Alaska
Burn him down: A history of effigy-burning protests in Alaska
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.
What do Fairbanks, Alaska, and Tehran, Iran, have in common? Not a riddle but a genuine question. People are people everywhere, driven by similar base needs and desires, so don’t be fooled by the more obvious geographic and cultural divides. There’s more than one similarity. Still, a particular detail stands out. Effigies of President Jimmy Carter were burned in both towns, nearly twin moments separated by continents.
There is a long history of strident political protest in Alaska from all points along the political spectrum. Liberal protests. Conservative protests. Serious protests. Silly protests. Protests in all shapes and forms. In 1911, residents at Cordova shoveled a shipment of coal into the harbor to protest land conservation efforts that forced Alaskans to import coal rather than mine it here. It was a Cordova Coal Party. For a different tone entirely, what is now the University of Alaska Fairbanks banned alcohol on campus in 1957. Students predictably disliked the new policy and dug a grave, which was filled with beer bottles and topped with a concrete headstone with a metal plate that read: “Here Lies Tradition, 1957.” Or, who remembers the Annoy Prevo: Think For Yourself bumper stickers of early 1990s Anchorage lore, referring to Baptist minister Jerry Prevo?
Like the Cordova Coal Party, some of these protests coalesced into genuine cultural moments that are crucial to understanding the flow of Alaska history, events such as the 1961 Barrow Duck-In and the 1979 Denali Trespass. For all that, there is something more pointedly personal about burning an effigy. More than a stand against a policy or platform, effigy burnings seek to destroy the person, symbolically at the least, wish fulfillment at the most. And Alaska history is likewise generously dotted with a series of effigy burnings. The following is a review of some but not all effigy-related protests in Alaska history, the most important, memorable and ridiculous.
Burning effigies as a form of protest is an ancient practice. The leap in logic from having an enemy to destroying them by figural proxy is short. History abounds with examples. From 1328 to 1329, the Holy Roman Emperor Louis IV, usually via his puppet Antipope Nicholas V, burned several effigies of Pope John XXII, after those effigies had been tried and condemned naturally. In 1919, a group of women suffragists lit a 2-foot-tall straw and paper effigy of President Woodrow Wilson on fire in front of the White House. Wilson had been slow in support of the female vote. Nicholas V eventually submitted to Pope John XXII and spent the remainder of his life as a less-than-willing guest within the papal palace. The protesting suffragists were immediately arrested, although Wilson did reluctantly call a special session where the eventual 19th Amendment was passed.
Moreover, a burning effigy is typically a display of citizen power. They are a fundamentally public act; try one inside your home if you think otherwise. The American history of effigy burning predates the Revolutionary War. In late 1765, several English newspapers published a letter from Boston. The author reported, “two effigies, one of which by the labels appeared to be designed to represent a Stamp Officer, the other a Jackboot with a head and horns peeping out of the top.” These effigies were hung from a tree, then paraded through town and burned atop a hill.
The horned “Jackboot” referred to John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, the British Prime Minister from 1762 to 1763 and even thereafter a close adviser to King George III. American colonists reviled Stuart for his preferred policy of heavily taxing the colonies. This included the 1765 Stamp Act that required all Americans to pay taxes on printed paper, including playing cards. The Act prompted the “taxation without representation” line and was a significant catalyst for the revolution that began 10 years later. Stamp officers collected the taxes — in British, not colonial currency, mind you — and were thus obvious targets of abuse and effigy practice.
In the spring of 1910, U.S. Marshal Daniel Sutherland and U.S. District Attorney John Boyce were dismissed from their Alaska posts in favor of men known as stooges for the Morgan-Guggenheim Alaska Syndicate, which sought to monopolize the territory’s transportation, mining and fishing industries. James Wickersham, Alaska’s non-voting Congressional representative, accused Gov. Walter Clark of also being in league with the Syndicate. Like many other Alaskans, Wickersham believed that Clark influenced the removals of Sutherland and Boyce. On April 26, Clark was burned in effigy at Juneau. He publicly laughed off the demonstration in the way that only a highly connected, protected man can. The governor, replacement district attorney and replacement marshal remained in their posts.
Gifford Pinchot was a close confidant of President Theodore Roosevelt. They shared a commitment to the protection of public lands, and Roosevelt accordingly appointed Pinchot as the first Forest Service chief, a position he held from 1905 to 1910. As regards Alaska, Pinchot influenced policies that sought to block the rapacious Alaska Syndicate from exploiting natural resources in the territory. To be clear, his intent was more conservation than preservation, in that he favored responsible and rational resource extraction. However, such attempts to curb more ruthless exploitation did hinder smaller-scale settler development.
Pinchot was therefore widely hated by settler Alaskans. His name was in the mind of every Cordova Coal Party participant. Still, such animosity was far from universal. Juneau of this era was less dependent upon new mining developments than a place like Cordova, which goes to why Gov. Clark was burned in effigy for supporting the same Syndicate opposed by Pinchot.
Katalla, southeast of Cordova, is a ghost town now. It was once a bustling boomtown boasting a few thousand residents but was in swift decline by 1910. The town relied upon the passage of oil and coal for its existence. Blocked development on nearby coal fields meant its demise, and to a person, the residents hated Pinchot. On May 3, 1911, an effigy of Pinchot was burned on the beach there.
By then, Pinchot was not even in office. President William Howard Taft dismissed him in January 1910, a key moment of what became known as the Ballinger-Pinchot Affair. In a very long story made short, Pinchot publicized efforts by Secretary of the Interior Richard Ballinger to subvert conservation efforts in favor of a company that was part of the greater Alaska Syndicate, including with lands in Alaska. Ballinger resigned in 1911, coincidentally working with the same corporate interests. The Taft administration’s efforts to cover up the scandal split the Republican Party and aided the Democrat Woodrow Wilson’s win in the 1912 presidential election.
A more curious incident happened in 1912 Kennecott. Per the Cordova Daily Times, “Some of the Chitina people now believe that in officialdom there a nest of foreigners lord it over Americans.” That March, residents burned an effigy of U.S. Commissioner M.R. Healy, who they believed was not an American citizen. In that, they were right. Healy was Canadian. He admitted to previous lies and was subsequently naturalized but resigned his position.
While most effigies are personal in nature, some represented a broader warning. In May 1912, some miners in the Fairbanks region hung an effigy as a warning for any possible firebugs. It had been a dry spring, and several cabins had burned due to careless fires.
In 1911, the Washington-Alaska Bank of Fairbanks failed and closed its doors with a $1 million in local deposits on its books. Later that year, depositors received half of their money, which comprised the entirety of the recovery for most locals. Blame fell almost entirely upon E.T. Barnette, the bank’s president until just three months prior. Fairbanks as a town originated with Barnette’s trading post on the Chena River, located where he was forced to disembark from a riverboat that could proceed no farther upstream.
Barnette aspired to be a pillar of the new community and briefly swam at the upper echelons of frontier society. Against this desire, he had a habit of cutting corners, of stealing from partners, and for disappearing when needed the most. He was a schemer, and his reputation eventually reached the Earth like the inevitable path of a thrown baseball, once clean and white but destined for the dirt. When the bank failed, Barnette was living in Los Angeles, with greater interest in his Mexican plantation than anything happening in Fairbanks.
The declining local economy — the bloom was well gone from their gold rush heyday a few years prior — played a role in the bank’s decline. However, Barnette’s management was the most significant factor. For example, he used the bank to liquidate himself of company stock at inflated prices, with the institution hiding the ramifications of the stocks’ declining value until years later. While in town, Barnette was incentivized to prop the bank up, to maintain its operation. He personally guaranteed any overdrafts of the bank’s holdings. Once he left in the fall of 1910, he made sure to take all of his own deposits with him.
An embezzlement charge went to trial in December 1912. To the great shock of all observers, Barnette was found not guilty of all major charges and only fined $1,000, a small percentage of the fortune he left town with two years before. Fairbanks Daily News-Miner editor W.F. Thompson described the ruling as “the rottenest judicial farce the North has ever witnessed.”
A few days later, a mysterious advertisement was pasted around Fairbanks. “All Fairbanks invited to attend open air New Year celebration. Monday evening, Jan. 6 at 8 o’clock. Everybody come to the waterfront.” Not having anything better to do on a January evening in the time before radio, TV, or internet, much of the town turned out for the show. A group of women with lost deposits in the Washington-Alaska Bank constructed three effigies. Two of them depicted John Clark and John McGinn, Barnette’s lawyers. The last effigy was of Justice, seemingly abandoned in Alaska. After a lengthy expository prayer, the effigies were burned with cheers heard for several blocks. Pictures of the event were subsequently exhibited at the theater.
The Alaska Railroad Act, which authorized and guaranteed funding for the construction of that railroad passed in March 1914. For many in Alaska and Washington, D.C., a government-owned railroad was a way to circumvent corporate interests like the aforementioned Alaska Syndicate and yet promote more independent development in Alaska. In theory, such a railroad would balance conservation and settler self-determination. Yet, a few Alaskans disliked the concept.
On April 13, 1913, seven senators of the Alaska Territorial Legislature submitted a letter to Secretary of the Interior Franklin Lane. The legislators agreed that a railroad in Alaska was “an imperative necessity to the development of our vast mineral resources.” Instead, they argued, “The majority of people, in our opinion, are opposed to the principle of government ownership.”
Despite the veneer of authority, the letter was not an official missive from the Territorial Legislature. Furthermore, the letter certainly reflected a minority opinion within the Legislature. In a speech to the House of Representatives, James Wickersham noted, “Out of 24 members of the legislature, seven of them have sought to prevent the passage of the Alaska railway bill by sending this communication to Washington to be used in debate, at the moment when it would do the Territory of Alaska the greatest amount of harm, by the opponents of the bill.”
The existence of the letter did not become public knowledge until early 1914 when it was weaponized by opponents of the railroad bill. The Alaska public response suggests the seven men had not misjudged the support for a government railroad so much as willfully misrepresented its nature. Indeed, in Alaska, those same men had acted more neutrally toward the idea of a government-owned railroad. The Territorial Senate had notably declined to take a public stand on either side of the railroad bill.
The public response to the letter was heated. In Cordova, pioneer resident George Dooley led a group that hung seven effigies on a line across the town’s main thoroughfare, one for each signatory to that letter. A sign on them declared: “The Traitors to Alaska.” They swung in the breeze for a while before they were taken down and burned. The implied threat was possibly not an empty one. The Petersburg Herald suggested, “the rebuke administered to the traitors by the Cordovans was much too mild for the offence. Fortunately, the end is not yet.” A bit ominous, that.
The next day, the Cordova Daily Alaskan made an observation that ties this era of effigy burnings together. Their editor opined, “Pinchotism’s blight on Alaska has forever been removed.” Four years after Taft dismissed Pinchot, Alaskans still frequently blamed the former Forest Service chief for lack of development in the territory.
Truly, the early 1910s were the heyday of effigy burning in Alaska. Alaskans hated the government, even the presence of the government, but at the same time had high expectations for government performance and expected the government to make their lives better. It was an uneasy, contradictory perspective on the world in a rapidly changing time. Firestarters abounded, as apparently did experts in life-size doll making.
The practice of burning effigies thereafter dwindled in popularity and severity, excepting that of President Carter. In 1934, Fairbanks hosted its first Ice Carnival, which inspired the creation of the Fur Rendezvous two years later. On the event’s last day, March 11, an effigy of “Old Man Depression” was burned on the banks of the Chena River. Old Man Depression was a personalization of the Great Depression, burned as a symbolic attempt to free themselves from what seemed like an eternal economic despair. This was far from an original act. Old Man Depression effigies had been buried, burned, and hung in towns across the country since 1930 and for several years after that Ice Carnival.
In March 1961, a 17-year-old student at Anchorage’s West High School hung an effigy of Principal Leslie Wells near the school. Wells was, of course, demonstrably guilty of keeping kids from doing all manner of cool things. Again, some effigies and some protests are more serious than others. Further indignities, including fire, were likely planned for the effigy, but the ringleader and his accomplices were quickly apprehended. Per the contemporary coverage, “A policeman patrolling the area nabbed the perpetrators and gave them 20 minutes to remove the ‘dummy.‘” No charges were filed, which is a constant with effigy protests in Alaska.
One month later, in April 1961, Gov. Bill Egan proposed a sweeping measure that would raise taxes on everything from alcohol to income. Many of these marked dramatic increases, as with a 60% higher cigarette tax. George Allen of Chugiak, an Alaska Democratic Party district vice chairman, suggested Egan be burned in effigy, even promised a local meeting on the idea. Notably, Egan was also a Democrat. There was a vote, and effigy burning lost in favor of a recall campaign that was in turn eventually abandoned.
The recently passed Jimmy Carter was the modern equivalent of Gifford Pinchot, as regards that specific intersection of land conservation, preservation, development, and rabid Alaskans. On Dec. 1, 1978, President Carter invoked the 1906 Antiquities Act and created 15 national monuments in Alaska and enlarged two others, withdrawing 56 million acres from possible resource development. The withdrawals were part of the long aftermath of the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and a bridge over congressional gridlock until the passage of the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.
Like the residents of Katalla and Cordova decades earlier, broad swaths of Alaskans were incensed at Carter and Interior Secretary Cecil Andrus for blocking development and, as they saw it, denying Alaskan self-determination. Groups of picketing protesters became a common scene in Anchorage, Fairbanks, and several other Alaska towns. Some of the signs pictured Carter hanging in a noose. In Ketchikan, two life-sized straw effigies of Carter and Andrus were tossed into the water. Organizer Ted Clifton declared, “We’re going to drown them here.”
Over the next several months, park rangers were repeatedly insulted and openly threatened across the state. A movement emerged in Eagle to expel any National Park Service, or NPS, presence from town. As a 1979 resolution declared, “The city council of Eagle Alaska does not advocate violence, but we can be no more responsible for the actions of an individual citizen than we can be for any animal when it is cornered.” An arsonist torched an NPS Cessna at Tazlina. In Glennallen, a business hung signs declaring, “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. Park Service personnel not welcome.”
In January 1979, a mass protest occurred at what is now Denali National Park. Known as the Denali Trespass, a few thousand Alaskans gathered with the stated intent to break every possible rule, regulation, and law. They drank every intoxicant in sight, hunted when they weren’t indiscriminately firing guns, built bonfires, and drove snowmachines everywhere. Some conducted target practice on images of King George III with a “Carter?” inscription. They dared any official to arrest them, but park rangers simply observed from a distance. One intoxicated demonstrator died when he drove his snowmachine onto a landing strip and into an airplane.
And there was that effigy burning, that link between Fairbanks and Tehran. Carter was burned in effigy on December 11, 1978, a planned event conducted at the downtown Fairbanks post office. An advertisement for the protest ran in the News-Miner, placed by the “Interior Wildlife Association,” and depicted Carter with an Adolf Hitler-style mustache. Then Fairbanks Mayor William Wood attended and participated, as did past mayors Harold Gilliam and Paul Haggland.
When Jimmy Carter died at the end of 2024, most Alaska commentators adopted a soft approach toward the former president, and understandably so. But the antipathy toward Carter in late 1970s Alaska was real, a vicious and bitter movement. It was far more malevolent than dunk tanks at the state fair with his pictures of his face, something that also happened.
Some historians have claimed there was no unanimous late 1970s Alaska hostility to Carter and land conservation. While technically true, the opposition to Carter from late 1978 through the end of his presidency was overwhelming in effect. Per a July 1979 poll, only 16% of Alaskans approved of Carter’s actions. By that same poll, only 10% of Alaskans favored him for reelection. And at that next election, Carter pulled only 26% of the Alaskan electorate, almost 10 percentage points worse than his performance in 1976 and the worst performance by a Democratic presidential candidate in Alaska history.
Perhaps the most amusing effigy burning incident in Alaska involved a fast-food clown. In 1989, the announcement of a new McDonald’s location in Fairbanks sparked anger among area residents. Zena Toy burned two Ronald McDonald effigies on her lawn and hung a third during the construction. She told the News-Miner, “There’s going to be giant golden arches and stinky hamburger smell and tons of Styro on Geist Road.” Bob Morton lived two blocks away from Toy and supported the new franchise, the fourth in Fairbanks. He said, “I think it’s great. And I thought her Ronald McDonald was cute, but dumb.” The franchise owners did build a wall separating the restaurant from its residential neighbors.
In the spring of 1992, the House Finance Committee passed a budget proposal with significant funding cuts for the University of Alaska, including $1.4 million from UAF’s operating budget. Gov. Wally Hickel’s capital budget included nothing for UAF’s long-deferred maintenance. At the same time, UA system administrators were considering a steep increase in tuition costs. Meanwhile, UAF students went to class and watched the buildings fall apart. Burst radiators and crumbling ceiling tiles were a common sight.
On April 15, around 400 students protested on campus, organized by SWARM, the Student Walkout and Resistance Movement. There were signs like “GIVE US OUR MONEY,” “STOP HICKEL’S RAPE OF UAF,” and “UAF NEEDS A FUTURE.” Eight mostly naked women streaked through the crowd shouting over and over, “We got stripped by Wally Hickel!” An effigy of Hickel was burned to great cheers. That night, about 100 students occupied the Butrovich Building for a peaceful sleep-in. The mere existence of the Butrovich Building, built to house administration offices, angered many students given the proliferation of asbestos and leaky roofs in dorms and classrooms.
The student protest galvanized students toward distinct goals and defined a coherent community. Yet, they were also less successful in reaching those goals. After long ignoring student demands for a meeting, Hickel finally agreed to a teleconference, though the budget cuts continued. Nine days after the protest, the UA Board of Regents passed an unaltered tuition hike.
The historical precedent and Alaskan preference are clear. Over and over, for more than a century, protests in Alaska have been plentiful and varied, sharp and even aggressive in approach. For decades, it has been a credit to our society and government that such protests are both familiar and allowed. For sure, the ways in which a government treats protesters is a barometer of freedom. Read the measurements however you want.
Alaska
Norwegian filmmakers’ documentary spotlights homelessness in Anchorage, aims for Alaska screening
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – Two Norwegian filmmakers say their debut documentary, Anchorage Welcomes You, is meant to put viewers face-to-face with people living on Anchorage streets — not to prescribe a political fix, but to “describe the situation” and the human stakes behind a crisis visible across the city.
“I think the core story is to shine a light on the prevalence of the problem that is in Anchorage when it comes to drug abuse and homelessness,” said director/cinematographer Peter Gupta. “But it’s also to show how people are … capable of taking a wrong turn in life and coming back from it.”
The documentary was shot over multiple trips to Anchorage spanning roughly two years, beginning with a summer 2022 visit, followed by a winter 2024 return and a completion last fall.
Gupta, along with editor/screenwriter Rasmus Aarskog Sætersdal, said the project first grew out of Gupta’s canoe trip down the Yukon River, where he said he saw “communities ravaged by drugs and alcohol.”
“I canoed the whole length of the Yukon in 2017,” Gupta said. “And I saw what was going on in all the villages. And I wanted to go back and make a film at some point.”
Gupta said he met Anchorage resident Erinn Leann — a central figure in the film — at the end of that trip and told her then he planned to return to Alaska to make a documentary.
A title drawn from a sign — and the ‘duality’ beneath it
The film’s title comes from the weathered “Anchorage Welcomes You” sign seen by commuters entering the city — and, the filmmakers said, from what they described as the contrast between Anchorage’s image and the encampments they saw nearby.
“It was interesting when we were there the first year and we saw this Anchorage welcomes sign falling apart and a whole … camp growing up beneath it,” Sætersdal said. “And it was just this … you can say duality of presentation for the city.”
Gupta said the pair debated keeping the name, but after multiple test screenings they found Alaskans preferred the working title.
“We’ve had ambivalent feelings about the title of the film because it’s kind of tongue in cheek,” Gupta said. “We didn’t want to keep it at some point, but the people from Anchorage really wanted to keep it.”
Building trust — and setting rules
Much of the film unfolds in intimate, up-close moments that are hard to capture in traditional daily news reporting.
Sætersdal said filming required clear rules and consent. He said the filmmakers spent time walking the same routes and meeting the same people repeatedly. Gupta added that trust was foundational.
“I think it’s so important, that respect for whoever is participating, that’s a prerequisite for bringing them into the project,” he said.
Anchorage through outsiders’ eyes
Asked what makes homelessness in Anchorage distinct, Gupta said his travels shaped his perspective. Gupta described what he called “social fragmentation” and “hopelessness” — a situation he said can be more than just a lack of material resources.
“I’ve been around the world,” he said. “And the poverty in the United States is different.
“When you go to the United States, there’s a social fragmentation in a way that is quite unique. And I think there is a hopelessness and a different character to it … it’s not only a material problem. It is also a social problem.”
Sætersdal added Alaska’s identity as a frontier draws people seeking escape.
“Alaska still has this mythical place in imagination as the last frontier,” he said. “You see also people coming from all over the country … coming to Alaska in escapism of something. And then there’s nowhere else to go.”
‘Not to tell the people of Anchorage what to do’
Gupta and Sætersdal said they hope the documentary sparks conversations without presenting a single prescribed solution.
“What we’re trying to do with this film is not to tell the people of Anchorage what to do about homelessness,” Gupta said. “It’s about describing what’s happening and sparking a conversation.
“We hope that we can kind of make the homeless appear as resourceful and also capable of changing. But it’s not down to us what to do with it.”
Returning to Anchorage — and trying to bring the film home
Now, the two say the hope is to screen it in Alaska — and eventually get broader U.S. distribution. They said navigating distribution has been its own grind, but Sætersdal added that Alaska continues to pull at them creatively.
“Alaska really is a place that it sticks to you,” Sætersdal said. “You can’t unsee it once you’ve been there and you can’t like brush it off. It becomes a part of you.”
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Alaska already has glaciers, whales, old gold-rush towns, wild seafood, and mountains. But Princess Cruises is taking the year by storm with something bigger than a standard summer schedule. The line is sending eight ships to Alaska, adding new North-to-Alaska programming, and giving travelers more ways to turn their trip into a full land-and-sea adventure.
Princess Is Going Bigger Than Ever
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
The 2026 Alaska season gives Princess its largest presence in the region to date, with eight ships, 180 departures, and visits to 19 destinations. Travelers are not boxed into a narrow route or one small batch of dates. The ship lineup includes Star Princess, Coral Princess, Royal Princess, Ruby Princess, Grand Princess, Emerald Princess, Discovery Princess, and Island Princess. For anyone comparing Alaska cruise options, that much capacity means more itinerary choices.
Star Princess Gives The Season A New Headliner
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Star Princess is the newest ship in the Princess fleet. This matters because Alaska cruising can easily feel like a trade-off between destination and ship experience. Princess is putting one of its newest vessels into one of its most important regions. Star Princess also hosts the new Après Sea experience inside The Dome, a high-positioned venue designed around big views.
Glacier Days Get The Full Main-Event Treatment
Credit: Getty Images
Glacier viewing has always been one of Alaska cruising’s biggest draws, but Princess is giving it extra structure through “The Glacier Experience: A Signature Princess Day.” On select Glacier Bay sailings, guests get close-up glacier views, live narration, and Park Ranger commentary from the bridge and open decks. There are also theater presentations and Junior and Teen Ranger programming. VIP viewing areas and bowfront access add another layer for guests who want the best possible look at the ice.
The Trip Can Extend Deep Into Alaska By Land
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Princess has long built part of its reputation around cruisetours that combine time at sea with inland travel. A seven-night sailing can deliver a strong Alaska trip in itself. However, inland travel opens the door to scenic train journeys, Princess Wilderness Lodges, and routes to places such as Denali, Kenai, and the Mt. McKinley lodge area. The 2026 season continues to lean into sea-and-land travel.
North To Alaska Makes The Ship Feel Local
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Princess first introduced its North to Alaska program in 2015, and in 2026, every Princess ship sailing in Alaska will carry the new programming. The whole idea is to bring local culture, food, personalities, and storytelling on board so guests learn something about Alaska between ports. This includes Native Alaskan speakers, naturalists, enrichment presenters, and destination-focused events that connect the trip to the place outside the ship. Names in the speaker series include Tlingit voices, Alaska Native educators, writers, and photographers.
Alaska Seafood Gets A Bigger Seat At The Table
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Princess is leaning into Alaska’s food identity with “A Taste of The Great Land.” The 2026 specialty restaurant offerings feature sustainably sourced, wild-caught Alaskan seafood created with regional suppliers. Crown Grill offers dishes such as Wild King Salmon, Alaskan Jumbo Lump Crab Cake, and Jumbo Lump Crab paired with Butter-Broiled Lobster Tail. Sabatini’s Italian Trattoria also brings Alaskan fish into an Italian-style setting.
The Entertainment Has Alaska In Its Bones
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
This season also features “Candlelight Concert Series: Fire & Ice,” with Alaska singer-songwriters performing in a candlelit setting twice per voyage. This gives the onboard entertainment a stronger sense of place than a generic music night. Returning favorites add a livelier side, including Great Alaskan Lumberjack Show elements with axe-throwing recruits, trivia, and timber-sports storytelling tied to Ketchikan. Select sailings also feature Deadliest Catch captains and crew members sharing Bering Sea crab-fishing stories. The lineup draws from Alaska’s labor, music, weather, and folklore.
Families Get More Than A Pretty View
Credit: Tripadvisor
Younger travelers are getting special attention, not a watered-down version of the adult trip. Glacier Bay Junior Rangers let kids complete activity books, attend presentations, and earn a badge and certificate through a partnership with the National Park Service. Gold Rush Adventures pulls families into a shipwide Klondike-style search, while Great Alaskan Expedition offers youth and teens a three-hour team-based experience across land, sea, and air. As puppies in the Piazza also return on ships visiting Skagway, guests get to see Alaskan Huskies and sled-dog culture.
Après Sea Gives Alaska A Stylish Cooldown
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
After a long day outside, Princess is adding a dedicated wind-down ritual through Après Sea. The setup is inspired by après-ski culture. Guests can expect warm drinks, happy hour, and panoramic views after they return from exploring. On Star Princess, the experience is in The Dome, and it provides a strong visual setting at the top of the ship. A relaxed lounge concept gives the evening its own personality, and guests don’t have to jump straight from adventure into dinner.
MedallionClass Keeps The Whole Trip Moving Smoothly
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Alaska days can get busy fast, with early excursions, glacier viewing, dinner plans, family meetups, and plenty of time spent moving around the ship. The Princess Medallion Class setup helps cut down on small hassles. The wearable Medallion supports contactless boarding, keyless stateroom entry, onboard ordering, contactless payment, ship navigation, and locating travel companions through the app. When the day already includes ports, wildlife, ice, and dinner reservations, fewer friction points onboard can make a real difference.
Rachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. Let’s kick off the week with a quick roundup of some science news you may have missed.
First, you may have seen some headlines last week about an outbreak of hantavirus on a cruise ship. Here to tell us more about what happened is Tanya Lewis, SciAm’s senior desk editor for health and medicine.
Tanya, thanks so much for coming on to walk us through this.
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Tanya Lewis: Yeah, no, thanks so much for having me.
Feltman: Why are we talking about hantavirus and this cruise ship? What happened?
Lewis: Just to catch people up, this outbreak was first noticed about a week ago on a ship called the MV Hondius, which was a cruise ship departing from South America, Argentina. And the people that were sickened and unfortunately passed away, two of those individuals were a married couple who had been traveling—it was a Dutch couple—we think were infected in Argentina and then boarded the ship. And then subsequently, multiple other people have been infected. As of May 7 the number of people on this cruise ship who had been infected with hantavirus was eight people. So that probably could still change.
But you might not have heard of hantavirus before, but it is a virus family that people have been sickened with before, and it’s generally spread by rodents, like rats or mice. And this commonly happens in places where people are exposed to the feces of these animals.
And it causes pretty severe disease. It can cause anything from respiratory distress and fluid in the lungs to some forms of it can be more of, like, a hemorrhagic fever, kind of like Ebola. But the kind that we’re seeing on this cruise ship is more the respiratory kind.
But yeah, this is a virus that, while it is fairly rare to be infected with it, it’s quite lethal. The estimates of its lethality vary, but anywhere from, like, 30 percent to even 50 percent of people infected have died of it.
Feltman: Right, well, and like you said, it, it’s usually spread through rodent feces. But unfortunately, the specific virus we’re talking about, with regard to this cruise ship, is one of the rare instances where it is technically possible to spread from human to human. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Lewis: Basically, these individuals on the ship were thought to be infected by human-to-human transmission. At least, that’s the working hypothesis right now. And the reason has to do with the exposure routes.
As I mentioned two of the people were a married couple, so we’re talking about, like, very close contact. This is not something like SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, where it’s, like, in the air and wafting around for hours or something. This is something that you would probably need to be, like, breathing very closely, in the same space. And of course, cruise ships are, like, kind of the perfect petri dish for that.
Feltman: Yeah.
So I think there are two things to talk about. There’s, one, why experts are not immediately super concerned about pandemic potential from this specific thing, but also why it is reasonable that I think so many of us, when seeing this news, went, “Uh-oh. We’re—this is a reminder of public-health paradigms I do not wanna be reminded of.”
So let’s start with the good news: Why are experts not freaking out about this?
Lewis: Yeah, so we have to remember that this is a virus that is very different than a lot of the pathogens that have caused respiratory pandemics in the past. In order for a pathogen to be a major pandemic concern, it needs to be very transmissible, and that is something that we have not yet seen with this hantavirus.
I should say, this particular strain is the only strain that has been shown to transmit human to human; it’s called the Andes strain. Most hantaviruses are not thought to spread that way. So the good news is, it’s kind of rare. The bad news, maybe, is that it does appear to have spread, at least, you know, in a limited way, between people.
But yeah, in terms of why experts are not, like, immediately concerned that this will spark a larger epidemic, I think the reason is just that this type of virus and the way it spreads is not conducive, as far as we know, to that type of outbreak. And it’s also happening in a very contained space, so although there have been reports that several of the people on board the ship have disembarked and we are still following that closely, at this point there is no indication of wider community spread, which is what we call it when people are getting infected who have not had direct exposure to the infected individuals.
Feltman: Is there any concern that the time that this virus spent, you know, in such a perfect petri dish may have given it the opportunity to mutate and be better at jumping from person to person?
Lewis: I think what virologists would tell you is, like, the more opportunities a virus has to jump between people, the higher the risk of it developing, like, a concerning mutation that makes it more transmissible.
That said, we’re still talking about a relatively small number of individuals. I mean, eight people sounds like a lot, but, you know, when you’re talking about this being very close quarters on a ship, this is not like, oh, you’re walking into a giant city like New York City and infecting everyone around you or something. So I think that is a little bit reassuring, perhaps, at this point.
But that said, we’ve been humbled before, and I think if there’s one lesson we can take from the COVID pandemic, it’s that we shouldn’t panic, but we should definitely pay attention. And at least scientists wanna know and learn more about this virus and understand it better.
Feltman: I think a lot of people are getting a little freaked out by this news. [Laughs.]
Lewis: Yeah, and I mean, I would be the first to say, like, something like this you hear about, it’s, like, instantly puts you back in that fearful space of 2020. And of course, there was the famous cruise ship, the Diamond Princess, where some of the early COVID cases happened. So that is always concerning.
On the other hand, you know, we have to sort of put it in perspective and remember this is a rare virus and it is something that people have been infected with in the past, so it’s not a completely new virus, unlike SARS-CoV-2, which we had never seen before. So we do have some idea of how this virus works, and while we don’t have any specific treatments for it, we do at least have experts who study it. So that should hopefully give some reassurance that, like, this is not a complete unknown. We are not starting from square one.
Feltman: Thanks for that, Tanya.
Now, listeners, keep in mind we had this conversation on Thursday, May 7. But you can always go to ScientificAmerican.com for more up-to-date science news.
Now for new research on micro- and nanoplastics—but this isn’t the health story you might be expecting. According to a study published last Monday in Nature Climate Change, these tiny bits of broken-down plastic could be contributing to our planet’s warming temperatures.
For starters, just in case you are blissfully unaware: yes, there are, unfortunately, microplastics in the sky. According to a study published in 2021, some of these particles swirl up into the air from the road, where tires and brakes frequently shed small pieces of plastic.
Now, the idea of microplastics permeating the air and even seeding clouds into existence is creepy enough, in my opinion. But this new study suggests they can also have a warming effect on the atmosphere.
Here’s how that would work: if you’ve ever spent time on a patch of blacktop on a sunny summer day, you know that black material absorbs heat. Conversely, white material reflects heat. The same thing happens when you scatter bits of dark and light plastic into the atmosphere, which is what humanity has inadvertently done quite a bit over the past few decades.
Unfortunately, according to this new study, any cooling effects we might get from light microplastics are probably vastly outweighed by the warming effects of dark microplastics. While the estimated effect is a small percentage of the warming fueled by soot from coal power plants, the results are still worrying.
As Jackie Flynn Mogenson reported for SciAm last week, we don’t actually know the concentration of micro- and nanoplastics currently in our atmosphere. But the authors of the new study argue that global climate assessments should do more to factor in these tiny plastic bits. And their findings serve as a great reminder that when we talk about the downsides of plastic, we should recognize that there may be impacts far less concrete and obvious than creating growing piles of trash in landfills.
Now I’ll turn the mic over briefly to SciAm’s chief newsletter editor, Andrea Gawrylewski. She’s gonna tell us about the science behind a tsunami that caught Alaska by surprise.
Andrea Gawrylewski: Thanks, Rachel.
Last summer, in August, a small cruise boat called the David B spent the night in an inlet about 50 miles from Juneau, Alaska. They were supposed to be at anchor nearer to Juneau in this beautiful fjord called Tracy Arm, but bad weather had forced them to pick another place to stay. And it turns out that detour may have saved their lives.
In the morning, from where they were anchored, the boat’s owners noticed seawater rolling over the nearby [sandbar] and shoreline. It was weird because the tide was supposed to be out at that time, and they had no idea why the water was so high.
When scientists heard about the strange sea-level rise, they began examining seismic data, they looked at aerial footage and satellite images, and determined that a massive landslide had occurred at the top of the Tracy Arm fjord.
So what had happened?
The South Sawyer Glacier at the top of Tracy Arm has been steadily shrinking and retreating for the last 25 years. In the spring and summer of last year the ice retreated inland several hundred feet, exposing so much bare rock that it ultimately caused a landslide.
That big slide hit the water and sent a tsunami racing through the fjord—like, so much water that the tsunami surged more than 1,500 feet up the sides of the fjord and sloshed back and forth, like in a bathtub.
That event also produced a seismic signal equivalent to a magnitude 5.4 earthquake. Scientists found smaller seismic events in the data that had occurred at least 24 hours before the big one, and they were increasing exponentially in intensity in the six hours before the landslide.
So now the question is: Could these early seismic signals be used as a warning system? One scientist at the Alaska Earthquake Center has been testing a landslide detection algorithm, and so far it’s detected 35 landslides in near real time. Sending out warnings within three to four minutes of big events could make all the difference to people who live in the area, so scientists are working to improve tools like these.
If you want more updates like this, sign up for my free daily newsletter, Today in Science, at SciAm.com/#newsletter.
Feltman: That’s all for this week’s science news roundup. We’ll be back on Wednesday to talk all about protein. Why is it everywhere all of a sudden? We’ll cut through the hype so you can just enjoy your tofu in peace.
Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Sushmita Pathak and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.
For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. Have a great week!
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