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Jon Grinspan

Jon Grinspan is a historian of American democracy, youth, and popular culture. He is a curator of political history at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History and a frequent contributor to the New York Times.

"WEB ONLY STORIES" BY THIS CONTRIBUTOR

A Tagish Indian known as Skookum Jim Mason discovered gold in the Klondike in 1896. Before August 17, 1896, Americans had little interest in Alaska, a far off “district”—not even a territory—full of wolves and ice and forests. That attitude started to change 121 years ago today, when a Tagish…, The remains of the James Minano Cabin in the Yukon was photographed for the 1933 Historic Buildings Survey. Library of Congress.