Seward is a historic community at the base of Mount Marathon on the western shore of Resurrection Bay on the Kenai Peninsula and near the mouth of the Resurrection River, about 80 miles (129 km) west-northwest of Homer and 79 miles (127 km) south of Anchorage, Alaska. The community is named after former U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward, who negotiated the Alaska Purchase from Russia in 1867. The Resurrection River starts from glaciers emanating from the Harding Icefield to the west and flows generally southeast for 18 miles (29 km) where it is joined by Salmon Creek with headwaters in the Sargent Icefield to the east and enters a broad delta at the head of Resurrection Bay draining a combined watershed of 141,731 acres (57,357 ha). Resurrection Bay is a deglaciated fjord between the Resurrection Peninsula to the east and the Kenai Peninsula to the west and trends roughly north-south for 18 miles (29 km) and connects with the Gulf of Alaska. The mountains surrounding the fjord are formed by rocks of the Valdez Group considered to be deposits of turbidity currents in a deep oceanic trench, and are now part of the Southern Margin composite terrane that developed in the Late Cretaceous and extends for more than 1,050 miles (1,700 km) along the southern coast of Alaska. The rocks consist mostly of partially metamorphosed sandstone, siltstone, and mudstone that weather quickly creating friable weakly bonded surfaces resulting in dramatic rock slides.
The central Gulf of Alaska coast is deeply indented by Cook Inlet, Prince William Sound, and several large fjords that were formed by repeated expansion and contraction of Pleistocene glaciers. The Gulf of Alaska does not develop seasonal sea ice, and early humans likely migrated along the coast in pursuit of food when the mainland was ice-bound. The archaeological record in Cook Inlet and Prince William Sound extends back to 3,000 years ago, but the record on the outer Kenai coast was degraded by over 8 feet (2.4 m) of subsidence caused by two megathrust earthquakes in 1170 and 1964. At the time of European contact in the 18th century, the outer Kenai coast was inhabited by Alutiiq-speaking people known as Unegkurmiut and their territory extended across the entire south coast of the Kenai Peninsula including Resurrection Bay where three historical villages existed. The village of Qutekcak meaning ‘big beach’ was situated at or near the present town of Seward. The head of Resurrection Bay was a cultural crossroads with access corridors leading north to Dena’ina lands and the bay provided access from the sea for the Alutiiq from the west and the Chugach and Tlingit from the east. In 1792, the Russian explorer and fur trader Alexander Baranov found unexpected shelter in the bay en route from Kodiak to Yakutat and named it after the day of discovery which was the Russian Orthodox Easter ‘Sunday of Resurrection‘, but there were no inhabited villages in the bay at that time.
Following the Alaska Purchase in 1867, fortune seekers and hopeful prospectors caused a series of interconnected events that brought considerable attention to Alaska in general and the Kenai Peninsula in particular including the U.S. Geological Survey mineral assessments, gold strikes at Hope and Sunrise, the Klondike gold rush, the explorations of U.S. Army Captain Edwin F. Glenn, and the Nome gold rush. Dozens of railroad schemes were started to provide access to the interior from the coast. In 1884, Frank G. Lowell and his wife Mary, an Alutiiq woman from Kachemak Bay, staked a homestead and settled at the head of Resurrection Bay. In 1902, the Alaska Central Railroad Company was started by Seattle businessman John Ballaine and he began to study ways to develop a railroad north from the head of Resurrection Bay that provided a deep water ice-free harbor for ships. The company purchased the Lowell homestead, filed a plat for a townsite named ‘Seward’, and started building a street grid. In 1903, a steamship arrived with 25 company employees, 35 other passengers, 14 horses, a pile driver, a sawmill, and tons of provisions to start building the new town and the railroad north. Today, Seward is the headquarters for Kenai Fjords National Park and dozens of cruise ships arrive regularly during the summer, disembarking thousands of passengers that can take a train north to Fairbanks via Denali or excursion boats to the outer Kenai coast. Read more here and here. Explore more of Seward and Resurrection Bay here:
