Today, the Ma Johnson Historical Hotel is preserved as one of McCarthy’s most important historic structures and is often cited as a symbol of the town’s frontier resilience.

Photography has become my way of slowing down and listening. I find myself drawn to places that show wear, places where the land and human intention collide. Knowing even a small piece of their history changes how I approach them. I’m more patient. I frame differently. I wait longer. I’m not trying to make something look dramatic; I’m trying to be honest about how it feels to stand there, knowing this moment is layered on top of so many others.

What really stays with me is the idea that this history isn’t finished—and neither is the landscape. Alaska is still being shaped, and so are the stories within it. When I take photographs, I’m aware that I’m capturing something temporary. The building might be gone in a few years. The road might fall back into the land. The community might change. That awareness makes the act of photographing feel personal, almost intimate, like a quiet acknowledgment of what’s passing.

I don’t photograph Alaska to explain its history, and I don’t pretend my images can tell the whole story. But they’re my way of engaging with it. Of saying, I was here, I noticed this, and it mattered to me. In learning about Alaska’s not-too-distant past, I found a deeper reason to pick up my camera—not just to see, but to remember.