A huge chunk of the mountainside east of Unalakleet is missing. In its place is a new gravel pad surrounded by evergreen trees and tundra. Even from a mile away, it’s obvious it's not like the pads other houses on the hillside sit on.
As early as next year, the site will become home to Unalakleet’s first public swimming pool.
Jason Harris is one of the proponents of the project. He, along with a small group of six Unalakleet residents, have quietly kept the pool project humming along for six years.
Before moving to Unalakleet, the former collegiate swimmer relished year-round access to an indoor swimming pool in Galena. In 2018, family circumstances brought him to his wife’s hometown.
“But a pool was always on my mind here, because after living in Galena for 10 years, I swore I'd never live without a pool again. I just couldn't, couldn't do it,” Harris said.
The dream of bringing a pool to Unalakleet lingered in Harris’ mind. But it wasn’t until he had some unexpected free time in 2020 that the idea started picking up steam.
“I'm still working at the school, and we don't have students at the school, and I finally had time to start looking at stuff, and I started gathering up grant information and that kind of stuff,” Harris said.
Bering Strait School District’s then-Director of Maintenance, Gary Eckenweiler, connected him with Cindy Massie, who was raised in Unalakleet.
“Gary was like, ‘well, Cindy is really interested in doing something with a pool. You should talk to them’,” Harris recalled.
Cindy Massie and her husband, Thomas Massie, founded the Outdoor Channel, a TV channel that once boasted nearly 40 million subscribers. They sold the channel in 2013 in a deal worth $268 million.
The duo run the Thomas and Cindy Massie Foundation, which has donated over $1 million to the Native Village of Unalakleet for the project.
A regional hub for learning to swim
Harris said Unalakleet's small planning committee of Eckenweiler, LA Commack, Bob Dickens, Chuck Moline and Dave Cunningham shared the same vision for the pool as the Massies.
“The whole purpose is to improve safety in the region. And then there's lots of other residuals, like a place for people to go when the wind is blowing 90 miles an hour,” Harris said. “And we have all these basketball players in town that are in their 40s and hobbling, and they can't do that stuff anymore, but they could definitely swim.”
Alaska has the highest rate of deaths by drowning per capita of any state, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Harris said in western Alaska, pools aren’t just a luxury – they’re a lifeline.
“Our entire region, we've got our oceans, we've got the rivers,” Harris said. “And the major thing in saving yourself or somebody else in an emergency is just remaining calm. If you know how to swim and you're around water, you're much more calm.”
Once complete, Harris hopes Bering Strait School District will bring students from its 15 schools to the pool for water safety lessons while in town for other regional competitions. Eventually, he hopes to develop a USA Swimming club team, but said it’ll take time.
“It's sort of like a step program. Each step before feeds the one above if the child decides they want to move on to that step,” Harris said. “After an age group team is going for a while, you'll bring in a high school team, so the 'learn to swim' feeds the age group, age group feeds high school.”
'What everybody competes in'
There’s still a lot of work to do on the pool before the first swimmer hits the water. Huge amounts of cement need to be poured to make a solid foundation for the steel structure. Harris said construction on the exterior is expected to be finished this fall.
Inside, crews will excavate for a six-lane, 25-yard-long pool that is 10 feet deep. Harris said the pool is similar to what other teams compete in, even at the collegiate level.
He said the pool itself will be made of welded stainless steel panels, giving it the ability to flex as permafrost underneath shifts and settles. The facility will also feature locker rooms, bleachers and office space.
150 miles across the Norton Sound, Nome’s 44-year-old indoor swimming pool is facing challenges maintaining funding. A grassroots fundraising campaign helped build the pool, but its annual maintenance costs only seem to go up.
“It's hard to get a pool to pay for itself. You start charging people what it would cost to run a pool, and they decide that they'd rather go to open gym,” Harris said.
Harris said grants will likely be the solution to keep the pool open long-term.
“There's a number of organizations around the area that it would benefit to have a swimming pool for the sake of education and water safety,” Harris said.
With no pool in the ground yet, Harris can count the number of people interested in signing up for a club swim team on his fingertips. But he said if you build it, they will come. And when the pool is filled up next year, he believes the community will.
