50 Years Ago
From the Polar Star, Mar. 28, 1958

Interest in Alaska Grows

A Tennessee family wants to farm in Alaska, a Californian is interested in mining possibilities, and a Washingtonian wants to know about plywood manufacturing potentialities, a Pennsylvanian queries about oil.
These are incontrovertible “weather vanes” which support the contention of Dr. Robert R. Wiegman, University of Alaska vice president, that Americans increasingly are centering interest in Alaska.
“In the past few months we literally have been swamped with requests for information about Alaska and its university,” Dr. Wiegman said.
He credits the Alaska Visitors Association, Alaska Chambers of Commerce, other Alaskan agencies, new media, travel organizations and enthusiastic Alaskans themselves with promoting this interest.
...“Alaska, one-fifth the size of the United States, is in danger of losing its ‘Last Frontier’ title. This is a danger we Alaskans are pleased to face.”

25 years ago:
the Sun Star, Mar. 25, 1983

Cabin Life Preferred by some
by Annemarie Schmid

Once a week Garth Cheff backpacks a five-gallon water jug from campus to his log cabin half a mile off the Old Nenana Highway.
“I’m in Alaska because I love to live that lifestyle,” he said. “I love the woods.”
Approximately 1,450 full-time students do not live on campus, according to current enrollment data. “Most of them are people who chose to live off campus. Finances don’t seem as big a concern,” said Eric A. Jozwiak, student housing officer.
The smoky cabin, the 14-by-16 A-frame, or the old trailer, with their wood stoves and outhouses, their kerosene lanterns and slop buckets, represent a special outlook on life for some Fairbanks students.
“I want to get back to the basics,” said Ed Ashmead, a TVCC electronics student. He lives in a one-room cabin in “Hopkinsville’ off Chena Pump Road.
... Ann Neumann shares her snow-skirted, river-view trailer with a dog and a cat. Thunder, the dog, playfully jumped at his mistress while she split next week’s supply of firewood on a Sunday afternoon. “There are things which you have to do which you can’t put off just because there is a test,” the electrical engineering student said.
Neumann, who wants to live her way, “and not the university’s way,” admitted. “I couldn’t do it if my friends wouldn’t help me. Just when somebody brings you a jug of water that really helps a lot…