By the early s, the tent city at the mouth of Ship Creek had turned into a bustling, modern city. Clifford Cernick wrote that Anchorage was much like Baghdad in an article that appeared in the Seattle Times on March 4, β a time when Baghdad was a bustling city, a jewel in the desert.
Cernick wrote that old-time prospectors, Natives from remote Bering Sea villages and the majority of tourists from the States all thought Anchorage was an amazing town. It is a city reaching for the clouds, with one story building planned and several others on the drawing boards," Cernick wrote.
Multi-colored neons splash glittering pools of color across the wide, paved streets at night. Cernick noted that women in fashionable mink coats were as much a part of the Anchorage landscape as Native maidens with moose-hide parkas.
And that dogs and sleds didn't warrant any more notice than panel delivery trucks. He said it was normal to see business executives and bank presidents sharing lunch counters with trappers and prospectors.
The reporter said the contrast and modern style of the town caused one airline pilot to make the observation that struck Cernick as fitting. Today, the city proper has 11,, and when suburban areas are counted, the total is close to 30, Hundreds of settlers have come and have constructed homes, roads and streets But he also noted that all Alaskans were not too pleased with the evolution of Anchorage into such a going concern.
