Jacob Marunenko, better known as “Russian Jack,” remains one of Anchorage’s most colorful historical figures-a bootlegger, homesteader, and notorious character whose name is now attached to parks and streets throughout the city. He also was a convicted killer.
Marunenko emigrated from the Ukrainian village of Parevka in the early 1900s, leaving behind a wife and two children to seek fortune in Alaska. He entered the United States in 1915 via Blaine, Washington, and by 1920 settled in the bustling railroad town under the name Jack Marchin. Census records reveal he owned the Montana Pool Room and a cabin, establishing himself as a literate, entrepreneurial figure.
He did not make much of a splash from the mid-1920s to mid-1930s. The completion of the Alaska Railroad in 1923 led to many transient workers leaving the area, and Anchorage itself survived mainly as a supply stop for outlying mining camps. It was during these decades that Anchorage’s character solidified, with European immigrants like Z.J. “Zack” Loussac and the Bagoy family helping shape the town’s economy and culture…