by Hank Nuwer | Jan 6, 2026 | Alaska Tales
By Hank Nuwer The year 1963 proved magical for an 18-year-old Alaska girl with her heart set on competing in a number of top beauty pageants. She was Nina Whaley, the daughter of well-known Alaska bush pilot and photographer who also lobbied to institute the World...
by Hank Nuwer | Dec 14, 2025 | Alaska Tales
Legendary sprint mushers long will stay household names in Alaska. One of the all-time best was veteran racing champion and veterinarian Roland Lombard. His eight wins in the Anchorage Fur Rendezvous World Championship Sled Dog Race were the most ever until George...
by Hank Nuwer | Nov 24, 2025 | Alaska Tales
Last Frontier Days. By Hank Nuwer John Hegness liked to tell people he’d come from Hell. And he had. His birthplace was Hell, Norway, which wasn’t named for a hotspot you’d like to avoid in the afterlife. Nope, his own personal Hell took its name for the Old Norse...
by Hank Nuwer | Nov 24, 2025 | Alaska Tales
Last Frontier Days By Hank Nuwer Right from the start, a man rarely had more strikes against him than did Ray Wise Mala. For starters, he was born Ray Wise in the mining town of Candle on the Seward Peninsula. That’s about 140 miles northwest of Nome. Snow drifts in...
by Hank Nuwer | Oct 24, 2025 | Alaska Tales
Last Frontier Tales Overnight Success? Not Hardly By Hank Nuwer “Overnight success” for Alaska artist Fred Machetanz and his author wife Sara took a “mere” 15 years of struggle and penny-pinching. Ever after Fred’s 1962 one-artist show at an...
by Hank Nuwer | Oct 18, 2025 | Alaska Tales
Our story thus far: Made a widow in a World War Two dirigible accident that killed her young Airman husband, Sara Burleson Dunn came to Alaska for a postwar vacation. In 1947 she wed Unalakleet children’s book author Frederick (Fred) Machetanz. By Hank Nuwer Fred and...
