Collection of correspondence and ephemera regarding Alaska, including records relating to Russia ceding Alaska to the United States, a letter from William Gouverneur Morris to E. S. Kearney, statements about Deputy Marshal J. J. Healy, tourism brochures, a descriptive booklet of the Alaska Historical Museum, and photostatic reproductions of a newspaper article about the Aleutian Islands by Isobel Wylie Hutchinson.

Papers of Amos Burg (1901-1986), including diaries, travel logs, notes, correspondence, published materials, and ephemera. Burg was born in Portland, Oregon, and lived there until after World War II, when he moved to Alaska. He traveled on multiple rivers in North America, and was a writer, photographer and filmmaker who worked for the National Geographic Society, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Erpi Classroom films, and later the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Collection includes manuscript diary, 1895, regarding a prospecting trip to Yukon along with four partners from Bridal Veil, Oregon; and a manuscript notebook, 1888-1897, with accounts, song lyrics, and poems.

Papers of the Cornell family and related families, including family correspondence; letters from Bertrand Cornell (died 1852) describing his journey to Oregon; and letters and newspaper articles by Wilbur F. Cornell (1841-1911) describing Alaska and the Yukon Territory. Methodist minister William Cornell (1812-1891) and his cousin Bertrand Cornell emigrated to Oregon in 1852; Bertrand died soon after the journey. William Cornell brought his family to Oregon in 1854.

Manuscript letters, 1897-1899, primarily to Kirke E. Johnson's mother in Wisconsin, regarding his experiences as a telephone line construction worker, surveyor and prospector in Alaska and British Columbia during the 1898 gold rush.