A refurbishing effort will breathe new life into Anchorage’s oldest standing building, a simple Russian Orthodox log church dating from the era of Russia’s colonization of Alaska.
KTUU's 70 years of broadcastingEKLUTNA, Alaska — The Russian Orthodox church on the outskirts of Alaska’s biggest city is packed with treasures for the Christian faithful: religious icons gifted by Romanov czars, panels of oil paintings and jewel-studded incense burners. But outside the hand-hewn log sanctuary, dozens of miniature Alaska Native spirit houses sit by aging gravesites alongside Orthodox crosses poking from the cemetery grounds.
“With the restoration of the church, we can now once again walk where our ancestors walked, pray where they prayed,” said Charlene Shaginaw, whose grandfather was the last traditional chief in Eklutna and who recalls wandering through the church and among the spirit houses as a young child. “With the rebirth of the old St. Nicholas Church, it will nourish our spirits and our souls.”
Russian settlements sprang up across Alaska, first in Unalaska in 1772 and then further north and east as the fur trading industry took hold. Russia sold Alaska to the United States for $7.2 million in 1867 and Alaska became a U.S. state in 1959. Better-preserved churches, some with iconic onion domes atop them, can be found in bigger cities including Anchorage, Unalaska, Kenai, and Sitka.
Leggett, of the Eklutna’s tribal council, said for hundreds of years Indigenous people have moved back and forth across a body of water known as the Knik Arm, an offshoot of Cook Inlet.
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