"GREAT LAND" 1947 ALASKA DOCUMENTARY FAIRBANKS & ALEUTS 31364

This 1947 black and white documentary "Great Land" about Alaska is part of a Movietone educational films series called “The World Today”. It was produced by Edmund Reek and narrated by radio announcer Nelson Case. A “Fifth Avenue Coach Company” double-decker bus is shown. A man puts a letter into a mailbox. A fly-over of New York City transitions to Alaska. (:35-1:10). The mail plane arrives by multiple igloos. A dog sled takes the mail to the post office (1:11-1:35). An incorporated town has a Trading Post. Sitka has stores and a Russian Church (1:36-2:15). The water and shore is covered in adult seals and pups (2:25-2:55). A boat passes ice floes and glaciers (3:05-3:29). People swim in steaming hot pools (3:30-3:39). Explorers walk along a ridge, with a close-up of spiked boots and an ice axe. One jumps across a crevice. Glacier walls fall away with up-close views (3:40-4:38). A bird eats on a tiny ice floe (4:39-4:48). Two deer scramble up the hill. A herd of caribou run through the forest (4:49-5:25). Bears catch salmon jumping upstream (5:26-6:05). A beaver swims through a stream (6:06-6:18). A fur trapper works his dog sled team through the snow (6:19-7:04). An Aleut builds an igloo. Children play on a dog sled past a group of muskox (7:05-7:37) and carved totems (7:38-8:00). Various Alaskan scenery is shown (8:01-8:38). Gold rush miners leave camp and walk up a mountain trail (8:39-9:00). A boom town’s women wear long dresses and men wear knickers (9:01-9:12). A miner packs his horse. He pans for gold and nuggets are shown in his pan (9:13-9:58). A tunneling mining operation is shown and miners ride cars into a shaft (10:00-10:30). People moving to Alaska board an ocean liner and cargo is loaded, including a 1940s flatbed truck (10:32-11:40). A steam train approaches the camera from the Palmer station and stops at the Fairbanks station where a man carrying his backpack gets off (11:46-12:10). A 1920s car is loaded with supplies (12:11-12:18). The Casca riverboat approaches the camera and passes (12:29-12:39). Forests are cleared with a bulldozer and trunks are hoisted into the air. The saw at a lumbermill cuts multiple pieces of lumber up close (12:40-13:28). The lumber is laid out on the ground to erect a log cabin, the notches stacked one on another. Other homes under construction are shown (13:29-14:00). A farmer rides a horse-drawn cultivator and another has a horse-drawn wagon full of hay. It passes a field of hay stacks. A tractor pulls a 1930s potato harvester; women stand and sort the spuds as they come up the conveyer (14:01-14:54). A large fur farm shows both mink and fox (14:55-15:45). A large net of fish is dumped aboard a trawler. They are taken to canneries for processing, which is shown (15:46-16:50). School children play on a swinging merry-go-round and do their studies, 17:15-17:38). University of Alaska men use geology equipment, sight with a surveyor’s transit, and launch a weather balloon 17:39-18:25).

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