Alaska Film Archives

[Arnie M. Lee and Family collection - 9]
[Arnie M. Lee and Family collection - 9]
This video is composed of footage from four film reels. AAF-16334 is from a film likely shot by Lee family friend Fred Torsak. It is labeled “1936?, Weeks Field airplanes, Cushman Street Bridge, Dad, dog team, polar bear.” (a post office date stamp on the film box says July 26, 1937). The film contains footage of airplanes at Weeks Field in Fairbanks, a Pacific Alaska Airways hangar, Cushman Street in Fairbanks, the Samson’s hardware store building, Cushman Street bridge over the Chena River, a polar bear in a cage, and people riding in a dog sled. AAF-16335 is from a film likely shot by Lee family friend Fred Torsak. It is labeled, “Fairbanks Alaska, Gold Dredge mining.” (The post office date stamp on the film box is April 2, 1938). The film contains footage of a large placer mining site, hydraulic giants at work, a man with a camera filming the mining operations, an overburden being blasted or falling in large chunks, a mining camp, a man walking along the pipeline (Davidson ditch or siphon?), a dredge at work, and tailings piles. AAF-16336 is from a film likely shot by Lee family friend Fred Torsak. It is labeled “Gold mining with great cleanup gold.” (The post office date stamp on the film box is February 13, 1939). The film contains color footage of hydraulic giants and a bulldozer at work, a man in a large sluice box, a man holding a large pan full of gold, people working a smaller sluice box, and Main School in Fairbanks. AAF-16337 is from a film likely shot by Lee family friend Fred Torsak. It is labeled “Weeks Field, dog team, Main School.” (The post office date stamp on the film box is also February 13, 1939). The film contains color footage of a dog team next to an airplane, a woman taking photos of a dog team, an airplane flying overhead, Main school in Fairbanks, and the wooden Fairbanks Airplane Corporation hangar on Rickert's field situated across from Weeks Field on Cushman Street in Fairbanks.