Hard to tell from that brief description exactly what it is you're
after. Alaska's a big place, and there are certainly parts of it
about which I know very little, but in the parts of the state with
which I am familiar, I'm not aware of any communities that developed
simply because there were landing strips there. By and large, by the
time airplanes became an important mode of transportation,
communities had already stabilized around missions, trading posts,
and transportation hubs, and the airplane followed this development.
That being said, if he area of interest is with Native communities,
perhaps the modern history of Anaktuvuk Pass would be interesting. As
it's located in the central Brooks Range, the people there are more
dependent on air transport that many, if not most other villages.
There are a couple of studies of land use patterns at Anaktuvuk that
might be interesting:
=====
Amsden, Charles Wynn
1977 A Quantitative Analysis of Nunamiut Eskimo Settlement Dynamics:
1898-1969. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of New Mexico,
Albuquerque.
Spearman, Grant
1979 Land Use Values Through Time in the Anaktuvuk Pass Area.
Occasional Paper No. 22, Anthropology and Historic Preservation,
Cooperative Parks Studies Unit. University of Alaska, Fairbanks.
=====
On a more general note, the state maintains a comprehensive community
data base that includes, among other things, a thumbnail history of
each community. It might be possible to mine this for communities of
interest. The link to that site is:
http://www.dced.state.ak.us/dca/commdb/CF_COMDB.htm
Howard Smith
[log in to unmask]
On Feb 27, 2008, at 6:29 PM, William McAlexander wrote:
> Greetings to all,
>
> Back in Albuquerque at the aerospace symposium last month a young
> lady asked about Alaskan bush pilot culture. Spacifically,
> Jennifer is interested in studying communities that developed
> around landing spots. After pestering people I know and asking
> them to pester people they know, I've been unable to find out
> anything.
>
> If anyone hs information on this subject, I'd be happy to relay it
> to her.
>
> Thanks,
>
> William E. McAlexander Jr.
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