| Summary: | Businesses and buildings identified on image (L to R): Com Berrick Dining House; Com Saloon now [illeg.] built; Bells Cigar Store; Brown & Hawkins; Dr. Burr hospital under construction; Brown & Hawkins new 2 story frame [illeg.] 30x60; restaurant; saloon; p. office; McNeely Hotel, 3 stories; barber shop; saloon; dentists; Hildreth Clo. Store; Com Store. >On verso of image: 4th Street, 3/28/04. This was taken the afternoon of the day we landed but does not do justice to the place. Fifth Ave. is almost as well built up as 4th. There are about 60 buildings now completed. >PH Coll 1185.27 Seward is situated on Resurrection Bay on the southeast coast of the Kenai Peninsula, 125 highway miles south of Anchorage. It lies at the foot of Mount Marathon, and is the gateway to the Kenai Fjords National Park. Resurrection Bay was named in 1792 by Russian fur trader and explorer Alexander Baranof. While sailing from Kodiak to Yakutat, he found unexpected shelter in this bay for a storm. He named the Bay Resurrection because it was the Russian Sunday of the Resurrection. The City of Seward was named for U.S. Secretary of State William Seward, 1861-69, who negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia during the Lincoln administration. In the 1890s, Capt. Frank Lowell arrived with his family. In 1903, John and Frank Ballaine and a group of settlers arrived to begin construction of a railroad. Seward became an incorporated City in 1912. The Alaska Railroad was constructed between 1915 and 1923, and Seward developed as the ocean terminus and supply center. By 1960, Seward was the largest community on the Peninsula. Tsunamis generated after the 1964 earthquake destroyed the railroad terminal and killed several residents. As an ice-free harbor, Seward has become an important supply center for Interior Alaska. Louis Com was born ca. 1862 in Germany. Thomas W. Hawkins was born ca. 1869 in Virginia. William A. McNeiley was born ca. 1862 in Missouri. Henry H. Hildreth was born ca. 1867 in Missouri. In 1920 he was living in Los Angeles, California, and working for the YMCA. He died May 2, 1956 in Los Angeles.
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