Where Was Your First Anchorage Home?

For many longtime residents, the first place you lived in anchorage was determined by when you arrived and what housing was available.

While some were born in Anchorage, others drove up the ALCAN, and others flew in to either Merrill Field or Anchorage International Airport.

Many started in small apartments, temporary housing, or early neighborhood homes during one of Anchorage’s many boom-or-bust years.

Mike of Anchorage Memories remembers landing at Merrill Field in 1950, living first in Mountain View, then moving to a log home on Fairbanks Street near downtown.

Sometimes the first place you lived in anchorage stays with you more vividly than the rest of the city—the small apartment, the housing shortage, the school that had not been built yet.

Mike of Anchorage Memories Remembers 

“My family flew into Anchorage and landed at Merrill Field in 1950 when I was 3 years old.

Our first place was a small apartment in Mountain View, located just across the street from where Orah Dee Clark Junior High School would eventually be built.

The apartment had been created to help with a housing shortage in Anchorage.

We lived there about a year, then we moved into a log home on Fairbanks street just a few blocks from Denali Elementary, where I would attend first grade.”

Mary Jane of Anchorage Memories

“In the 1950s, my father built our three room brick house on 5th Avenue in downtown Anchorage. 

He built the house very well, because many years later it held up during the 1964 earthquake.

At the age of four, my family moved into a three-story log house at 2nd and Cordova. It seemed so big to me, and I had to learn how to walk up and down the stairs.

Back then, families were large (I had five brothers and two sisters) and we played outside in our neighborhood a lot. We played hide and seek, kick ball, and in the winter I learned how to ice skate with my double bladed skates.

Great memories of growing up in Anchorage.”

Where Was Your First Anchorage Home?

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