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Health Care in Early Valdez

Health care is a central service that Valdez has always tried to provide for residents. Over the years, health care has been provided here in a variety of ways. Valdez was established in 1898 as a gold rush tent city and rapidly grew into a bustling turn-of-the-century American city. While the first rush into Valdez…

Health Care Dilemma of 1950’s

In the 1950’s, Valdez was a small community of about 500 people at the end of the gravel Richardson Highway. Access to reliable health care had been a problem since the Episcopal Church’s Hospital of the Good Samaritan closed in the 1940s. In a period of just about a decade, over 5 doctors came and…

Harborview Center

1960 marked the beginning of a change in the way the State of Alaska provided care for its mentally disabled residents. Prior to this, mentally disabled individuals had been sent to institutions out of state. After much work and many hours of debate, the Legislature began a process that would bring these residents back to…

Copper Center

Copper Center is located at the confluence of the Klutina and Copper Rivers, 100 miles north of Valdez. Valdez and Copper Center were both founded in 1898 during the gold rush. The promise of gold drew prospectors north from the Lower 48 States to Alaska that year and about 4,000 prospectors traveled through Valdez on…

Chitina

Chitina, a tiny settlement on the Edgerton Highway, has a history rooted in the copper mining boom years of the early 1900s. Chitina’s story begins with the first big copper discoveries in the summer of 1900. Two men, Clarence Warner & Jack Smith, were directed to the Kennecott Glacier area (quite a ways from where…