage’s Mountain View is, according to the 2010 census, the nation’s most diverse community. The second and third-most diverse neighborhoods are also in Anchorage, with the fourth being in Queens, NY.
42. The couple Michelle Shocked sings about in her ‘80s hit “Anchorage” are real friends of hers and, when last heard from, were still married after almost 30 years.
43. The Ted Stevens International Airport is the third-busiest cargo traffic airport in the world.
44. About 95 percent of all goods imported into Alaska arrive through the Port of Anchorage.
45. Juneau may be the state capital, but Anchorage has nearly twice the number of state employees.
46. In fact, in 1974 Congress actually approved a move to make Anchorage Alaska’s new state capital, but voters declined to fund the construction of a capitol building so the switch never took place.
47. The Alaska Zoo in Anchorage began with the donation of a single animal, an Asian elephant named Annabelle who’d been won as a prize in a contest sponsored by a toilet paper company. Annabelle managed to overcome her ignominious origins, and later achieved fame for her artistic skills.
48. Anchorage was the U.S. candidate to host the 1992 and ’94 Olympic Games. They didn’t win, but they’re considering a bid for 2026. Wow, is it getting that late already?
49. They may not have the Olympics (yet), but at least Anchorage has Alaska’s first women’s flat track roller derby team, the Rage City Rollergirls.
50. Anchorage has a single, solitary numbered state highway (obviously it doesn’t have any interstate ones), Alaska Route 1. Well, why bother with other numbers when you’ve only got the one?
