History has been busy in this little town, with the gold-rush hoax that birthed it, the early road link that gave it life, the 1964 earthquake that leveled it, the oil pipeline that enriched it, and the Exxon Valdez oil spill that made it infamous. The museum makes the most of it all with such items as a model of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, a 19th century saloon bar and an exhibit on glaciers that usually includes a cooler full of ice from the Columbia Glacier. In an annex, there’s a scaled model of the original townsite, before it was destoyed by the earthquake.