This month’s Beyond the Exhibit, presented by the Kenai Chamber of Commerce Cultural Center, explores Seward’s Folly and post-European contact. The lecture took place on Thursday, March 20th.
For March, KPC history professor Dr. Jeff Meyers Jr. gave a presentation at the center, providing insights into Seward’s Folly: The History of the Alaska Purchase.
He highlighted the Treaty of Cession “didn’t happen in a vacuum.”
“There were a lot of geopolitical things happening around the world. Russia was worried about Britain. They didn’t want to go to war with America. They had just lost a war in Crimea, and they were kind of licking their wounds and trying to reform their society.” Said Meyers.
The Kenai Cultural Center Coordinator, Danielle Lopez-Stamm, says Meyers’s lecture ties into the post-European history up to the oil boom.
“I felt like that was a good time to tie in Seward’s folly or the purchase of Alaska. All of those geopolitical relations were happening during this big time frame and post-European contact into the oil boom. Alaska wasn’t purchased until the late 1800s when the Homestead Act was extended to here in Alaska. We kind of had this rush of people come in during that time.”
She mentions a few artifacts in this month’s exhibit that she favors, such as the Homestead pieces donated by Peter Kalifornsky.
Every month, the Cultural Center will rotate the exhibit with other artifacts that have never been on display. The exhibit will then be accompanied by a corresponding lecture series and a guest speaker discussing a topic related to the era in question.
April’s guest speaker is Dr. Cheryl Siemers, professor of history at KPC, who will be giving a lecture on Education in the Kenai Peninsula on April 30th at noon.
For more information or to view upcoming events at the Kenai Cultural Center, please visit kenaichamber.org.