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Search Alaska Obituaries

Look up obituaries, death records and people by name.

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Obituary guide

How to find an obituary in Alaska

For a recent death, check the funeral home's website and the Anchorage Daily News, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner or Juneau Empire obituary pages. For older deaths, the Anchorage library's online obituary index and the Alaska State Library's newspaper index guide tell you which paper and date to look in.

What to have ready

  • The person's full name, including a maiden name or nickname
  • The approximate date of death and the town or borough where they died
  • Their age or birth year
  • Names of close relatives

Knowing the community narrows things the most. Many Alaska towns had their own small paper, and the Alaska State Library lists indexes by community.

Where to look, by when the person died

When the person diedWhere to look
Last few yearsThe funeral home's website; Anchorage Daily News obituaries; the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and Juneau Empire pages on Legacy.com
1990s to recent decadesThe Anchorage Newspapers Obituary Index (January 1981 to October 2001); newspaper databases at your public library
Older or historicThe Alaska State Library's guide Finding articles in older Alaskan newspapers, which lists printed indexes by community; Chronicling America for digitized historic Alaska papers
Official death recordAll Alaska death certificates come from the state office. Records go back to the 1890s, but many deaths before 1930 were never registered. See how to order an Alaska death certificate.

Major newspapers' obituary pages

Recent listings are open to read. Older newspaper articles may need a subscription.

Libraries and archives

  • Anchorage Public Library posts the Anchorage Newspapers Obituary Index online, covering the Anchorage Times and other Anchorage papers. It combines several printed indexes, so scroll down for later dates.
  • Alaska State Library keeps printed indexes for many Alaska papers. Its Anchorage indexing covers 1915 to 2000 and is strongest for obituaries. Its genealogy guide links more death and vital-record sources.

Timeline expectations

  • Recent obituaries usually appear online within days of the death or before the service.
  • The Anchorage online index runs from January 1, 1981 to October 1, 2001.
  • The State Library reports that, as of June 2023, 127 Alaska newspapers had content on Chronicling America. Coverage for any one town varies.

Tips

  • If you can't find a death in Alaska, search the person's former home state too. Many Alaskans' obituaries also ran in a hometown paper elsewhere.
  • In older Alaska papers, deaths were sometimes reported as news items rather than under an "obituaries" heading. Search the name with words like "died" or "funeral."
  • The Anchorage index is a long PDF arranged A to Z. Use your browser's find feature (Ctrl+F) to jump to a surname.

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