Aunt Phil's Trunk

Aunt Phil's Trunk Volume Three entertains readers as they travel through Alaska's history from 1912 to 1935. This book of nonfiction short stories highlights the pioneering spirit of early Alaskans as they enter a new era as a territory of the United States. As with the first two books, Volume Three is filled with close to 350 historical photographs. Downing Bill weaves page-turning narratives. Readers follow along as men with axes, hammers and mauls pound a path through the vast Alaska wilderness to lay railroad tracks that connect the deep-water port of Seward in the south to the territory's interior town of Fairbanks in the north. Through the stories in this volume, readers watch a railroad construction town grow out of the tundra to become Anchorage, the largest city in Alaska. Volume Three also shares stories about epidemics and disasters, including the Great Sickness of 1918, the sinking of the steamship Princess Sophia in Southeast Alaska and the incredible diphtheria serum run in 1925 when brave mushers and their tenacious dogs saved the town of Nome from certain death. This book shines a light on early aviators who blazed new trails through Alaska skies, how the Alaska Native people struggled for recognition and how farmers from America's Midwest carved out an agricultural community in the wild Matanuska Valley. It ends with the fatal airplane crash of humorist Will Rogers and aviator Wiley Post near Barrow in 1935.