Interior Sketches: Ramblings around Interior Alaska historic sites

By Ray Bonnell

Take an artistic tour of Eastern Interior Alaska historic sites with Fairbanks artist and writer, Ray Bonnell. For the past 30 years Ray has been tramping the back roads and trails of this vast but sparsely populated region. His destinations have been old mining camps, roadhouses, homesteads, villages and other historic locations. Some of those sites are being preserved, but many are fading away-the result of accidents, development, time, and vandalism. Several of the historic structures that Ray has visited have already disappeared or undergone dramatic changes. Perhaps just as significant, the memory of these sites is fading as the old-timers who lived this history die or move away. Ray feels it is important to at least record a "snapshot in time" of these sites, so on his trips he takes numerous photographs and notes, and draws reference sketches. The sketches evolve into detailed pen and ink drawings, and the notes become essays.Many of those essays and drawings end up in his newspaper column, Sketches of Alaska, which is published in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. His column received the Contributions to Alaska History award from the Alaska Historical Society in 2011.Sixty of those snapshots, selected from the first two and a half years of Ray's column, appear in this book. Each entry consists of a pen-&-ink illustration and essay. All of the sites are on or near the road system, so you can drive or walk to most of them if you are so inclined. A map of Eastern Interior Alaska showing the general location of sites is included. In keeping with the historical and artistic nature of the book that detailed map was hand-drawn and inked by Ray.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0615923194
• ISBN13: 9780615923192
• Release Date: November 2013
• Publisher: Pingo Press
• Length: 132 Pages
• Weight: 0.99 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.3" x 8.5"