The 1970 Gold Rush Motor Lodge: The Tragedy, Myth, and Road to the Merger

​Originally published by the Anchorage Daily News on August 24, 2025, this article is re-published with permission from the author as part of the History Takes series. 

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Fifty years ago this September, two separate civic authorities, the Greater Anchorage Area Borough (GAAB) and City of Anchorage, merged to form the Municipality of Anchorage. Not quite two powers alike in dignity, the borough and city alternately shared, divided, and bickered over the governance of the Anchorage Bowl. In the history of Anchorage, the history of the people who lived and live here, this unification matters. It was not just an arcane alteration to boundary lines and titles, but a significant change with a meaningful impact on people's lives. Indeed, before the unification, people died because of this divide, fates impacted by whether they were on the north or south side of an invisible line. Most notably, there was the 1970 Gold Rush Motor Lodge fire, the tragedy that did not inspire change.

The Gold Rush Motor Lodge opened in May 1965, off Northern Lights Boulevard, between Cheechako and Dawson Streets. GAAB Chairman John Asplund and Anchorage Mayor Elmer Rasmuson worked together at the ribbon-cutting, a public relations gesture of unity that played well in the papers. Officially, the head of the borough government was a chairman, although many locals referred to them as mayors as well.

While not quite up to the standards of the Hotel Captain Cook, which also opened in 1965, the Gold Rush was yet another higher-end lodging destination in a still-young city. Each of the 74 rooms featured wall-to-wall carpeting, televisions, and complimentary coffee and tea service. Per its advertisements, the décor was “Gold Rush rustic." Gold carpets adorned the floors, while the public interior walls were of California redwood trimmed with cedar. Sixty-foot-long fir beams supported the ceiling, atop eight stone pillars, the fir from Washington and the stone from Alaska. The owners described it as the “largest all-electric heated motel in the Northwest." 

There was also a dining room and Golden Whale bar, with walls covered in images of Alaska and Anchorage from decades prior. This was so long ago that it might have been the first bar or restaurant in town decorated with historic images, which is now a common feature. At the least, the Gold Rush managing director claimed the Golden Whale was the first such Anchorage bar.

Northern Lights Boulevard was a primary border between city and borough. North of the road was the City of Anchorage. South of the road lay the GAAB. The Gold Rush was on the southern side, in the GAAB, though they advertised themselves as being in either Anchorage or Spenard. In the late 1960s, one of the first things new arrivals saw while leaving the international airport was a Gold Rush billboard, which also proclaimed Anchorage as the “crossroads of the air world."

Due west along the road, there was the Caribou department store, later renamed Caribou-Wards, eventually just a Montgomery Wards. That Caribou opened in April 1961, at the east end of the Northern Lights Shopping Center, and it featured the first escalator in Alaska. As co-owner Vance Phillips explained, “The store was built on the Anchorage city limits. At the bottom of the escalator, you were in Anchorage and at the top in Spenard." There were signs pointing one way for Anchorage and the other for Spenard. The boundary line did not literally run through the store, but it was a fun story, and the store was a tourist destination for many years after.

If the idea of a metropolis without natural borders divided into two local governments sounds like a silly, inefficient way of operating a growing city, it was once far worse. In essence, the divide happened because Anchorage suffered from success during the 1940s. In 1939, the erstwhile forgettable railroad hub was selected as the site of a new military base, what would become the original Fort Richardson. Construction began in 1940, with the first troops arriving that June. And over the decade, the Anchorage area boomed, growing from just over 4,000 people in 1940 to 32,000 in 1950. However, only around 11,000 of those 32,000 people lived within city limits.

The population grew too quickly, altogether too fast for city leadership to match that growth with a corresponding expansion in services and borders. The new arrivals needed places to live, and they were increasingly forced to build new homes outside the city, in neighborhoods that soon formed their own identities: Mountain View, Eastchester, and Spenard. Eastchester was renamed Fairview in 1954. From 1948 to 1949, those three communities formed public utility districts, essentially the least possible amount of government that would provide some basic services like road grading, dust control, and water. Sometimes more. Sometimes less.

Public utility districts were, by design, disinclined to make sudden service additions or undertake significant infrastructure improvements. Thus, there were fewer restrictions and codes within the public utility districts. They were outside the jurisdiction of the city police and with only the intermittent presence of what would become the state troopers. And taxes were lower. In some years, the public utility districts didn't collect any taxes at all.

It was convenient for many to live and operate outside city limits, where it was both cheaper and more lawless. These independent communities became havens for vice and a certain type of person, those with a distaste for any amount of government in their lives. And while there were indeed many economic and social opportunities in these boomtowns, the Anchorage bowl became a patchwork of government authorities. In 1954, there were Mountain View, Fairview, Spenard, Fort Richardson, Elmendorf Air Force Base, and the proper city of Anchorage. Additionally, there were significant public safety costs.    

Consider dogs. Throughout American history, most developing cities experienced a phase where they suffered from packs of feral or near-feral dogs. For places like Chicago and Detroit, this was more of a 19th-century problem. In Anchorage, it was a mid-20th-century problem. Packs of as many as 30 dogs roamed around, a well-documented menace. There were multiple attacks, and some of the dogs were smart enough to wait outside schools and churches for crowds to emerge. An old school Anchorage resident who delivered newspapers in the 1950s told me he carried a hammer for self-defense.

In 1955, a pack of dogs attacked and killed 22-month-old Danny Betz outside his parents' Spenard home. Faced with tragedy, the City of Anchorage promptly hired two dogcatchers. Again, the outer communities were slow to react to even blaring needs and generally disinclined against proactive governance, partially by design and partially by the will of its residents. In Spenard, where Betz actually died, there was no action until 1958, when a dogcatcher position was finally created. In his first ten days on the job, that dogcatcher captured 28 feral dogs but could only describe the ongoing threat as “diminished." 

As the City of Anchorage leadership saw it, they were providing some services, building some infrastructure and amenities that served the entire area but were supported by only a fraction of the possible tax base. So, they began an aggressive campaign of annexation that, by 1960, had run south to Northern Lights Boulevard. The Spenard residents to the south voted against annexation, forcing a temporary stalemate.

However, not all Anchorage area residents outside the city limits were happy with the status quo. To be clear, not all such residents were comfortable with, for example, inaction on roving packs of feral dogs. When local officials wouldn't act, these people took their concerns to their legislators. By 1963, these same legislators were overwhelmed by the complaints and generally exhausted by the dissonance of people voting against annexation but also desiring government services. So, that year they passed the Mandatory Borough Act, which forced populated areas to incorporate and, in 1964, prompted the creation of the Greater Anchorage Area Borough. That said, the GAAB was populated and run by the same sort of people as had been there the years prior and thus remained a less-than-proactive government.

That brings us back to the Gold Rush Motor Lodge. In April 1969, three separate state fire inspectors visited the motel, each observing and documenting extreme fire hazards. One of the inspectors immediately wired his immediate supervisor: “Made cursory inspection of Gold Rush Motor Lodge this a.m. Building presents extreme life hazard in that it fails to meet minimums of State Fire Safety Code. I respectfully ask you to travel to Anchorage as soon as possible to assist in this matter."

Among the more severe violations, the motel was occupied while construction continued on the third floor. That work exposed the wood framing, which would have allowed any fire to spread more quickly throughout the structure. Far worse, inspectors identified 239 fire alarm pull boxes installed across the motel, seemingly complete and functional. However, they were connected to nothing, a willful display of false safety that dated back to the motel's opening.  

At least one of the inspectors discussed the issues with Gold Rush management, not that the illusory fire alarms would have been a surprise. Yet, the official responses end there. No one from the state sent a list of such deficiencies, notified residents, or otherwise announced the safety concerns. In that era, and for issues within incorporated areas, the state fire marshal's office typically deferred to the local fire marshals, the GAAB fire marshal in this instance. Yet again, there were no repercussions and no changes to the motel's operation.

Early in the morning of January 13, 1970, a fire broke out at the motel. Unfortunately, the worst-case scenario happened; the “extreme life hazard" became a reality. The call went out at 2:31 a.m., and the first truck reached the scene at 2:34. No matter the quick response, the blaze was already out of control. In the colorful words of GAAB fire chief Bill Tonguet, “the fire went as fast as a freight train in high gear carrying potatoes to the New York market." And he described the all-wooden motel as “built to burn."

The fire lasted for hours, as firefighters fought to contain the inferno in frigid ten-below-zero weather. Through 4 a.m., it remained out of control, and at 10 a.m., they were still hosing down the embers. Three Salvation Army volunteers maintained an emergency service wagon laden with coffee, doughnuts, glove liners, and cigarettes. The fire was an arson. As late as 1977, fire inspector John Glenn declared, “We have our suspicions as to who did it, and we are going to keep trying to solve the case," but no one was ever charged.

There were 43 guests registered at the motel that night. Without fire alarms, one of the night attendants, Donald Cochrane, ran up and down the first-floor hallway yelling, “Fire!" Bill Kuross from Minneapolis, Minnesota, was on his first trip to Anchorage. He was in his room, at the end of a hall and near the back of the building, when he heard the shouts. He told the Anchorage Daily Times, “When I heard the man yelling 'Fire' I thought I had more time and I put on my shoes, socks, and pants. Then I realized the room was full of smoke, so I opened the door and ran. There were no windows in the corridor, and the smoke was so toxic. By the time I got out of the front entrance, I was covered with black soot. I couldn't stop coughing for ten minutes."

The fire was already raging when the second-floor residents became aware. John G. Johnson, a private investigator from Seattle, awoke to a cloud of smoke over his head. He tried the door but was greeted by a wall of flames. Clad only in his underwear, he bashed out the window with a chair and readied himself to jump when a firefighter shouted at him to wait for a ladder. At 3:14, he set foot on the ground, where somebody handed him a pair of shoes. He noted, “I usually don't get excited by I did this time."

Motel general manager David Grove occupied a room with his wife on the incomplete third floor. “I opened the door to the hallway, but there was too much smoke to even see. He broke out a window, and they jumped towards the first-floor roof, which was icy. They slid off to the ground. He broke an arm; she broke a hip and a heel.

Five people died that day because of the “extreme life hazard" that was the Gold Rush Motor Lodge. These deaths weren't forgotten, but as the flames were extinguished, another narrative dominated discussions. Again, the Gold Rush was on the borough side of the border, albeit just across the line. The City of Anchorage also dispatched firefighters with a ladder truck to the scene. When borough firefighters met city firefighters at the scene, they argued as the fire and smoke swirled about as a backdrop. Though a few city firefighters broke ranks and found ways to help, the rest of the city crew and their truck sat on the other side of the road and watched, for want of a few feet in the wrong direction. And they were there as five people died. One survivor briefly trapped on the roof claimed the city crew ignored his pleas for help, a version of events vehemently denied by city officials.

In the wake of the fire, the GAAB Assembly considered creating its own building codes. Bob Atwood of the Daily Times opined, “It is astonishing, really, that only now is the Borough Assembly and the Borough Administration giving serious consideration to adoption of a building code—one that might have prevented the tragedy at the Gold Rush Motor Lodge." Later that year, that effort was abandoned, so much for momentum.

Before 1970 was over, the motel owners had a new establishment up and running, the Gold Rush Hotel, which went on to earn its own infamy. It was the first Anchorage hotel with color televisions in its rooms. Over the years, the hotel changed names and owners a few times. When it closed in 2002 after more than 60 fire code violations, it was the Northern Lights Hotel. Then it sat, a notorious derelict until it was finally demolished in 2017.

There is a local myth about this fire, that the Gold Rush Motor Lodge disaster changed hearts and minds over unification and thus forwarded the cause towards reality. On the surface, the story appears to make sense. And the incident was cited by several Anchorage residents during unification debates. Not least, some locals worried that if they did not approve unification, legislators would handle the issue without them. Indeed, some people in Juneau wondered whether they would have to force a merger, much as they had felt compelled to pass the Mandatory Borough Act in 1963. In the immediate aftermath, state representative Wendell Kay expressed his concerns that “this artificial boundary—and it is an artificial boundary" could exacerbate such a calamity. He added, “If it did, then we've got a duty to consider legislation to correct it."

But the notion that the Gold Rush fire positively influenced the march towards unification is a myth without support from the historical record. Notably, it is less an error of historiography than a public legend. As in, no credible historian would make such a claim in print. But just this summer, I've been personally told the myth twice. Like many myths, this one perpetuates because it glorifies the people involved, that the folk in 1970 followed reason in order to save lives. The actual history is colder and meaner.

Three months before the fire, on October 7, 1969, the Anchorage-area voters approved the concept of unification and empowered the first charter commission. As with each subsequent vote on unification, voters from both the city and borough had to approve the merger. In the 1969 election, city residents were roughly 73 percent in favor of unification, compared to 53 percent among borough residents.

Voters made their ruling on that first attempt at a charter—their first opportunity to vote on actual unification—in October 1970. Nine months after the tragic fire and with a record turnout, unification failed. City support dropped to roughly 54 percent in favor, while the borough residents were down to only 36 percent. There were contentious issues with that charter to be sure, with the assembly taking on some school district powers and the mayor gaining line-item veto powers. Regardless, support for unification declined significantly after the fire, even turning from a yes to a no in the borough, where the people died that horrid January morning.

Voters were given another chance to approve unification on August 31, 1971, but it failed again. City residents were down to only 52 percent in favor while borough support stalled at 36 percent once more. Again, other issues influenced the discourse and outcome, primarily concerns about taxation. Unification took another four years, with a new Charter Commission producing a new, improved charter, before voters approved the merger in September 1975.

The Municipality of Anchorage is currently celebrating the anniversary of that successful unification with a series of events, talks, and articles. More details are available on the MOA50 homepage, with additional articles scheduled for publication over the next few weeks. Do you want to know what some of the 1975 Charter Commission members thought of the process? Or would you like to know a certain historian's ten hidden Anchorage gems? That is the place.

Moreover, this article is just one small slice of history related to the merger into the Municipality, one perspective on the evolution of this city. The MOA50 website includes the opportunity to share your own history with Anchorage, the events, people, and details that impacted you! Don't miss out on a chance to record your story.

Key sources:

Adams v. State of Alaska. 555 P.2d 235 (1976), https://law.justia.com/cases/alaska/supreme-court/1976/2326-1.html

“Arsonists Have No Stereotype." Anchorage Times, July 10, 1977, B-1, B-4.

“Campaign Against Wild, Loose Dogs Opens Tomorrow." Anchorage Daily Times, August 16, 1955, 7.

“City-Borough Friction Will Be Driving Force of Legislative Probes." Anchorage Daily Times, January 16, 1970, 1.

“Fire Razes Motor Hotel." Anchorage Daily Times, January 13, 1970, 1, 2.

“More Than a Fire." Anchorage Daily Times, January 20, 1970, 4.

“Some Ran, Jumped to Escape Blaze." Anchorage Daily Times, January 13, 1970, 1, 2.

“Spenard's Dog Catcher Traps 28 of Wild Pack." Anchorage Daily Times, January 21, 1958, 1.

Wangsness, Paul H. A History of the Unification of the City of Anchorage and the Greater Anchorage Area Borough. Anchorage: Anchorage Urban Observatory, 1977.

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