photograph by J. Stephen Conn via Flickr
Church of the Holy Ascension, AK: Completed in 1826, this structure was built by the Russian American Fur Company under the terms of its second charter; this charter required the company to support Russian Orthodox missionaries and establish schools in Russian America. This site is associated with Father Veniaminov, who established a Russian school which operated from 1825 until the early 1860s. Father Veniaminov created a new alphabet, based on the Cyrillic alphabet, for the most widely spoken Aleut dialect. Along with translating the Russian bible into the Aleut language, Father Veniaminov recorded Aleut customs and material culture.