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Business View Magazine
The Port of Anchorage
Earthquake survivor supports the “last frontier”
It would be hard to make the case that anything good
could ever come out of an earthquake. Especially an
earthquake of enormous destructive power, like the
Great Alaskan Earthquake of 1964, the most powerful
tremor ever recorded in U.S. and North American history.
Registering a magnitude of 9.2 on the Richter scale, it
caused widespread desolation across the south-central
part of the state. And yet, perhaps, if it wasn’t for that
devastating natural disaster, the Port of Anchorage (POA)
may never have become the economic engine that it is
today, as well as one of Alaska’s most important mari-
time ports, responsible for supporting a vast majority of
the Frontier State’s population with the goods they need
to survive.
According to Stephen Ribuffo, Director for the Port of An-
chorage, when the Port’s opening-day ribbon was cut in
September, 1961, “it was a modest, little dock, with a
pile-supported deck, and three small loading cranes to
lift baskets and netting out of ships. That was the sub-
stance of the port when it opened for business.” And so
it might have remained until one evening in March, three
