Municipality of Anchorage

It isn’t just a city, it includes suburbs, the urban core, a joint military base and most of Chugach State Park. It is the 4th largest city in the US by area, and larger than Rhode Island.

In 1867, US Secretary of State William Seward brokered a deal tp purchase Alaska from Russia for $7,200,00, about 2 cents an acre. The idea was lampooned by his political rivals, but in 1888, gold was discovered along Turnagain Arm, just south of modern-day Anchorage.

Alaska became a US territory in 1912. Anchorage started as neither a fishing nor mining camp.

There were a number of indigenous settlements along the Knik Inlet (north of Anchorage) for years. By 1911, the families of ‘Bud’ Whitney and Jim St Clair lived at the mouth of Ship Creek (on the south side of the Knik Inlet). There were joined there in 1912 by Jack and Nellie Brown.

In 1914, the Alaska Engineering Commission chose a site near the mouth of Ship Creek for a railroad construction port. The area quickly became a tent city, while a townsite was mapped out on higher ground to the south. Anchorage was incorporated on November 23, 1920.

On March 27, 1964, an earthquake of magnitude 9.2 struck Anchorage, killing 115 people and causing $116 million in damages. It was the world’s 2nd largest earthquake in recorded history. Because much of the city was built atop glacial silt, there was much soil liquefaction, leading to massive cracks in roads and the collapse of large swaths of land. Dozens of house that were originally 250 to 300 feet above sea level sank with the land they sat on, coming to a rest at sea level.

Although there have been many attempts to move the capitol to Anchorage or to a location closer to Anchorage, they have all ultimately been defeated. Even so, Anchorage has over twice as many state employees as Juneau, and is to a considerable extent the center of state and federal government activity in Alaska.

Cities often grow where they have easy access to trade routes, whether by water or land. Even Anchorage follows that stereotype, starting where an ocean inlet gave access to a creek from inland. And it continued by becoming a railroad hub, making (rail)roads where there hadn’t been any before. It currently has an international airport, which is fitting, since it is only 9.5 hours or less to most large cities in industrial countries.

We didn’t get to Anchorage when we went to Alaska; we took a cruise, and it didn’t go that far north. We may have to try again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchorage,_Alaska

The Castle Cave

Castles can be scary and/or awe-inspiring. Caves can be scary and/or awe-inspiring. So, what do you suppose you get when you combine the two? You get the Predjama Castle of Slovenia.

Predjama Castle is a renaissance-style castle built with a cave mouth in South-central Slovenia, an area historically known as Inner Carniola.

About 1274, the Patriarch of Aquileia built the first castle at this location, using the Gothic style. At that time, it was known by the German name of Luegg Castle. It was made difficult to access by building it under a natural rocky arch set high in the stone wall below the cave. It was later acquired and expanded by the Luegg noble family, also known as the Knights of Adelsberg.

Sir Erasmus of Lueg became lord of the castle in the 15th century. He was the son of the imperial governor, and according to legend, he killed the commander of the imperial army, who had offended the memory of a deceased friend of Erasmus. Lueg fled the wrath of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III, returning to the family fortress at Predjama, where he began to attack estates and villages in the area. Thus he became a robber baron.

The emperor ordered Erasmus be captured or killed, but for a long time, the best that could be accomplished was to lay siege to the castle. Surprisingly, that didn’t seem to keep Sir Erasmus from continuing his attacks. It turned out that there was a vertical shaft through the cave roof. Erasmus ordered it enlarged, and that was not a means to allow him to continue robbing his neighbors, but also allowed him to smuggle food into his besieged castle. Eventually, however, he was killed.

Apparently, the seige saw the destruction of the original castle. The Oberburg family acquired the ruins. A second castle was built by the Purgstall family early in the 16th century, only to be destroyed in an earthquake in 1511.

Better luck next time? It would seem so. In 1570, the current castle was built in the Renaissance style and hugging the vertical cliff. In pictures, you can see the top of the cave mouth hanging just above the tower tops, looking like some huge monster trying vainly to open up enough to swallow it whole.

In the 18th century, it was known as a favorite summer residence of the Cobenzl family. I have to wonder about people who enjoy spending their time in a huge castle precariously protruding from the mouth of a cave. Perhaps they were not gifted/cursed with my level of imagination.

At the end of World War II, the castle was confiscated, nationalized, and turned into a museum.

Have you seen it? Predjama Castle was the castle featured in the 1986 movie Armour of God, starring Jackie Chan. It was also the filming location of Laibach’s Sympathy for the Devil cover’s music video. AND the “Castle” map from the 2014 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive DLC, Operation Breakout, is based on Predjama Castle. So, you might have.

There are lots of pieces of the story of Predjama Castle that would lend themselves to a story. I’ll just add them to the ‘pot’ I have brewing in the back of my mind and see where they gravitate to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predjama_Castle

A Different Place

If someone mentions New Zealand, what tidbits of thoughts race through the back of your mind? Mine include ‘hobbit films location’, ‘weird landscape’, ‘two islands’, ‘south Pacific’, and ‘near Australia’. Of course, I don’t often think about New Zealand. It’s very far away, and I’m not likely to get there soon.

A couple weeks ago, I saw a headline about a recent earthquake NZ had. It took my head a couple seconds to realize, “Oh, yeah, it sits on the other side of the ring of fire.” So, just because my curiosity was aroused, I’ve been looking into the geology of NZ.

First of all, yes, New Zealand does have two large islands, but they are surrounded by a bunch of little ones. Islands tend to come in groups, right? Seems like it to me.

The south island is home of the Southern Alps, the tallest some 12,316 ft tall. These steep peaks and the deep fjords on the southwest coast indicate the glaciation that once covered the area. Makes me shiver just thinking of the ice that was once there.

The north island is not as mountainous, but does have volcanoes, which have formed a plateau. That plateau hosts that island’s highest peak (9,177 ft) and the country’s largest lake, which sits in the caldera of one of the world’s most active supervolcanoes. Okay, that’s a little too much heat for roasting marshmallows.

New Zealand is what’s left of Zealandia, a microcontinent (half the size of Australia) that long ago broke off from the super-continent Gondwana, and then slowly submerged. It also straddles the border between the Pacific and Indo-Australian tectonic plates.

The border of these plates is most evident by the Southern Alps, pushed up and contorted by the force of the 2 plates pushing against each other. In other places, the edge of one plate gets pushed beneath the other, producing deep trenches in the ocean, most notably south of NZ, east of North Island, and 2 others further north.

So, NZ has mountains and bays once scoured by glaciers, deep ocean trenches and volcanoes. What about earthquakes? Of course! It sits on a giant fault. In fact, Wikipedia says they experience 150-200 earthquakes every year that can be felt, and almost 14,000 more each year that aren’t felt.

The headline that caught my attention not long ago was about an earthquake in November of this year; a section of seabed that had been raised 6 feet above sea level on a beach. As I researched ‘New Zealand earthquakes,’ I saw another interesting headline, this one about 3 cows that were left stranded on a ‘land island’ after an earthquake. Apparently, that earthquake caused a lot of land to collapse, leaving dots at a higher altitude with sides too steep for the cows to navigate. And possibly some tourists were also trapped on similar ‘land islands’ and had to be rescued.

Just one more way New Zealand is ‘different.’