Primary Name: Reck, John

Filed as: Reck, John

Also known as: John Reck

Occupation / Association: Charter member, Pioneers of Alaska Juneau Men's Igloo; butcher; businessman; mayor of Juneau; president, First National Bank of Juneau

Associated places: Elkador, Clayton County, Iowa; Tacoma, Washington; Juneau, Alaska; Strawberry Point, Iowa

Keywords: John Reck, Reck family Juneau Alaska, Alaska Meat Company Juneau, mayor of Juneau 1914 1915, Juneau Chamber of Commerce president, First National Bank of Juneau president, Pioneers of Alaska Juneau Men's Igloo charter member

Biography

John Reck was a charter member of the Pioneers of Alaska, the Juneau Men's Igloo, and a prominent businessman and civic leader in early Juneau.

He was born April 12, 1865, in Elkador, Clayton County, Iowa. At the age of thirteen, he left home to support himself. By the age of eighteen, he had learned the meat business and, in 1886, moved west to Tacoma, Washington, where he lived until 1897.

In 1897, the firm he worked for sent him to Juneau to take charge of a meat market owned by the company after the butcher had left for the Klondike gold rush. Reck expected to remain only a few months, but the company never sent a replacement. As he later remarked during a newspaper interview on his seventy-fifth birthday in 1940, “And I have been here ever since.”

On October 3, 1888, he married Marie Ann Rieck in Strawberry Point, Iowa. She had been born June 20, 1867, in Kitchener, Ontario. The couple had four children. Marie Ann Rieck Reck died in Juneau on December 5, 1940.

Reck became deeply involved in the civic and commercial life of Juneau. He served four terms on the Juneau Municipal Council and served as the city's mayor from 1914 to 1915. He also served as president of the Juneau Chamber of Commerce.

For many years, he operated the Alaska Meat Company in Juneau. In 1912, he became involved with the First National Bank of Juneau, serving as a director until 1915, when he was elected president.

Through his business enterprises and public service, John Reck played a significant role in the economic and civic development of Juneau during Alaska’s territorial period.

Daily Alaska Empire, April 12 and December 6, 1940; Biographies of Alaska-Yukon Pioneers 1850–1950, Volume 2, pages 268–269, by Ed Ferrell.