"Bible of North Country Travel"

Full coverage of the central Kenai Peninsula along the highway in the 1951 edition of The Milepost.

BIBLE OF NORTH COUNTRY TRAVEL

JANUARY 2011

In 1951, the third annual edition of The Milepost—self-proclaimed “Guide to the Land of the Northern Lights”—dedicated exactly one paragraph to Kenai and mentioned the word “Soldotna” only once. Two years earlier, the inaugural edition of the booklet had allowed but two paragraphs (covering the lower half of page 59) for the entire Kenai Peninsula.

Since those days, however, much has changed in this renowned guide—a direct reflection of the considerable changes in the times and in the infrastructure of what would become the 49^th state.

By 1967, the guidebook, which would still fit in most glove compartments at that time, had almost quadrupled its size to 280 pages. By 1975, the page number had blossomed to 498, and the pages themselves had been increased to magazine size.

By 1981, when the 33^rd edition rolled off the presses, nearly 55 pages of that $7.95 volume were consumed by the travelogue for and the businesses advertising along the Seward and Sterling highways and their ancillary routes.

And the changes and the growth have continued up to the present time.

Cover of the first-ever edition of The Milepost, 1949.

This March, about 60,000 copies of the $29.95, 784-page 63^rd annual edition of The Milepost—“Since 1949 the Bible of North Country Travel”—will hit newsstands. (Incidentally, the number of copies printed peaked in the 1990s, when nearly 100,000 copies per year were sent into circulation.)

The venerable highway guide’s yearly spring appearance is now a fact of life for most peninsula residents. Thousands of travelers from Outside will use its maps and its pages of information to lead them into Alaska and up and down its highways. Thousands of Alaskans will employ it to travel to remote areas inside and outside of the state.

The Seward Highway and Sterling Highway sections of the 2011 edition will fill more than 100 pages, including myriad side roads—the Kenai Spur, Kalifornsky Beach Road, Funny River Road, and many more. Perhaps two dozen pages will be dedicated solely to the Kenai-Soldotna area and the featured advertisers who do business there.

But in 1949, it was a different story. The Milepost—begun by William A. Wallace through his Alaska Research Company and with assistance from publisher Bob Atwood—began its section entitled “Highways of the Kenai Peninsula” with this sentence: “The new Kenai Highway, now under construction, will eventually connect Anchorage, Seward, Homer, Kenai, and intermediate points.”

In 1949, nearly every community not listed in that sentence was considered little more than an “intermediate point”—including Ninilchik, Clam Gulch, Kasilof, Hope, Cooper Landing, and the fledgling homesteading areas of Sterling (then called Naptowne), Soldotna and Nikiski.

The peninsula section continued: “From Kasilof the road construction is progressing rapidly toward Homer, and will probably be passable by late summer of 1949. At present, cars may be shipped via the Alaska Railroad to Moose Pass, on the Hope to Seward Highway, unloaded there, and driven to Kenai and Kasilof, or to Seward.”

The guide stressed that, once the highway has been completed, the new road system “will open up the magnificent and hitherto inaccessible Kenai Peninsula to automobile travel from Anchorage and Seward.”

The 72-page, saddle-stitched first edition of The Milepost sold for one dollar and featured color only on the shiny front cover. Wallace, who had made many trips up and down the Alaska Highway while working for the Interior Department’s Alaska Fire Control Service at Tanacross, named his guidebook after the mileage posts that guided travelers along the rugged stretch of gravel from Dawson Creek to Fairbanks.

In 1951, the price remained a dollar, but more information was available inside. The “new, revised edition” that year was released in April, was printed by Desert Magazine Press, and had expanded to 96 pages. And this time the peninsula received its due.

On page 71 began a section entitled “Anchorage to the Kenai Peninsula: Log of the Turnagain Highway with Log of the Sterling-Hope-Seward Highways.” The peninsula section began with this announcement: “The Turnagain Highway, due for completion in the fall of 1951, and for paving (through to Seward) in 1952, will finally link Anchorage and all of Alaska to the famed Kenai Peninsula.”

Sure enough, when the Soldotna-bound Tachick family arrived in Anchorage from Washington on Halloween in 1951—after 10 days of travel with eight people in a Ford sedan and a 2½-ton pickup—they found the road south open, but barely.

They had expected to have to load their vehicles onto the train for Moose Pass and Seward. Instead, they were told that they might be able to drive all the way on the new road.

On Nov. 1, they trundled down the rough dirt-and-gravel Seward Highway until they reached a construction zone, where the crew there allowed the Tachicks to pass on through. Sometime later, they arrived in Soldotna—barely a wide spot in the road in those days—and located some family friends, who gave them a place to stay while Tachick patriarch, Paul, searched for work and tried to find land for sale.

It’s perhaps fortunate for the Tachicks that they didn’t try to locate Soldotna by using The Milepost. On page 76, the guidebook refers only to “Kenai Junction”—what peninsula residents now call the “Y”—and explains that this is the location of an 11-mile “side road” leading to the fishing village of Kenai. (Nothing beyond Kenai is mentioned.)

The MIlepost, 1951.

Just past Kenai Junction, the guidebook describes in some detail “Carver’s Cottages and Automotive Service,” and then, in an aside stretching just past two full lines, adds: “Across from Carver’s is the Soldotna Inn, a café and bar, which also handles groceries, fishing tackle and ammunition. Managed by Joe Faa.”

From the Kenai Junction south to Homer—a distance at that time of almost 80 miles—only 11 locations are specifically mentioned. They are: the Kenai River bridge, a side road to the fishing village of Kasilof, the Kasilof River bridge, the Clam Gulch Store and Post Office, Jackinsky’s Ranch Tavern, the fishing village of Ninilchik, “E” Services and Repairs, the Deep Creek bridge, the Stariski Creek bridge, the Anchor River bridge, and the Hilltop Hideaway.

In 1962, William Wallace sold The Milepost, which had doubled in size since its debut edition, to career newspaperman, Robert Henning. The 224-page 1963 edition, then, was published by Henning’s Alaska-Northwest Publishing Co.

In 1988, as part of Alaska Northwest Books, The Milepost was acquired by GTE Discovery Publications Inc., which in November 1992 sold Alaska Northwest Books to Graphic Arts of Portland, Oregon. A month later, Vernon Publications Inc. of Bellevue, Washington, acquired The Milepost. Then, in 1997, the guidebook’s current owner, Morris Communications, purchased The Milepost.

Morris Communications, a Georgia-based conglomerate which owns six Anchorage radio stations (including KFQD), is also responsible for the publication of Alaska magazine, as well as The Peninsula Clarion, The Homer News and The Juneau Empire.

And now, more than 60 years since the first Milepost promised that soon new roads would open up the peninsula to the world, about one-eighth of the annual guidebook is dedicated solely to the Kenai. And today more than twice the number of locations are listed in the guide along the 11 miles of the Spur Highway between Soldotna and Kenai than in the 80 miles between Soldotna and Homer covered in The Milepost 60 years ago.

Times have certainly changed.