Browne centennial celebration set for Saturday

TALKEETNA — A daylong celebration is planned July 21 at locations around Talkeenta to mark Belmore Browne’s 1912 attempt to be first to summit Denali.

Beginning in the winter and traveling by dogsled team from Seward at sea level, Browne made it within 125 feet of the 20,320-foot summit in late June 1912, but was turned back by extreme winds on two separate summit attempts.

The celebration includes a slideshow of almost 300 photos that Brian Okonek gleaned from the Belmore Browne archives at Dartmouth College. He will supplement the slideshow with his own images from years of wandering through the Alaska Range.

Okonek co-founded Alaska Denali Guiding Inc. in 1983 and directed the company until 2001, overseeing 60 expeditions to Denali.

Along with Charles Sheldon, Browne also was instrumental in the 1916 Senate hearings that led to the creation of Denali National Park.

Later in life, Browne became a well-known landscape artist with paintings at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art, the Smithsonian and the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Events include:

• 10 a.m., the art of George and Belmore Browne slideshow at Northern Susitna Institute.

• 11 a.m., Plein Air Paint Out at Talkeetna and environs.

• 4 p.m., mountaineering exhibit presentation at the Talkeetna Historical Society.

• 5 to 7 p.m., plein air exhibition at the Sheldon Community Arts Hangar.

• 7 p.m., Belmore Browne Slideshow presented by Brian Okonek Sheldon at the Community Arts Hangar.

For more information, call Northern Susitna Institute at 733-7111.