Civic Calendar: Remember James Wickersham on Aug. 24

The Forty Ninth State Fellows Program of the UAA Honors College calls the attention of the University community to the anniversary of the birth of James Wickersham, Aug. 24, 1857.

Wickersham was Alaska's longest serving territorial Congressional delegate, a federal district judge and patriarch of Alaska politics in the Progressive Era. Wickersham lobbied through Congress bills creating the first territorial legislature, the Alaska Railroad and Mt. McKinley National Park, and brought significant federal funding to the territory. He served as delegate from 1908 to 1920.

Born near Patoka, Illinois, east of St. Louis, Wickersham moved to Washington Territory in 1883, where he became active in Progressive Republican politics. He was appointed to the Alaska district court in 1900. He died in Juneau, Oct. 24, 1939.