By Suzanne Downing 
A long-planned tribute to Alaska’s storied mushing heritage is finally rising over downtown Anchorage.
Crews began installing the Anchorage Mushing District’s signature arch on Nov. 17, closing off a block of West Fourth Avenue as workers assembled the steel truss structure that will become the district’s defining landmark. The arch, featuring a silhouette of a dog team and musher, is being placed between D and E Streets, where construction activity and staging fully closed the roadway through Nov. 21, with marked detours in place.
The project is the culmination of years of planning that began when the Anchorage Mushing District was first designated as a historic district in 2019 by mayoral proclamation of Mayor Ethan Berkowitz. That official action laid the groundwork for developing the corridor along Fourth Avenue from A to G Streets, and it allowed the arch project to move forward once a formal city agreement was approved in late 2024. That agreement set a completion deadline of January 2026.
Instead, the arch is now arriving ahead of schedule. The Mushing District initiative broke ground in early October, and the installation phase is now nearly complete.
Once finished, the illuminated arch will be the centerpiece of the district’s broader educational and cultural ties. Plans call for interpretive signage, walking tours, seasonal banners, and other features that highlight Alaska’s iconic dog-mushing traditions, from the early freight trails to the modern-day Iditarod and Fur Rendezvous sprint races.
Who is paying for it???
Who do youthink is?? It isn’t coming from the Assembly members’ pockets, or their discretionary budgets. That money is prespent forgraft
Given the extreme radical leftist political orientation of Anchorage’s mayor and the overwhelming majority of the assembly, I am surprised that they are not erecting an image of Karl Marx on this arch, surrounded by homeless inebriates, draping it all with hammer-and-sickle flags and COVID masks.
Or, Jefferson, you might mention something positive about the arch. You could you know. Praise a new artistic addition to downtown with planned events. Maybe it will be part of an economic advance. But no, true to your constipated worldview, you examine the dogs genitalia and seeing no penises, conclude the dogs are trans.
Jefferson is, and has always been, incapable of saying anything positive. Poor dude, filled with hatred and rage. Ignore him and let him stew in his own juices.
Hans, you are both wrong and dishonest, and you know it.
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Your lies about me only highlight the fact that you KNOW that my criticisms of you, and your deranged radical leftist ilk such as the Anchorage Marxist Ten, are hitting the mark. The complacent acceptance of growing statism and tyranny which you and other radical leftists display is not a sign of mental health or moral integrity, but a reflection of exactly the opposite.