Alaska
Andrew Kurka is eyeing Paralympic gold. After, his Alaska bed and breakfast awaits
CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — Andrew Kurka spent his childhood roaming the outdoors of rural Alaska at his family’s homestead near Nikolaevsk, with 600 acres at his fingertips, sleeping inside only because he had to. But it was always fishing that was the lure.
Even as a 5-year-old, the now 34-year-old para Alpine gold medalist was resolute.
In those early years, his mom, Amy Bleakney, joined Kurka on the edge of a river for hours and hours as he searched for that one fish he was trying to catch. While temperatures might have dipped and time dragged on, there was no stopping Kurka and his child-sized fishing pole.
“‘We can come back,’” Bleakney would try to tell her son. “‘The fish is still going to be here tomorrow.’ He’s like, ‘No, I got to get it.’”
Bleakney would sit in the truck and watch her son.
“We didn’t leave until he caught his fish,” Bleakney said.
Thirty years later, Kurka still feels the pull of the water and Alaska. It’s been his home and the place that holds the next chapter of his life as he plans to step back from ski racing following the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Paralympics. Shaped by the nature around him, he’ll be looking to help others find that sense of purpose with his next steps.
Just as he found his.
When Kurka was 13, he severely damaged three vertebrae in the middle of his spinal cord in an ATV accident. About three months after his accident, a family friend got him back in a boat and out on the water to go fishing. Kurka was in a back brace and still in excruciating pain, so the pair didn’t spend much time out. But that hour or so in the middle of nowhere was all Kurka needed.
“It was something that I wanted and something that I needed in my life, and he was able to help me get that, and then the moment that happens, he helped me set a new goal for myself: to be able to pursue being better,” Kurka said. “‘Hey, I want to do that, but on my own.’ You know?”
Two years later, he tried a different elevation of the outdoors — down the slopes on a mono-ski for the first time through a program called Challenge Alaska, thanks to the encouragement of his physical therapist. Kurka crashed at the bottom, going straight down.
Those who helped Kurka suggested he try turning on his next go-around. Instead, Kurka again went straight down.
“The moment that I slid down that mountain, the moment I felt that speed, I felt so alive,” Kurka said. “I remembered, ‘Hey, I can live. This is life. I can do things.’”
On a chairlift ride back up, his instructor predicted his future, telling him, “You’d be a pretty good racer. You don’t seem to be afraid.” Kurka learned about the Paralympics. For a lifelong athlete who wanted to go to the Olympics as a wrestler, the conversation renewed Kurka’s desire for “being the best.”
Kurka first qualified for the U.S. Paralympic team in 2014. But he didn’t compete after crashing in training. He made his Team USA debut in 2018, winning two medals (a gold in downhill and silver in super-G). He became the first-ever Alaskan Paralympic medalist. He is scheduled to compete this week in the super-G (Monday), combined (Tuesday) and giant slalom (Thursday).
Andrew Kurka celebrates with his silver medal from the super-G at the 2018 Paralympics. He also won gold in the downhill that year. (Lintao Zhang / Getty Images)
But with Kurka, there’s always something else brewing. And he knew his athletic career could set up his future. Not long after Kurka won his gold medal, Kurka started chatting to his now wife, Verónica, after the two met online. Kurka couldn’t stop talking about the property he had just found, telling her it was perfect.
“I was like, ‘OK, what’s your favorite color or something?’” Verónica Kurka says now with a laugh. “But he really, really wanted to talk about this project.”
Always a dream of his, he used his earnings to buy property and build cabins, looking to set up a retirement plan for himself. By the time Verónica visited Alaska some time later, Kurka was already living in one of the cabins. But in the process, after the 2018 Games, he realized he wanted it to be something more than just a build-and-sell investment.
Soon after, some of his friends came up to visit. So did someone whom Kurka barely knew, but he invited him up to Alaska on a challenge anyway.
When Derek Demun posted a photo of a personal-best-sized halibut he caught in his home area of Southern California, Kurka saw it on a mutually followed Instagram account connecting impaired outdoorsmen in the United States. Not long after, Demun received a direct message from Kurka that read along the lines of, “Oh, that’s your personal best. Why don’t you come up to Alaska and beat it?”
Kurka told him about his wheelchair-accessible bed and breakfast, the Golden Standard, and his backstory as a para athlete. The two chatted on the phone, and Demun checked him out to make sure he was a real person. A week later, Demun had tickets to Alaska for a trip that summer of 2020 with his dad and friend. Kurka picked them up in Anchorage, and the adventure was on as they drove to the property near Palmer, about 45 miles from Anchorage.
They spent the days exploring the scenery and taking in the moose that would frequently appear as roadblocks. Evenings were spent around a firepit. And there were two fishing excursions on Kurka’s boat, when they headed out to open water, a nearly 2 1/2-hour trek.
“I have no idea where we’re at,” Demun said. “It’s raining, it’s cloudy. We’re rocking with the waves. I’m like, ‘Dude, we’re in Alaska. I’m fishing for halibut. I’m going to die out here. No one is going to know. I feel like I’m on a TV show.’
“But he held by his word. I was able to go and catch the biggest halibut I’ve ever caught in my life.”
Since that trip, Demun has gone back to Alaska nearly every summer. The adventures have continued with airplane tours — Kurka has a sport pilot license and a plane is next on his to-do list — Jet Ski rides up to glaciers and plenty more fishing.
“When people think of Alaska, they think of igloos and polar bears and lots and lots of snow and just unaccessible terrain,” Demun said. “And me and Andrew, we have a little saying, like, complacency kills and comfort kills.”
Derek Demun (pictured) took Andrew Kurka up on his offer to visit Alaska. “He held by his word,” Demun said. “I was able to go and catch the biggest halibut I’ve ever caught in my life.” (Courtesy of Derek Demun)
As the years have passed between visits, the number of cabins on the property has grown, and Kurka has found his purpose.
“There was that sense of peace, that sense of freedom and that sense of fun that they got on the ocean has stayed with them forever,” Kurka said. “Nature was what helped me to recover from my injury. You know that peacefulness that helped me to recover from my injury, and I want other people to experience that also to help them recover from their injury. And it’s really easy for me to provide that.”
It’s the time with family and building out his next plans for the Golden Standard that has Kurka looking forward to stepping back from ski racing. But Kurka won’t be slowing down. He’ll just be spending more time in Alaska compared with the extensive travel that comes with being on the circuit. There’s a bike-trail trip in Japan with Verónica in the works, and he wants to spend time forging knives. He’s working with a nonprofit mentoring young athletes. For the Golden Standard, he plans on getting his commercial pilot license to become a flight instructor for others with impairments, along with providing fly-in fishing and hunting trips.
But beyond the occasional trips out, he doesn’t want to turn fishing into an extended job, as the water remains a sacred place for him.
“From my childhood, there’s been that outdoor sense of nature that has grabbed ahold of me,” Kurka said. “For me, nature and adventure is true freedom, because you stop worrying about everything else in life that doesn’t really matter. And that’s the piece of me that finds peace, and that’s what I search for. And I find bits and pieces of that inner peace while I’m competing. Because when I’m on the course and when I’m pushing out of the start gate, nothing else matters but that next one minute and 30 seconds worth of life-changing moments and dangerous speeds.
“But nothing about it compares to when I’m on the ocean in Alaska. … That’s the piece of me that I love and the piece of me that will always be in Alaska.”
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – Saturday night, just before midnight, Anchorage police officers were called to the city’s Turnagain neighborhood for reports of shots fire, according to the Anchorage Police Department.
When officers arrived, they found evidence a “weapon was discharged in the area,” APD said.
That area, a dispatch supervisor said, is the 2000 block of Foraker Drive including part of Lyn Ary Park.
“While officers were on scene, they were notified of a victim who arrived at a local hospital suffering from a gunshot wound to the lower body. The victim is recovering,” according to APD.
The investigation is ongoing and no one has been arrested, APD said.
Anyone with information is asked to call 311.
See a spelling or grammar error? Report it to web@ktuu.com
Copyright 2026 KTUU. All rights reserved.
Part of a continuing weekly series on Alaska history by local historian David Reamer. Have a question about Anchorage or Alaska history or an idea for a future article? Go to the form at the bottom of this story.
Seward is not the first Seward in Alaska, nor the second one either. It is the third Seward worth noting, unless features besides settlements are included, in which case it falls further distant in the count. After all, creeks and glaciers and peninsulas matter. Then there was Fort Seward, completed after Seward was founded but, of course, not actually located in Seward.
Seward, not to be confused with antecedents or forgotten forts, is the fishing, whale-watching, aquarium-visiting port on Resurrection Bay. And indeed, it was not the first attempt at naming a town for William H. Seward, only the most successful, certainly the most enduring. From the 1890s into the earliest years of the 1900s, there was something of a rush to name things Seward, and that in a territory known for its mad rushes.
As regards Alaska, the existence of William H. Seward (1801-1872) is a never-to-be-forgotten piece of trivia. He was secretary of state from 1861 to 1869 and personally negotiated the 1867 purchase of Alaska. In fact, he was an avid expansionist with dreams of unifying the entire North American continent and more besides, including Greenland.
[When America considered trading part of Alaska for Greenland]
There is a longer history of Alaska place names encumbered by attempts to curry favor with, or otherwise honor, people who never set foot anywhere near this land. Fairbanks is named for Sen. Charles Warren Fairbanks of Indiana. Prince of Wales Island is named for George Augustus Frederick, later King George IV. Whittier — glacier and town — are named for Quaker poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier.
Yet, Seward at least visited Alaska, though not any of the locations that would later bear his name. In 1869, he made the trek north and gave a speech at Sitka, when he naturally talked about the weather like any other wandering politician. “The weather of this one broad climate of Alaska is severely criticized in outside circles for being too wet and too cold,” said Seward. “Nevertheless, it must be a fastidious person who complains of climates in which, while the eagle delights to soar, the hummingbird does not disdain to flutter.” He added, “It is an honest climate, for it makes no pretensions to constancy.”
The first earnest effort at a Seward town was Seward City, a gold-mining town established around 1890. It was located at the mouth of Sherman Creek, on the east side of the Lynn Canal, a little north of Berners Bay. It was between Haines and Juneau if that helps. The long-since abandoned settlement and its adjoining mine never quite developed enough for any permanency, let alone a significant population.
The limited documentation of Seward City suggests it may have been a rough place to live, particularly because of food shortages. In 1900, James Mathers and Alexander Irving died there after eating mussels contaminated by mine runoff. Two other men barely survived.
Fred and Marie Hanilla ran a hotel and general store there for over a decade but left due in large part to failing health. Their great-granddaughter, Beverly Keithahn, attributed their decline to the food. In 1998, she told the Juneau Empire, “Their diet, with little or no fresh food and improperly canned food, probably caused their untimely deaths in their 50s. There is no good winter anchorage at Comet, so it is supposed that they had no ships bringing food or anything else during the winter months.”
From an 1899 letter published in the Douglas Island News, Seward City was a “half dozen cabins — a fisherman’s hut and the two-story frame hotel under the direction of the genial Mr. (Hanilla).” In 1908, Seattle lawyer John W. Brown traveled north, the basis for his “Abridged History of Alaska” published the next year. He wrote, “Just as we were passing the north end of the gold belt, the captain wanted to know if I saw a town on the bank. I told him I did not; but he insisted there was one, and with the aid of the glasses we observed it to be one house, and which he said was Seward City.”
Seward City’s amorphous status was reflected in its names, plural. Some called it Seward City. With the arrival of the third Seward — that is the modern town of Seward — Seward City mine owner Thomas S. Nowell renamed the outpost after himself, Nowell City. It would later be called Kensington by presumably dozens of Alaskans.
However, for the brief periods when the town possessed a post office (1901-1902, 1936-1938), the stubborn Postal Service referred to it by another name in relatively common usage, Comet. There is a long history of post offices determining place names. Residents used to disagree on how to spell Soldotna. From 1949 to 1967, it was officially Soldatna. Note the “A” in the middle. In 1967, the Postal Service changed it to Soldotna. And more close to home, the Postal Service is why Anchorage is called Anchorage instead of Ship Creek, Woodrow, Alaska City, Terminal, Gateway, Mearsville, Strongov, Dgheyay Kaq’, or any of the other names tossed around.
[In 1915, Anchorage residents voted on an official name for the new city. The name ‘Anchorage’ came in 3rd place.]
The second attempt at a Seward town was on Kachemak Bay, by McNeil Canyon and near what would become Homer. In support of yet another mining operation, a post office was activated there on Oct. 26, 1895. Some sources incorrectly list this as being the site of modern-day Seward on Resurrection Bay, for the understandable reason of why wouldn’t Seward be at Seward. It closed a year later when a new location opened on the Spit, this time named Homer after con man mining promoter Homer Pennock.
Before introducing the third Seward settlement, there are all the other features adorned with Seward’s name, many of them likewise gaining the moniker before the modern town of Seward existed. The Seward Mountains are a small part of the Boundary Ranges in Southeast Alaska, named in 1868 by Staff Cmdr. David Pender of the British Royal Navy, who was surveying the adjacent Portland Canal region. Geologist Israel Russell named Seward Glacier in 1891.
Alaska Gov. John Green Brady proposed the Seward Peninsula name sometime around 1898. That moniker eventually won out over other contenders, such as Nome Peninsula, Kaviak Peninsula and Sumner Peninsula. The Seward Creek southeast of Eagle gained its name during the Klondike gold rush. There are other creeks, a passage and so many streets. There were and are ships and businesses. Certainly, there are more common place names in Alaska, but the state is absolutely lousy with Sewards.
As for the Seward Highway, it was built in increments over decades. In 1923, the road out of Seward ran 18 miles to Kenai Lake. By the late 1930s, it was possible to drive from Seward to Hope but not to Anchorage. Motorists from Anchorage would have their cars delivered via railroad to Moose Pass, where they could continue driving. The highway was completed in 1951, then paved and widened to two lanes throughout in 1954. The term “Seward Highway” was in use by the late 1920s, an informal designation that gained gravitas over the years, from back when the road was definitely not a highway as people would understand it now.
Then there is Seward, the third and most successful settlement of its name. In 1901, Seattle businessman John E. Ballaine decided to, in his own words, “organize and promote a railroad from the Pacific Coast through Central Alaska to the Yukon valley.” The Alaska Central Railway was organized in March 1902, and construction began the following year.
For a base of operations, he wrote, “my first aim was to establish the ocean terminus on a harbor easy of access and free from obstruction every hour of every day of the year.” Several locations were considered, including Cordova Bay, Iliamna, Resurrection Bay, Seldovia, Tyonek, Valdez, Whittier and Knik. The latter location was opposite Ship Creek on the Knik Arm. Ballaine narrowed his choices to Cordova Bay, Valdez and Resurrection Bay, settling on what would become Seward, where he “found every requirement to my complete satisfaction.”
That left the name of the new settlement. If Terminal and Lane sound like dire options for Anchorage, consider the alternatives for Seward. The other contenders were Almouth and Vituska, both given serious consideration by Alaska Central Railway bosses. Almouth was supposed to suggest the port was the mouth of Alaska. And Vituska was a combination of “Vitus” from Vitus Bering and the last two letters of “Alaska.” Bering was the Danish-born leader of two 18th-century Russian expeditions to Alaska.
In 1902, a group of Alaska Central Railway engineers made the acquaintance of Seattle journalist and historian Edmond S. Meany while traveling north aboard the steamer Bertha. Meany taught at the University of Washington and established the Washington Historical Quarterly journal. In 1907, he published an article in that journal that included relevant correspondence. So, the name of Seward is surprisingly well documented for Alaska of that era.
When one of those engineers wrote to Meany for place name suggestions, the professor quickly offered Seward. He wrote, “I thank you for the opportunity of suggesting a name for the southern terminus of the new railroad. The name above all others most appropriate for a prominent city in Alaska is Seward … More than any other one man is he responsible for American ownership of Alaska.” As regards the naming of Seward, that was essentially that. It speaks to the relative anonymity of Seward City that a Seattle journalist well familiar with Alaska was seemingly unaware of its existence.
As the concluding offering of trivia, there is Fort William H. Seward. From 1925 to 1940, it was the single permanent military facility in Alaska. And naturally it was not in Seward. Construction began in 1902 outside Haines and was completed in 1904. After it was deactivated in 1945 and eventually sold, it became Port Chilkoot, which was later merged into Haines.
The Alaska Central Railway was less successful than the town formed in its wake. The railroad only made it about 50 miles out of Seward before bankruptcy in 1907. But consider the opportunity costs, what was lost. Alas, scenic Almouth that we never had. ALMOUTH. It just rolls off the tongue and lands on the floor with a thud.
• • •
Key sources:
Ballaine, John E. “Where Seward Got Its Start and Name.” Seward Weekly Gateway. January 6, 1906, 1, 4.
“A Breezy Letter.” Douglas Island News. September 13, 1899, 1.
Brown, John W. An Abridged History of Alaska. Seattle: Gateway Printing Co., 1909. Washington D.C.:
Knopf, Adolph. Geology of the Berners Bay Region Alaska. Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1911.
Meany, Edmond S. “The Naming of Seward in Alaska.” Washington Historical Quarterly 1, no. 3 (1907): 159-161.
Orth, Donald J. Dictionary of Alaska Place Names, Geological Survey, Professional Paper 567. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1971.
“Seward City to Become Nowell City.” [Skagway] Daily Alaskan. September 23, 1904, 3.
Seward, William H. Alaska Speech of William H. Seward at Sitka, August 12, 1869. Washington, D.C.: James J. Chapman, 1879.
Thomson, Lori. “Area’s Early Mining Days Detailed.” Juneau Empire. February 17, 1998, 1, 8.
“Two Men Killed at Seward by Poison.” [Skagway] Daily Alaskan. June 14, 1900, 1.
While you may not think of Alaska first when thinking about high school sports, there is no shortage of elite talent that has come from the northernmost state in the U.S.
Carlos Boozer, who won a championship with Duke and made multiple NBA All-Star teams, hails from Alaska. So does Curt Schilling, who dominated the mound over a 20-year MLB career. Jessica Moore of the WNBA played here, as did Olympic gold medalist Kristen Thorsness and three-time Super Bowl champion Mark Schlereth.
Simply put, it’s a crowd of athletes who made names in a variety of sports.
Which schools from the biggest state in the U.S. are the best for high school athletes?
According to a study conducted by Niche, which includes for survey feedback from students and parents as well as data from the U.S. Department of Education, the following make up the top 25.
25. Napaaqtugmiut School (Noatak)
Total number of sports: 3
24. Thunder Mountain High School (Juneau)
Total number of sports: 11
23. Wasilla High School
Total number of sports: 18
22. Petersburg High School
Total number of sports: 8
21. West Valley High School (Fairbanks)
Total number of sports: 12
20. Haines High School
Total number of sports: 6
19. Seward High School
Total number of sports: 5
18. Soldotna High School
Total number of sports: 10
17. Susitna Valley High School (Talkeetna)
Total number of sports: 11
16. Homer High School
Total number of sports: 9
15. Barrow High School (Utqiagvik)
Total number of sports: 8
14. Sitka High School
Total number of sports: 14
13. Catholic Schools of Fairbanks
Total number of sports: 15
12. Eagle River High School (Anchorage)
Total number of sports: 25
11. Bartlett High School (Anchorage)
Total number of sports: 25
10. Service High School (Anchorage)
Total number of sports: 26
9. Mountain City Christian Academy (Anchorage)
Total number of sports: 6
8. Colony High School (Palmer)
Total number of sports: 18
7. Juneau-Douglas High School
Total number of sports: 16
6. Bettye Davis East Anchorage High School
Total number of sports: 23
5. Grace Christian School (Anchorage)
Total number of sports: 11
4. Chugiak High School (Anchorage)
Total number of sports: 26
3. West High School (Anchorage)
Total number of sports: 26
2. South Anchorage
Total number of sports: 27
1. Dimond High School (Anchorage)
Total number of sports: 26
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