May 2023: An AWESOME Month — Juneau!

May 20.  We arrive in Juneau, the state capital, accessible only by air or sea. The absence of a road network is due to the extremely rugged terrain surrounding the city.  This makes Juneau a de facto island city in terms of transportation, since all goods coming into the city must go by plane or boat, in spite of the city’s location on the Alaskan mainland.  It is the only state capital on an international border (it borders Canada on the east).  It is the second largest city in the United States by area, larger in area than both Delaware and Rhode Island.  As of the 2020 census, with a little over 32,000 people, it is the third most populous city in Alaska, after Anchorage and Fairbanks.  Downtown Juneau sits at sea level, below steep mountains up to 4,000 feet high.  Atop these mountains is the Juneau Icefield, a large ice mass, approximately 1,500 square miles, from which 30 glaciers flow.  Two of these, the Mendenhall and the Lemon Creek Glaciers can be seen from the local road system.

Juneau was made the territorial capital in 1906. With the decline of whaling and the fur trade, Sitka, the original capital of Alaska, had become less important, and Juneau was at that time the largest city in Alaska.  Through the years there have been efforts to move the capital to Fairbanks or Willow, but they have all failed.

This area was a fishing ground for the Auke and Taku tribes, who had inhabited the surrounding area for thousands of years.  Abundant resources allowed the local clans to develop music, dance, art, textiles and storytelling.  Juneau today has become a major social center for the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian people, descendants of the early tribes. 

Although Russia had a colony in Alaska, they did not settle in Juneau.  The first European American settlement in the territory after the US purchase was here, after prospectors Joe Juneau and Richard Harris established a 160 acre mining camp in the area after discovering gold nuggets “as large as peas and beans.”

Sal, John and I set out to explore the town.  We toured a museum and walked to the governor’s mansion and the state capitol building.  Juneau is hilly, so for a break we checked out Alaskan Brewing Company.  (Their White Ale is a favorite of mine.)  We found the statue of Patsy Ann, a small, white English bull terrier, deaf from birth, who became a popular dog-about-town in Juneau in the 1930s. Her statue reads in part, “Because of Patsy Ann’s unerring sense of the imminent arrival of each ship and her faithful welcome at the dock, Mayor Isadore Goldstein dudded her ‘Official Greeter of Juneau, Alaska’ in 1934.”  We had missed a question on Patsy Ann in the Alaska trivia game.  That won’t happen again!  

We had a good hot dog lunch, sitting waterside by a small park populated with an unkindness of ravens.  (Unkindness, that’s what a group of ravens is called, because they are associated with bad luck and known as tricksters.)  Sal split off to join Bev and Fran at the top of the Mount Roberts Tramway.  John and I wandered the shops and returned to the ship and a pina colada.

It was a pretty night leaving Juneau.