These illustrations of historic Alaska by Byron Birdsall, one of the state s most renowned artists, portray the territory from the beginning of the twentieth century through the first decades after Alaska achieved statehood in 1959. Accompanied by informative captions, the black-and-white drawings are organized by region: Southcentral Alaska including Anchorage, the Arctic, the Interior, the western/Bering Sea coast, and Southeast. Birdsall s masterful illustrations depict a myriad of scenes, from tents on Ship Creek in 1915 to a train unloading tourists at McKinley Park Station in 1935, from the Governor s Mansion in 1939 in the capital city of Juneau to the Good Friday earthquake in 1964 and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline near the Koyukuk River in 1975."