Scidmore’s Alaska Travel Airs on BBC

Thanks to the brief posting of a video on YouTube, I was able to see my cameo appearance on BBC2’s “Great American Railroad Journeys.” My interview with the program’s host, Michael Portillo, took place in Juneau in the summer of 2018. [Note: The online video has since been removed.] I was in Alaska at the…

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Scidmore, National Geographic Female Explorer

Tourists at Muir Glacier, 1880s

Eliza Scidmore is known largely for her role as the earliest visionary of Washington’s cherry trees. She was also an intrepid traveler. And the National Geographic Society considers her its first female explorer. The Geographic recently spotlighted some of its pioneering women on its blog. I kicked off the series with an article on Eliza…

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Video: Scidmore’s Historic 1883 Trip to Glacier Bay

Steamer "Idaho" in Juneau, 1887

Of all I’ve learned about Eliza Scidmore so far, nothing has excited my imagination so much as her pioneering Alaska travel. She went for the first time in the summer of 1883, in a journey that became historic, as I show in the video below.     Scidmore, then 26, was working at the time…

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