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!!
Nothing to be proud of. Democrats are ruining America. City by city. They’ve already got Anchorage.
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…
Not to mention the Cuddy Family park near the library!
The last time that vacant lot was filled with tent camp trash we avoided the library park like the plague because it was downright scary, with trash accumulating outside the porta potties, tents in the bushes nearby, inebriates walking around and people gesticulating senselessly.
Clearly, these folks need help, but they won’t get it wandering around public spaces designed for children and making them unsafe for families.
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.
I remember when the First Protester sat for days in front of The Visitor Center, Downtown, in the mid 1970’s. Establishing he had a Right to be there. Up until then he would have been run off. Downtown Anchorage Was a beautiful BUSTELING CITY, filled with happy people pointing fingers at—-lets go here, or let’s go there. Tony Knowles had a retraunt called the Pickle Barrel, or maybe it was. Called the Downtown Deli. Anchorage was ALIVE and Well. 50 years later, that lone Protester has brought us this. To all Left Leaning Individuals—-Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.
I
Yo Anchorage Assembly!
You suck!
You too, LaFrance.
Stop sh*tting up our city. It is time for Anchorage to stop electing invertebrate poofters that think throwing tax payer money around will somehow fix a problem they haven’t identified. For the $250mm they’ve spent they could have given each besotted and drug addled roach a fatty bankroll and watched our collective problem resolve itself. Instead, they need another 250 large.
Without consequences there’s no accountability and those on the Anchorage Assembly need to be held personally accountable or they’ll continue to squander all they can grab. Same w/ the woman responsible for Anchorage’s health and wellbeing. She’s stuck in a responsibility warp assuming that advertising her support of aberrant behavior will somehow shrink social decay. I would sign a recall petition for all of them, any day. I’d also vote for an amendment that limited spend on the bum community to less than 1% of annual tax income without a vote.
My, my, you folks up there should really clean up your town. You’re making Seattle look like a garden city. It’s amazing that y’all can’t manage to do it, what, with all that PFD money sloshing around.
Maybe Trump should order up the National Guard to police your streets instead of having them pick up trash on the Mall in DC.
Excellent idea! There are enough National Guard around the country to do both and more. Not sure total number but following is what internet reports: “The U.S. National Guard has over 430,000 civilian members in its two branches: the Army National Guard and the Air National Guard. This total figure includes personnel in all 50 states, three U.S. territories, and the District of Columbia.” Full disclosure, haven’t verified personally myself and can’t confirm the source is trustworthy or accurate.
Or maybe the mayor of DC could actually do something, much the same as the mayor of Anchorage. Using the national guard is a last resort, but an act which becomes necessary when neutered liberals such as yourself turn a blind eye to crime and civil decay. What’s your solution troll?
You sporting a fever? You’re beginning to make sense.
Steal a bicycle? Ping… DLP.
The bread and circuses idiots in elected positions have had their chance and now they should shoulder responsibility for the cleansing event forming around the corner. Wipe your brow w/ that flag you sissies hold so dear.
Freeattle is far from “garden city”.
There is enough human feces on the sidelines of the entire downtown area to keep you all high on the methane gases it produces.
Democrats love squalor
Look around yourself, what is there about this outpost and “these” people that excites in you the notion that Anchorage can become–most likely through PR and sanitized bullshit–a shining city in the north? Ah, the hubris, the stuff of scam! Dream on: you too can be a Magadan!
That lady laying there is some Alaskan’s firstborn sprinkled in glitter as a beloved Alaskan baby. With the advent of foreign drug trade the undereducated fell tidily into the international trap America’s enemies laid for the naive. This must not be tolerated. These people must get and stay sober on a dole if need be until they have a clear mind again.