Talk:Portage, Anchorage, Alaska

Picture Caption Misleading

I think that the picture caption is fairly misleading: "preserved by saltwater are all that remains of Portage today". The picture shows what appears to be heavily-iced remnants of vegetation, and while this is a typical winter occurrence the caption leads the reader to believe that they are covered in crystallized salt. Am I correct in assuming that this is ice and not salt crystals? This should be clarified, or a picture of the area in the summertime could be uploaded. Matt on March 15, 2011. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.248.186.179 (talk) 19:08, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, somehow I missed this comment at the time. The salt water got into the root systems of the trees in the area, killing them and preserving them all at once. The vegetation in the photo is indeed ice-covered, it was really cold when I stopped and snapped that photo. I would presume the vegetation there now is able to survive in a brackish environment, unlike the spruce trees. Perhaps I can tweak the caption wording to make this more clear, what is interesting about it is that these trees died in 1964 yet they are still standing. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:09, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Page move

Not sure I agree with the logic behind the page move, which is recorded as "its current status is as a neighborhood of a larger incorporated city, rather than a community of its own." The town was destroyed 47 years ago. The Municipality of Anchorage was formed 43 years ago. So, there never really was a neighborhood of Anchorage called Portage. Perhaps that is the legal definition today, but how can it be a neighborhood when there are no houses and no population? Beeblebrox (talk) 17:29, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

I would also note that we haven't renamed the articles on Girdwood or Eagle River, which are also both inside the municipality and are closer to Anchorage proper than Portage. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:15, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Eagle River (Alaska) refers to the river itself (or actually, multiple rivers in Alaska by that name). The community article was changed from Eagle River, Alaska to Eagle River (Anchorage) some months ago. On a related point, someone recently edited Ernest Gruening to change the location of Gruening Middle School from Eagle River to Anchorage, which I felt was even more pedantic than what I'm normally capable of. One or more editors began removing the ", Alaska" suffix from a number of articles of places which are located within a larger incorporated city at some point earlier this year, mostly in Anchorage and Juneau, though they left the job half-finished. I moved this and West Juneau, and started a CFD to try to sort out the proper categorization for these articles. I figured it would be best to at least motivate some discussion and/or consensus before going forth to finish the job. The Greater Anchorage Area Borough was incorporated prior to the earthquake, so there is some standing for claiming it to be a "neighborhood of Anchorage," even if such claims are suspect.RadioKAOS (talk) 22:37, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Even the United States Postal Service uses Portage, Alaska and similar uses for Eagle River, Girdwood, etc. I sent a letter in the late 1980's to Eagle River with the correct zip code and was returned as undeliverable, I called and was told the it was rejected because of Anchorage not Eagle River as the town.Sunbelt alaska (talk) 01:46, 2 March 2020 (UTC)