Updated 1/2-Credit Alaska History Course

My Dad’s older sister, Phyllis Downing Carlson, was one of Alaska's most respected historians. She willed me a strange inheritance after she died in 1993: her entire life’s work of research into the extraordinary history of my great state. The trunk contained her notes, research and rare Alaska history books that she had collected during her 84 years in the Last Frontier.

I felt a deep responsibility to do something with this gift. So I returned to college (in my 50s) and graduated with a degree in journalism and a minor in history from the University of Alaska Anchorage in 2003.

Then I sorted through Aunt Phil’s notes, organized her work into periods of time and began researching on my own to fill in some holes for pieces of history that I thought important. Once the research was complete, I wrote short stories about the events, people and places that helped make Alaska what it is today and searched for hundreds of historical photographs to complement the storytelling.

The result of my labors became the five-book Aunt Phil’s Trunk Alaska history series, which earned the 2016 gold medal for Best Nonfiction Series from Literary Classics International. Each book features a different period of time in Alaska’s colorful past. I also developed a full curriculum with student workbooks and teacher guides for classroom and homeschool use, which won a silver medal in the Education Category from Literary Classics International in 2018. (A college book took gold.)

After nine months of intense labor, Aunt Phil has birthed a 67.5-hour graded course for those students who want to work online. And just like the print books in the Aunt Phil’s Trunk Alaska history and curriculum series, this online course is not only educational but also entertaining.