The Municipality of Anchorage is celebrating its 50th anniversary this month, with a schedule of events intended to highlight community spirit and civic pride.
While Anchorage’s roots stretch back more than a century, the incorporation of the municipality came in 1975, combining the city and borough into a unified government. To mark the milestone, city officials plan events beginning Friday with a “night market” at Town Square Park from 5 to 8:30 pm. The celebration continues through November with music, art, and community parties.
Photo Gallery: Anchorage at summer’s end, a city overrun by vagrant camps
But for many residents, the timing of the festivities underscores a sharp irony. Anchorage in 2025 is not the Anchorage of 1975. Today, the city’s streets and parks bear the visible signs of social decay — homeless encampments scattered across downtown, drug use in full view, and petty thefts that have become routine in local businesses. Visitors to Town Square Park, where Friday’s event will be staged, have long complained about disorder and safety concerns in the very heart of the city.
Monday dawn stroll through vagrant-overtaken Peratrovich Park in downtown Anchorage
The contrast is stark: A city celebrating its golden anniversary while grappling with a vagrant crisis that leaves sidewalks littered and smeared with human excrement, storefronts shuttered, and entryways overtaken by vagrancy.
As part of our ongoing series documenting the decline of Anchorage, Must Read Alaska has another set of photos of the “real Anchorage in 2025” — images that stand in sharp relief against the official anniversary banners and speeches.
Glamping in the greenbelts: Anchorage’s luxury lawlessness, with free tents for vagrants
As the Municipality presses forward with its planned commemorations, the deeper question for Anchorage’s future remains whether the next 50 years will reflect renewal or further decline.
Video: Drone footage reveals sprawling vagrant occupation expanding in S. Anchorage greenbelt
Photos from the past 48 hours in Anchorage:
More coverage from earlier this summer:
Video: As Anchorage begins to abate vagrant encampments, the squatters set protest fires
New Anchorage law targets illegal fires amid rising wildfire risk and vagrant camp sprawl
Another day, another vagrant camp fire in Anchorage
Anchorage Assembly’s Tuesday agenda has millions to deal with vagrancy and homelessness
Man arrested for sexual assault within yards of Anchorage City Hall — in broad daylight
Anchorage mayor fails to order downtown cleanup ahead of Trump visit
As snipers scout rooftops, Anchorage’s streets remain littered with bodies before diplomats arrive
Another work day in Anchorage: Arson edition
Photo tour: Step carefully in urban Anchorage
As lawlessness abounds, Anchorage Assembly hosts workshop to ‘reimagine’ public safety
A city in decline. Decay, dereliction, destitution.
What is there to celebrate? A bunch of Democrats patting each other on the back and complimenting destruction. SICK!!
Have you noticed that the vacant lot behind Lowe’s on Tudor has vagrants moving in again?
I believe Bronson was able to clear out the squalor when the Muni sold the lot, but the vagrants are creeping in and will trash it all over again, negatively impacting all the businesses along Denali and that stretch of Tudor -again. Unless they’re stopped…
I’m so tired of it. There are a few tents within a block of my house. Davis Park has people camped out in it again.
Welcome to San Fran Anchorage or the New Seattle/Portland. The homeless grift contracts, money train, shucking and jiving continues without any permanent solution. Can’t solve it, there is too much money to be extracted for former government hacks.
While there may be a few exceptions, it is striking that the current crowd/cabal running the MOA has absolutely no idea what Anchorage looked and felt like in 1975. Now they are trying hard to channel their inner Santa Barbara/Eugene/Boston/Havana vibe. Anchorage, once a frontier city of promise with clear flaws, is in a van being transported to the mortuary.