George Henry Byer (June 22, 1912 - August 22, 2000) was an American politician who served as Mayor of Anchorage, Alaska from 1959 to 1961. He was the first full-time mayor of Anchorage, and was chiefly responsible for Anchorage's first two All-America City Award designations. [1]
George Byer, born on June 22, 1912, moved to Alaska in 1947, after serving in the United States Army during World War II. From 1951, he worked as a mail carrier. In 1956, he campaigned successfully to have Anchorage named as "All-America City", and in 1959 he was elected mayor of the city, serving two terms. From 1963 to 1966 he sat on Anchorage's City Council, during which time he lobbied to renew Anchorage's "All-America City" status (1965), and launched an unsuccessful bid to bring the 1972 Winter Olympics to Anchorage. In 1967, he ran once again for Mayor of Anchorage, but lost to George M. Sullivan.
In later years, he lived in Hemet, California and was active in efforts to promote world peace.
Byer died, age 88, of heart disease in Hemet on August 22, 2000. [2]
Since Alaska became a U.S. state in 1959, it has sent congressional delegations to the United States Senate and United States House of Representatives. Each state elects two senators to serve for six years, and members of the House from Alaska are elected to two-year terms from Alaska's at-large congressional district. Before becoming a state, the Territory of Alaska elected a non-voting delegate at-large to Congress from 1905 to 1959.
The City and Borough of Juneau, more commonly known simply as Juneau, is the capital city of the state of Alaska. Located in the Gastineau Channel and the Alaskan panhandle, it is a unified municipality and the second-largest city in the United States by area. Juneau was named the capital of Alaska in 1906, when the government of what was then the District of Alaska was moved from Sitka as dictated by the U.S. Congress in 1900. The municipality unified on July 1, 1970, when the city of Juneau merged with the city of Douglas and the surrounding Greater Juneau Borough to form the current municipality, which is larger by area than both Rhode Island and Delaware.
Ernest Henry Gruening was an American journalist and politician. A member of the Democratic Party, Gruening was the Governor of the Alaska Territory from 1939 until 1953, and a United States Senator from Alaska from 1959 until 1969.
Jay Sterner Hammond was an American politician of the Republican Party, who served as the fourth governor of Alaska from 1974 to 1982. Hammond was born in Troy, New York and served as a Marine Corps fighter pilot in World War II with the Black Sheep Squadron. In 1946, he moved to Alaska where he worked as a bush pilot. Hammond served as a state representative from 1959 to 1965 and as a state senator from 1967 to 1973. From 1972 until 1974 he was the mayor of the Bristol Bay Borough. Then, in 1974, he was elected governor of Alaska. He oversaw the creation of the Alaska Permanent Fund in 1976, which, since the early 1980s, has paid annual dividends to Alaska residents. He advocated for fiscal responsibility. When his tenure as governor was over, he continued to be active in public life. He advocated for environmentally and fiscally responsible government and individual civic responsibility. From 1985 to 1992 he hosted a television series called Jay Hammond's Alaska. He wrote three autobiographies.
The Alaska Statehood Act was signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on July 7, 1958, allowing Alaska to become the 49th U.S. state on January 3, 1959.
George Poe Wuerch is an American politician and a member of the Republican Party. He served as mayor of Anchorage, Alaska from 2000 to 2003.
After congress approved the completion of the Alaska Railroad from Seward to Fairbanks in 1914, it was decided that a new town should be built as a port and rail hub along the route. The decision was made to develop a site near Ship Creek on Cook Inlet. Survey parties visited the area in 1914 and researched possible routes for the rails and options for siting the new town. Anchorage was originally settled as a tent city near the mouth of Ship Creek in 1915, and a planned townsite was platted alongside the bluff to the south. Anchorage was mostly a company town for the Alaska Railroad for its first several decades of existence.
Anchorage is a unified municipal consolidated city-borough in the U.S. state of Alaska, on the West Coast of the United States. With a population of 291,247 in 2020, it is Alaska's most populous city and contains nearly 40% of the state's population. The Anchorage metropolitan area, which includes Anchorage and the neighboring Matanuska-Susitna Borough, had a population of 398,328 in 2020, accounting for more than half the state's population. At 1,706 square miles (4,420 km2) of land area, the city is the fourth-largest by area in the United States and larger than the smallest state, Rhode Island, which has 1,212 square miles (3,140 km2).
Thomas A. Fink was an American Republican politician from Alaska. He was Mayor of Anchorage from 1987 to 1994 and Speaker of the Alaska House of Representatives from 1973–1975. He was also a member of the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, serving from 1997–2010.
Richard Mystrom is an American politician and businessman who served as the 32nd mayor of Anchorage from 1994 to 2000.
George Murray Sullivan was an American politician from the state of Alaska who served as the mayor of Anchorage from 1967 until 1981.
Maynard Loren Taylor Jr. was Mayor of Anchorage, Alaska from 1951 to 1955.
Henry Aristide "Red" Boucher Jr. was an American politician who served as the lieutenant governor of Alaska from 1970 to 1974. He had also served as mayor of Fairbanks, Alaska, from 1966 to 1970, and in the Alaska House of Representatives. Boucher served on the Fairbanks City Council and Anchorage Assembly.
Michael Joseph "Joe" Conroy was the second Mayor of Anchorage, Alaska, serving from 1923 to 1924.
Wasilla (Dena'ina: Benteh) is a city in Matanuska-Susitna Borough, United States and the fourth-largest city in Alaska. It is located on the northern point of Cook Inlet in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley of the southcentral part of the state. The city's population was 9,054 at the 2020 census, up from 7,831 in 2000. Wasilla is the largest city in the borough and a part of the Anchorage metropolitan area, which had an estimated population of 398,328 in 2020.
Matthew W. Claman is an American politician and attorney serving as a member of the Alaska House of Representatives. Claman previously served as the acting Mayor of Anchorage after Mark Begich resigned from the position to serve in the United States Senate.
Daniel Albert Sullivan is an American businessman and politician who served as the mayor of Anchorage from 2009 to 2015 and on the Anchorage Assembly from 1999 to 2008. The son of Anchorage's longest-serving mayor, George M. Sullivan, he was the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor of Alaska in the 2014 election but he and incumbent Governor Sean Parnell were defeated by the ticket of Independent Bill Walker and Democrat Byron Mallott.
Ruth Anna Marie Schmidt was an American geologist and paleontologist who was a pioneer for women scientists. She spent most of her career in Alaska, where she established a United States Geological Survey (USGS) field office and established the first Department of Geology at the Anchorage Community College, now part of the University of Alaska Anchorage. In 1964, Schmidt directed the initial assessment of the damage done to the city of Anchorage by the Great Alaska Earthquake, the largest earthquake in North American history, and the second largest earthquake ever to be recorded. She worked for the USGS in Washington, DC during the era of McCarthyism and was investigated twice for disloyalty because of her membership in the interracial Washington Cooperative Bookshop. She was cleared both times. She earned a number of awards, honors, and letters of commendation and appreciation. After her death in 2014, she was recognized as a philanthropist.
The 2021 Anchorage mayoral election was held on April 6, 2021, to elect the mayor of Anchorage, Alaska. As no candidate received at least 45% of the vote in the first round, the two candidates with the highest vote share, Forrest Dunbar and Dave Bronson, advanced to a runoff on May 11, results pending. The election is officially nonpartisan. Incumbent independent acting mayor Austin Quinn-Davidson, first appointed to the position in October 2020, was eligible to run for reelection to a full term, but did not run. The deadline to register to vote in the first round was March 7. Mail-in ballots were sent out starting on March 15. On May 21, 2021, Forrest Dunbar conceded the race to Dave Bronson. Bronson was sworn in on July 1.
David Bronson is an American politician, pilot, and retired military officer serving as the mayor of Anchorage, Alaska. Bronson was elected in the May 11, 2021 runoff election, narrowly defeating Forrest Dunbar.
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