This image is from an album of 298 black-and-white photographs taken by August Cohn during his work with the Alaska Engineering Commission in 1915-17. Cohn was a civil engineer and surveyor who worked on the survey of the original site on which the town (and later city) of Anchorage was built. He also was involved in surveying and engineering work for many of the bridges that were constructed along the Alaska Railroad from Seward to Nenana. The photographs in the album focus on the Anchorage town site area, including images of construction, railroad buildings and equipment, Anchorage residents and their families, houses, cabins, and local businesses. Other locations that Cohn photographed and that are included in the album are Seldovia, Ketchikan, Petersburg, Juneau, Yakutat, and Seward in Alaska and Seattle, Washington. Cohn generally recorded the date, location, and subject of each photograph. The album was donated to the Anchorage Museum by Cohn's daughter, Helen Copeland, in 1997. It was digitized for the Meeting of Frontiers digital library project in the early 2000s.
