Talk:Lawing, Alaska/Archive 1

Archive 1

Real only on paper?

I have lived on the Kenai for fifteen years and traveled extensively in this specific area, and I have no clue what this article is talking about. It sounds an awful lot like Crown Point, Alaska, but the given coordinates are slightly different. I guess what I am getting at is that as far as I can tell the federal government, the state of Alaska, and the borough government all fail to officially recognize this as a separate community, it is merely a "named populated place". Not every single item listed on GNIS is notable enough for an article, and I am not at all sure this neighborhood even comes close. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:32, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

I looked up the NRHP nomination form for Alaska Nellie's Homestead, and it describes Lawing as a distinct community. Also note this picture of the town sign, and a number of other pictures of Lawing. This is (or at least was) a distinct community. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 00:59, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

The sign looks very much like a sign one would see naming a railroad stop, which is what this apparently was. The Alaska Railroad still uses signs not unlike this to demarcate their own definitions of specific areas. I'm just not sure that a temporary settlement consisting of eight buildings should have it's own article. NRHP recognition as separate settlement is not really relevant as that is not their area of expertise. If the census or the state of Alaska had recognized it as anything beyond a stop on the railroad that would be different. This was basically Nellie Neal Lawing's homestead and business, all the structures there were apparently related to her in some way. And since it is an NRHP site it is in the realm of an "automatically notable" subject, so I tend to think an article on the roadhouse would be better than an article on this settlement that was more or less nothing but the roadhouse anyway. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:47, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

I'll try and start an article on the homestead, so this can be merged there if necessary. Going by the NRHP nomination, it seems like Lawing is very much tied to Nellie Neal Lawing's presence in the community, and there isn't much left there now. The only reason I'm not in favor of outright merging it is that there is a Lawing Airport, so the name does appear to still be in use. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 22:11, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Been busy in the real world lately. Beeb should know that summer in Alaska means paying work is at hand which may not be available at other times of the year. Anyway, the sign would refer specifically to a section of the railroad. "Back in the good old days", crews would be stationed throughout the line, each housed at and responsible for maintaining a section, or a certain number of miles of track and sidings within a specific geographic area. The vast majority of sections were consolidated over the decades; I believe all of the railroad's maintenance functions are handled out of Anchorage, Fairbanks or Seward these days. Some misc. musings:

• Lawing is actually a small part of a CDP, but given how near-useless Census FactFinder is, I couldn't tell whether it fell within Crown Point or Primrose. Then again, Beeb and I had a related prior discussion about the Old Believer villages near him. All three of them are within the Fox River CDP, yet they appear on here largely as four islands unto themselves. Certainly, Lawing is/was of far greater significance than those communities.
• Let me let everyone in on a "dirty little secret" regarding sourcing geography articles strictly from GNIS. Most of the GNIS entries for Alaska were lifted verbatim from Dictionary of Alaska Place Names, which was published nearly a half-century ago. Therefore, in our rush to pillage public domain databases because it's much easier than writing and researching the old-fashioned way, we're using the presumed reliability of GNIS to regurgitate information onto Wikipedia which may not necessarily be that reliable because it may not necessarily be that current. For example, DoAPN refers to Spenard as a city, despite the fact that "city" in Alaska specifically refers to a type of incorporated municipality. The northernmost portion of Spenard was annexed into Anchorage, but Spenard never incorporated as its own community. Many of the permastubs created by Merovingian on geographic features in Juneau totally miss the mark for these very reasons. And we're talking about someone from Juneau. You would think he would know better.
• This segues into mass article creation resulting in flooding the encyclopedia with dubious content, which is somewhat pertinent to this discussion as it's a favorite tactic of the NRHP crowd and this is an NRHP listing we're talking about. When the Copper Center Lodge burned last year, most media accounts mentioned that it was NRHP-listed, yet it's not found on the list here. It's obvious there are lots of site delistings which haven't made their way into those lists. The point I'm making is that if the media was mistaken about it being on the NRHP, we run the risk of having people who don't know any better boldly deeming it to be non-notable due to lack of a listing.

This doesn't necessarily apply to one building halfway towards the middle of nowhere. I've seen editors remove mentions of historically important Alaskans from articles (in some cases, signers of the state constitution or 20–25 year state legislators) with highly condescending edit summaries such as "Nobody cares". Of course, they're right; I should be spending my time constructing an entire series of articles about Ashley Tisdale. Ahem, anyway. These are the same sort of people who made a big deal out of such an insignificant figure as Cheryll Heinze, for no apparent reason other than the circumstances of her death. I've also seen admins who believe that their highly uninformed opinions on a given subject's notability carries more weight than what the real world may believe to be notable or not notable. Since we're talking about the NRHP, there's also the editors who take liberties to remove valid sourced content from NRHP listing articles because that information is "not in agreement" with the official listings. The short version: if we're content to parrot other websites, "official government sources" or uninformed opinion, and using that as our guide in place of common sense, then I don't need Wikipedia. I'm perfectly capable of finding those sources and the information contained therein without it.

• The homestead certainly is notable, but not just because of an NRHP listing. It's notable because of eighty-some years worth of mention in reliable sources, even if most of those sources can't be Googled and are regarded as obscure by today's standards. Ultimately, though, the root of notability here lies with Nellie Neal Lawing, and for the same reason: mention in RS, even if they are obscure sources. As for the other uses of Lawing, there is an airport. If you wish to dredge up another discussion involving Beeb and myself, it's not exactly an airport in the sense of what most people consider an airport, but there are lots of places like that in Alaska. My memory is fuzzy, but I believe there is also a DOTPF maintenance station bearing the name Lawing located in the same vicinity. Regardless of all that, it all begins with ol' Alaska Nellie herself, and that's where the bulk of the effort should be made here.

I could take this opportunity to pick on Doncram, but I see enough evidence of him constantly stepping in shit piles with no involvement on my part. Just to use Doncram's zeal for the NRHP as an example, it's missing the mark in the same manner. Norman R. "Doc" Walker is the truly notable subject, not the Walker-Broderick House. Likewise, there's a dab page with an entry to another NRHP listing in Ketchikan, the Ziegler House. A. H. Ziegler is highly notable. Bob Ziegler is highly notable. The law firm founded by A. H. Ziegler nearly a century ago could quite possibly be considered independently notable. In comparison, the house is just another fucking house propped up against the side of a mountain, like a lot of houses in Ketchikan.

I probably have about eight or ten more points I could make, but it's getting close enough for me to go back to work. Later. RadioKAOS  – Talk to me, Billy 01:40, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

I'd rather have an article that could use some work but still provide coverage on a topic than nothing. Also that GNIS lifts from DoAPN is no secret; it's displayed rather clearly in their entries. --Merovingian (T, C, L) 02:06, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

I agree that Nellie Neal Loving is notable as well; that's pretty clear from the sources I've dug up while trying to start the homestead article. I've run into this problem before with NRHP articles; there are a lot of houses that are listed primarily due to their connections to a person, but it's often easier to find information on the house than the person. The NRHP is a fairly well-organized government program with an easily accessible source for many properties, an active wikiproject and structured lists of properties by region, so it's easy to find listings that don't have articles and start articles on them. There's no corresponding list of historic American figures that I know of, so if you're a national editor you pretty much have to stumble across these people to start articles on them, and there often aren't a lot of easily accessible sources. This often leads to the odd situation where the house gets an article before the person does (and it really doesn't help when the article on the house doesn't even mention the person, as is the case with most of the two-line articles that plague WikiProject NRHP). Of course, the house will have some other significance most of the time (usually this is either its architecture or its status as a museum or landmark). For instance, the homestead was apparently a popular resort and became a B&B after Nellie's death.

And since you brought it up, please don't take those two-line articles as representative of the "NRHP crowd". The project has been trying to do something about that for a while and is probably closer than it's ever been to a solution. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 03:21, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

• As an aside, if we could come up with a specific location, as in something i could find by driving to it on an actual road, at some point (maybe not all that soon but eventually) there's a good chance I can find the time at some point to take some pictures there. Not like right away, don't have any plans to go there in the immediate future (about a three hour drive from where I am) but I do make it over to the Seward/Kenai Lake area once in a while. The NRHP application says this is now a tourist shop, but that was nearly forty years ago. I suspect it is something else by now, if it is still standing at all. There's a restaurant called Alaska Nellies in Seward proper, but they appear to be just re-using the name. My guess is that this is now one of the lakefront lodges near Moose Pass or Crown Point, I've probably gone right by it in my car and my boat without even knowing it... Beeblebrox (talk) 04:22, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

This page seems to indicate that it's still around, but it hasn't been used for anything in a while (and was one of the 10 most endangered properties in Alaska as of 1998, which isn't a good sign). TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 04:44, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, per the images below, all I found were rotting buildings and an empty clearing where the lodge probably was. There were newer houses down the street, but the homestead itself does not appear to be being maintained in any way. And yet there are private property and no parking signs all over the place, probably to discourage campers from squatting there or fisherman from using the lake access.

And this leads me to question how we are defining it here. Lawing does not appear to be an “unincorporated community” but rather a ghost town that is not in and of itself a community but rather part of the Crown Point CDP. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:42, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Found it, took pictures

So I found myself over in this part of the world today and thought I’d spend a minute trying to find Lawing. I had about given up as there are only a few spots matching the given description, where the railroad runs right by the lake and there is enough room left for buildings (the road and the railroad are crammed into a mostly very narrow space between the mountains and the lake). I’d almost given up when I came upon “Lawing Drive” and knew I must have found it. There’s more than what you see here, but there private property signs all over the place so I stuck with what I could get good images of from the road. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:23, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

• Pinging @TheCatalyst31: and @RadioKAOS:. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:28, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

What’s left of Lawing

• 
  This seems like it might be a good lead image for this article as it clearly identifies the location
• 
  One of the remaining homes
• 
  Turnoff from the Seward Highway and the only reason I ever found the place.
• 
  If you look closely you can see some sort of metal structure in this perfectly flat area by the lakeside. I’m pretty sure this was the site of the actual roadhouse as it was said to actually stretch out over the lake.

is it really an “unincorporated community”?

Given what I found when visiting the place as well as the dearth of any evidence that any government entity still considers this a seperate and distinct settlement, I think we need to consider how we are defining this place. It seems clear it is a former community that has been superseded by the Crown Point, Alaska CDP, which I’m pretty sure Lawing falls inside of. Thoughts? Beeblebrox (talk) 20:44, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Ok then, I’ve changed it to “former community and homestead” which I think better reflects the reality of the situation. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:10, 14 May 2018 (UTC)