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40,000-10,000 BCish -- people cross the Bering Land Bridge?
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1728 -- Vitus Bering (Danish) finds Bering Strait
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1741 -- Vitus Bering lands on what is now Kayak Island and ‘discovers’ Alaska
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1778 -- Captain Cook finds Cook Inlet
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1784 -- first Russian settlement in Alaska, on Kodiak Island
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1857 -- coal mining at Coal Harbor
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1867 -- Alaska Purchase/Seward’s Folly
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Provisions finally made for education in Alaska -- school opens in Sitka
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1872 -- gold found near Sitka
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1880’s-1890’s -- Gold Rush era -- Juneau, Klondike, etc.
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1884 -- Organic Act -- education to be provided to children in Alaska regardless of race -- later provisions would effectively nullify this and segregate schools or force rural and native students to boarding schools, sometimes out of state entirely
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1896 -- oil found in Cook Inlet
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1900 -- capital moved from Sitka to Juneau
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1912 -- Alaska named a territory
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1915 -- Great Anchorage Lot Sale -- sets up the city -- name is picked (Alaska City, but federal government chooses to remain Anchorage)
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1931 -- Bureau of Indian Affairs takes over operation of rural schools
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WWII prompts building of the Alcan -- militarizes Alaska very quickly
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1959 -- Alaska becomes a state
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1960’s-70’s -- oil found in Prudhoe Bay -- building of alaska pipeline
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1964 -- 9.2 earthquake -- largest in North America and second largest in the world
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1972 -- Molly Hootch case -- Alaska Legal Services sued the state, stating that boarding schools and correspondence did not provide the same opportunity as schooling within home community -- this resulted in more schools in rural communities and tripled the HS graduation rate of rural alaskans
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1976 -- Alaska Permanent Fund!
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1988 -- North Slope Borough trial -- Dischner and Mathisen stand trial after over a billion dollars is spent on 'projects' in a relatively small (5000-pop.) area of the state.
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1989 -- Exxon oil spill -- over 10 million gallons on the shoreline. Cleanup takes several years.