The final issue of Alaskan History Magazine for 2026 features an excerpt from Michael Englehard’s newest book, ‘Northerners: Alaskans Yesterday and Today’ (Corax Books, Oct. 2026), about the lighthouse keepers of Alaska’s rugged coastal waters. He writes compellingly of the hardships and loneliness endured by these stalwart men, and notes, “Above everything, the light mustn’t go out.”
Also in this issue:
• A photo gallery shares additional images of a few lighthouses along Alaska’s often treacherous coastline.
• Another article tells the story of the famed “Ghost Ship of the Arctic,” the S.S. Baychimo, a derelict which haunted the northern coastal waters of Alaska for decades. Eluding recovery, often disappearing as suddenly and unexpectedly as it appeared, the Baychimo gained a reputation almost as great as another famous ghost ship, the notorious Mary Celeste, an American merchant brigantine found abandoned and drifting in the Atlantic Ocean with its crew missing and lifeboats gone in November, 1872.
• An article profiles a man from another country who played a major role in Alaska’s history, the Russian Tsar/Emperor Peter the Great, who sent Vitus Bering and Aleksei Chirikov to explore the then-unknown lands to his east.
• Traveling with them was the naturalist and surgeon Georg Wilhelm Steller, another whose name is writ large in Alaska’s history; he went on to describe a number of animals and plants, some of which bear his name, either in the common name or the scientific genus or species.
• A woman’s travels are highlighted in excerpts from May Kellogg Sullivan’s book, A Woman Who Went to Alaska, published in 1902. The book describes two trips in which the author journeyed to the Yukon and Alaskan goldfields in 1899, a year after the height of the Klondike Gold Rush. The excerpts shared in this issue describe the beginning of her time at the oceanside town of Golovin, just a little southeast of Nome.
Lots of great reading about the history of the North, and wrapping up this issue is an index to the 2026 issues of Alaskan History Magazine – more information, back issues, and three collected anthologies are at this website for the magazine.
