Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
history lesson, beginning with the arrival in Seward in 1924 of the first round the world
flight by the U.S. Army Air Services, as seen through the eyes of local resident Patsy Ray
Williams, then 13 and now 92. The back of a girl in a red coat, blue hat and long blonde
hair stares out at Resurrection Bay at four biplanes coming in for a landing. “This is the
one closest to my heart,” Jennifer says, who was the master designer for this mural, be-
cause Patsy is a friend, and so are the Eads brothers, whose black Piper is sitting on Bear
Lake at the other end of the mural.
Down in the harbor on the side of the Parks Service building is the mural based on a
woodcut by Rockwell Kent, who spent time with his son out on Fox Island in Resurrec-
tion Bay in the winter of 1918-19. “The woodcut is in black and white, but we picked a
pallet of colors and told the artists to go for it.” On the shower building at the waterfront
campground is a mural of Alaskan wildflowers. “Each artist got to paint one flower
however they wanted to,” Jennifer says. “They were fighting over which flower they got
so we wrote down the names and made 'em pick.” “Snapshots from our Past” on the
McMullan Building on Main Street is a photograph album of Seward history. “Putting it
up was a major honey-do project,” Jennifer says, laughing. “My husband will never again
volunteer to put up another mural.”
Back at the arts room in the Seward Middle/High School the painters, eleven from Se-
ward and one who has driven down from Girdwood, are standing with their hands very
much behind their backs as Jon explains what they are about to do. The design was pro-
jected on eight 4'X10' panels of signboard ordered specially from Seattle and penciled in
the night before. The design is a historical perspective of the Iditarod Trail, a Seward per-
spective. The original Iditarod Trail actually began in Seward when gold was discovered
in Iditarod in 1910. The faces of a dog and his musher fill the first two panels, followed at
right by Seward's main street as it looked then, leading to a log cabin with men standing
in front of it as a dog sled team mushes by beneath a full moon and the northern lights.
The scenes are laid out like photographs, with black corner holders keeping them in place,
and are painted in sepia, which gradually gives way to color in the scene of the modern
musher set in the present day. “The Iditarod Trail” is lettered beneath in tall orange script.
There are additional design elements in the style of the time, sort of art nouveau-ish,
Frank Lloyd Wright-ish right-angled patterns. They provide a reference point for the
