A few recently acquired photographs landed in my mailbox today. I’ll post them over the coming weeks. The first one is one of the CR&NW’s steam shovels loading rock into side dump car #13, with car #85 right behind it. The location and date are unknown, but judging by the trees it looks like a forest fire has been through the area recently.

Records of forest fires in Alaska from these early years are pretty sparse, as there was little way to monitor and track them systemically. However, we know the Gilahina Trestle burned in 1915 from the Sourdough Hill fire, which was attributed to the railroad and burned some 384,000 acres from Chitina to Kennecott. There was also the 1915 Kennecott Fire, which burned 64,000 acres between the Kennicott and Nizina rivers. Still that’s just a guess, and even if correct doesn’t really narrow it down.