The Alaska Statehood Committee had been fighting for over a decade to get Alaska's star on the American flag, and other supporters had been at it much longer. Yet in some parts of the territory — including Chugiak-Eagle River - another skirmish was taking place about whether statehood should even happen.

“The sides were drawn,” said Eagle River homesteader Joe Anne Vanover, as reported recently on the Chugiak-Eagle River Historical Society's Web site. “There were those who were for' and those who were against.' They almost came to blows. There were very few in the middle.”

Vanover said she and her husband John supported statehood because they felt Alaskans weren't getting adequate representation in Washington, D.C. Legislators did not know how to regulate mining and fisheries, she said. Many other Alaskans were of the same mind, especially when it came to the fisheries.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department allowed the use of fish traps, said Lee Jordan, a longtime Chugiak resident and former editor and publisher of the Alaska Star.

“Fish traps were huge things the fish swam into but couldn't get out of,” he said in a February 2008 interview. “You couldn't manage a fishery that way at all.”

Big Seattle-based canneries relied on the traps, according to a June 30, 1958, story in the Anchorage Daily Times, and had been lobbying the U.S. Legislature against statehood, knowing that Alaskans would quickly outlaw the traps once the state had the fisheries under its control.

Some Alaskans favored setting up a self-governing, self-taxing commonwealth that would be part of the U.S. but not an actual state.

A group called Commonwealth for Alaska Inc. formed in 1954, according to the book, Alaska: A History of the 49th State, by Claus M. Naske and Herman E. Slotnick. The group's proposal died within a year when a senator from Oregon submitted a report from the Library of Congress showing that no incorporated territory had ever been exempt from federal taxes.

Eagle River homesteader Phyllis Smith explained why she originally had voted against applying for statehood.

“It seemed to me at the time that we would be better off declaring independence and setting up our own government. We had a brand new constitution. Oil and gas exploration had begun. We could have governed our own land. Instead of paying income tax to the federal government, we could have paid ourselves.”

After the U.S. House passed the Alaska Statehood Bill on May 28, 1958, and the U.S. Senate passed the bill on June 30, 1958, Smith acquiesced.

“When we voted to ratify the vote of Congress, I voted in favor,” she said. “We would look like idiots if we went to all the trouble of getting Congress to approve statehood and then voted against it.”

But not everyone was confident Alaska would become a state.

“At the time, I felt it was too early for statehood and didn't think we had the population to support state government,” said longtime Eagle River resident Shirl Mauldin said,

When it looked like a done deal, Mauldin, like Smith, accepted it.

“I realized it was a historical event and that only a few people get to witness the birth of a state,” she said on the local historical society's Web site.

“My husband and I wanted our four children to remember this occasion and we talked and impressed upon them the importance of what was taking place.”

The Mauldin family decided to forego the giant celebratory bonfire in Anchorage and the smaller one in Chugiak, both of which took place June 30, 1958, the day Alaskans received word of the Senate vote.

“After all,” Mauldin quipped, “we had our own burn barrel at home and could have a fire anytime.”

Eagle River's Bob Johnson took a pass as well. “They had a big bonfire, but we didn't participate in it,” he said on the website. “We had five kids - we were too busy to play. We had to work.”

The Anchorage bonfire was part of a massive party, described in an Anchorage Daily News article: “Residents will remember the booming wail of the air raid siren atop the city hall at 2:04 p.m. on that historic afternoon, and the spontaneous celebration erupting into the streets of downtown Anchorage, carrying on through the night as Alaskans whooped it up' in a style reminiscent of the gold rush days of '98.

“As the city roared its welcome to statehood, every road and artery leading into the business section was jammed with autos moving bumper to bumper. Huge busses from nearby Fort Richardson and Elmendorf Air Force Base carried troops and airmen into town to join in the historic moment of jubilation.

“Honkytonks, gin mills and the swankier bars throughout the city were loaded, as were most of the happy patrons.”

The Chugiak celebration - described in the July 3, 1958, Knik Arm Courier -sounded tame by comparison.

“When the news of the signing of the Statehood for Alaska Bill by the Senate of the United States came over the radio, a huge pile of tires and scrap lumber began to grow on an open piece of ground at Moose Horn. By 3 p.m. 150 people had gathered and added more fuel so that when the pile was lit a huge column of black smoke rose to the sky and could be seen for miles. At intervals the smoke was a brilliant red color, then finally plumes of golden smoke surrounded the fire, which were symbolic of this land of gold.' Youngsters lit firecrackers and parents talked of the solemnity of the occasion.”

The Knik Arm Courier was silent on the matter six months later, when President Eisenhower signed the Statehood Proclamation and made it official. Perhaps the editors felt their readersalready so busy maintaining homesteads, raising children and making a livingwere ambivalent about statehood and wouldn't care to read any more about it.

The Anchorage Daily Times and the Anchorage Daily News covered every facet of Alaska's entry into the Union, from the newly unveiled 49-star flag to the swearing in of Gov. Bill Egan to how many pens the President used when signing the proclamation (six).

The papers reported that Representative-Elect Ralph Rivers and Senators-Elect Ernest Gruening and Bob Bartlett witnessed the signing at the White House. All three later spoke by phone to a crowd celebrating in the Sydney Laurence Theater in Anchorage, but it was Bartlett's words that were quoted again and again.

“We're in,” he said. “It's legal. It's irrevocable. It can't be kicked out.”

This article published in The Alaska Star on Wednesday, December 31, 2008.