Hank Nuwer Alaska Yarns
My Travel Blog
By Alaska’s Columnist of the Year
Welcome. Enjoy the official story clearinghouse of Alaska author Hank Nuwer with photos by Malgorzata (Gosia) Nuwer. Scroll down to very bottom of this main page for archived stories.
Bio: University of Alaska (Fairbanks) adjunct professor Hank Nuwer
Awards: 2025 Hoosier State Press Association first-place winner for commentary, 2023 and 2024 Alaska Press Club (APC) First-Place Columnist of the Year, and 2022 Ohio SPJ First-Place Columnist of the Year.
Gosia Nuwer photographs Alaska and its wildlife. She and Hank reside in Fairbanks, Alaska, with 20 acres in remote Alaska, and a vacation cabin in Poland.
Gosia and her husband in 2025 contributed an article on Alaska back-road trips for Phi Kappa Phi’s Forum Magazine.
Contact Prof. Hank Nuwer at Hjnuwer@Alaska.edu
Know someone who has fought hazing in student groups, the military or sports? Nominate him/her/them here for a Hank Nuwer Antihazing Hero Award at Hazing Prevention Network.
How they celebrated New Year’s in rural Alaska
The First Masquerade Balls By Hank Nuwer Masquerade Balls were about the most popular social event of the year in pioneer Cordova. Guests braved winds, snows, and icy trails to gather for food, drink and comradeship. The first ball was put on in 1912 by the Eagles...
This Story Passed for News in 1951
Humor by Hank Nuwer Now I know that the subject of transplanting fish and game into area where they previously never existed is a serious topic. It’s discussed in university wildlife management classes, Alaska Department of Fish and Wildlife...
Death of a Cordova Merchant and Banker
by Hank Nuwer Samuel Blum in his time was one of the wealthiest Alaskan pioneers, making his money primarily as a mercantile store owner, banker and investor. A devout Jew, he earned statewide respect as a philanthropist. Born and educated in San Francisco, Blum...
An Unlikely (But True) Love Story
From the Cordova Times pf November 29, 2024 My wife Gosia and I enjoyed two Thanksgiving meals this week. Only a few days remain before our community theater Christmas comedy Twas the Night Before Christmas opens. So, the cast members came over to our kitchen last...
Setting a writing agenda
One essay project is a memoir on a savage attack on me with a baseball bat at Cheektowaga Town Park by a street hoodlum named Dale August Fechter. . .’m also writing about multiple disgraced priests at Buffalo’s Diocesan Preparatory seminary, again as a memoir.
General Willis P. Richardson: From Alaska Road Builder to Commander in Siberia
By Hank Nuwer Alaskans and Alaskan visitors by automobile evermore owe a debt to General Wilds Preston Richardson for building the roads more traveled. A native Texan, he was born March 20, 1861, three weeks before Confederate troops fired the first shot of...
Nevada Artist Robert Cole Caples
Robert Cole Caples is an enigmatic man. Seldom photographed, a lover of privacy: he became one of Nevada’s best-loved artists. By Hank Nuwer (1973) Much of the information available on Caples exists preserved in an intriguing essay by writer Walter Van Tilburg Clark...
EPA must determine extent of problem
By HANK NUWER, It’s a story as old as the story of human progress. A new discovery or innovation heralded for its efficacy is suspected to have harmful effects that require ingenuity on the part of researchers to find an antidote to the unintended causes. I consider...
Minto, Alaska
Weekends fly by all too fast, don’t they? One week ago Saturday my wife Gosia and I enjoyed the incredible vistas on the highway south of Delta Junction and north of Paxson. The next day I took Gosia for her first trip on the Dalton Highway, but we did not drive too...