George Pilz, as the first professional mining engineer in the new territory of Alaska, became a leading figure among the miners who entered Alaska in the first decades after purchase.

He was born in Saxony and educated at the famed mining academy at Freiberg. He left Germany in 1867 after exploring for coal, and thus avoided conscription for the Franco-Prussian War.

Initially Pilz looked at prospects in Canada and the United States for a German-owned company; he left that company to work for Calumet and Hecla at Hancock, in the Michigan copper ranges. In 1869, he left Michigan to erect a copper smelter in California.

Over the next decade, in California, Arizona, and Nevada, Pilz established a reputation for cantankerous competence that assured him employment, but kept him moving for the rest of his life at prospecting, mining, and erecting mills and smelters.

In 1878, Pilz met Nicholas Haley in San Francisco; the men had previously met at a job in California. Haley, who had been stationed with the U.S. Army in Sitka, had rich gold-quartz specimens from the Stewart and other lodes near Silver Bay, south of Sitka.

At first, Pilz thought the ore came from the rich Grass Valley district in California, but Haley introduced George to army officers and soldiers in San Francisco who convinced Pilz the samples were from Alaska.

Pilz found capital for the project, and, in February of 1879, moved to Alaska to start construction of a mine and mill at Silver Bay. Gold processed by Pilz's five-stamp mill was the first lode gold produced in Alaska. The mine shut down early in 1880, when it became evident that it was not rich enough to pay. Pilz was criticized at the time, but subsequent events redeemed his reputation.

To extend his range of prospecting throughout southeast Alaska, Pilz enlisted the aid of several Tlingit tribes. He followed up on their samples with experienced prospectors, including Alaska Mining Hall of Fame inductees Joe Juneau and Richard T. Harris.

One of his prospecting parties opened up Chilkoot Pass, later the gateway to the Klondike, after Navy Captain Beardslee convinced the local Chilkat tribe to open the pass on a profitable freighting basis.

Some of the best samples obtained by Pilz were brought by Alaska Mining Hall of Fame inductee Auk Chief Kawaée, who lived on Admiralty Island, near the site of the modern-day city of Juneau. The samples were almost certainly from the Gastineau Channel area.

Harris and Juneau made their lode discovery in early October 1880, following an early trip that took the men to Gold Creek, where they found good placer showings and fragments of quartz with gold.

On the first trip, Harris and Juneau went as far up Gold Creek as Snowslide Gulch, a left limit tributary, where they found marginally commercial indications of gold. (Snowslide tapped the quartz vein system that became the Ebner mine.)

A grubstake agreement recorded by Pilz allowed Harris and Juneau the right to stake placer claims for themselves, and also the right to stake lode claims for themselves at the ratio of 3:1 favoring Pilz.

Following the discovery of the rich deposits in Silver Bow Basin above the site of the modern-day city of Juneau, Harris and Juneau returned to Sitka. Pilz returned to the new town site with them. He approved of the work that the men had done, and accepted the claims as fairly staked. There were enough miners in the Territory of Alaska to set off a rush to the new site in December 1880.

N.A. Fuller, a storekeeper from Sitka, appears to have been associated with Pilz in some way. Later, Pilz maintained that Fuller was a subsidiary player, always acting on behalf of Pilz and not on his own behalf. The confused matter caused trouble later on for both Pilz and for Richard T. Harris. A Sitka jury sided with Fuller and awarded a judgement against Harris in 1886.

Pilz, who could have aided Harris, was in the San Francisco jail waiting for trial on a fraud charge, a charge that Pilz always denied. Many years later, Pilz had few good words to say about Harris, but numerous letters from the period show that Pilz then regarded Harris as one of his few friends.

Harris and the miners of Juneau sent gold dust to Pilz in San Francisco so that Pilz could make bail. The complex events suggest, again, that Pilz was his own worst enemy.

Pilz almost certainly erected the first prefabricated building in Alaska, when he erected a home pre-built in Sitka. On 7 February 1881 Pilz chaired the miner's meeting that adopted revised rules for the Harris district. He was also involved with the organization and platting of Juneau, then known as Rockwell or Harrisburgh.

Pilz's career took him to Mexico, South America, and several other sites in Alaska. Pilz was in Dawson in 1906; at Katalla in 1907, probably working on coal; in Chitina in 1911, then spent many years in the Forty-Mile region. He died in Eagle, Alaska, on September 15, 1926, vociferous and cantankerous to the end.

By Charles C. Hawley and David B. Stone, 1999.

Alaska Mining Hall of Fame

Edward Webster arrived in Juneau in 1881 and staked placer claims in the Silver Bow Basin with his father, William I. Webster (Stone 1982). Over the next 10 years, the Websters located and developed the Humboldt Mine on Gold Creek. During that period they established the first stamp mill in the Juneau Gold Belt (Alaska Monthly 1907). Webster also worked as a pile driver contractor, engaging in wharf construction along the Juneau waterfront (Alaska Monthly 1907).

Bach arrived in Juneau in 1883, moved across the channel to Douglas and opened a merchandise business (Alaska Monthly 1907; OeArmond 1967).

In 1893, business partners Webster and Frank Bach constructed a two-telephone system across the channel to provide better communication between their residences. The system worked so well that the Treadwell Gold Mining Company connected to the line.

When other residents desired phone service, Webster and Bach formed the Juneau and Douglas Telephone Company. By the late 1890s the partnership dissolved, and Webster assumed full ownership.

Edward Webster married Anna Faulkner-Scott-Knutson-Webster on August 10, 1910 in Juneau. She brought three daughters from previous marriages to the family, twins Mabel Grace Scott and Minerva Beatrice Scott and Carol "Carrie" Swanhilde Knutson-Webster-Jorgenson.

The Edward Webster House, 135-139 West Second Street, sits on the east ridge of Telephone Hill overlooking downtown Juneau. Photographs of Juneau during the 1880s confirm that the Webster House was one of the early homes in the area. Robert E. Hurley, the grandson of Edward and Anna Webster, owned the home when the 1984 Telephone Hill Historic Site and Structures Survey was conducted in 1984.

The Webster family owned and operated the Juneau and Douglas Telephone Company from 1893 to 1968, the first commercial telephone service in Alaska. The phone company was located in the Webster home from 1915 to 1958 (DeArmond 1967; Hurley, Carrigan 1983).

Edward Webster began construction of his house in 1882, and numerous extensions were added during the next 70 years (Hurley, Carrigan 1983). District Recorder records and the 1894 plat map of Juneau Townsite show Edward Webster and his business partner, Frank Bach, owning Lots 7 and 8 in Block 1.

After Webster's death in 1918, his wife, Anna, assumed control of the company until her death in 1957.

The Juneau Memorial Library, aka the Veterans Memorial Building, located at 114 W. Fourth Street, has a commanding presence, sitting on a hillside at the corner of Fourth and Main streets, across from the Alaska State Capitol and overlooking downtown Juneau.

The building stands on a prominent location in the community, next to Alaska's state capitol, on a hill overlooking downtown Juneau with a residential area behind it.

The Juneau Memorial Library, completed in 1951, was the first major community project initiated by Juneau residents. The Juneau Rotary Club undertook construction of a library building for the town's residents as a memorial to the men and women of the area who fought in World Wars I and II.

A local architectural firm designed the stately reinforced concrete building incorporating Neo-Classical Revival architectural elements.

The building housed the community's library until the mid-1980s. It is now the city's museum, continuing to be a public facility serving the community. The period of significance starts in 1951 when the library opened and ends in 1959 to encompass the statehood event.

Following the discovery of gold on Gold Creek in Silver Bow Basin in 1880, the town of Juneau was established. It became a center for large scale hard-rock mining. The city incorporated in 1900 and became Alaska's capital in 1906. It was Alaska's largest community from 1920 to 1950.

In 1897, the Juneau Public Library Association, comprised mainly of local ministers, organized and provided a library collection that was housed in the federal courthouse. In 1898, the building burned and the library with it. A library was not reestablished.

In 1906, a party of American Library Association visitors met with Juneau's mayor and left a collection of books. The mayor told the group he would try to get the City Council to pass an ordinance to establish a free library. Apparently, the Carnegie Library Foundation Association made an offer of a building to the city after the visit.

Juneau did not have a public library again, however, until 1914 when the Juneau Draper Club, a civic group, founded one. The club bought books, rented a small building, and hired a librarian. They opened a reading room in August 1914 and a circulation department in December 1914.

A Juneau Library Association organized in April 1915, and at the end of the year reported 141 monthly subscribers and 55 yearly subscribers to the association. In a letter to the librarian at the Seattle Public Library, dated May 18, 1915, the Association's president wrote that "Our library is small, consisting of about fifteen hundred books, and at present the position pays $75 per month. It is a free circulating library with a reading room. We prefer a lady, one not too young, and a Protestant, If you know of any person or persons who would like this position, will you please have them apply as soon as possible?"

On the first anniversary the library cited impressive statistics. They had 1,180 borrowers, 350 of whom were children. During December 1915 there had been 700 people visiting the reading room. The Draper Club paid $150 to operate the library, and in 1915, the president, Ben D. Stewart, said the group could not continue to support it. Stewart, however, also was the city's mayor. He persuaded the City Council to pledge $1,800 a year for library support.

The City of Juneau took over the library on August 16, 1918, and housed it in two rooms on the top floor of Juneau City Hall. The Juneau librarian wrote an article, "Libraries in Alaska," that appeared in the American Library Association's journal in 1918. The librarian mentioned that Juneau "has not been able to accept the generous offer of a $20,000 building" made the year before by the Carnegie Library Foundation. By the end of World War II the two rooms were badly overcrowded.

The Juneau City Hall was razed in 1950 for construction of the Alaska Office Building, and the library moved temporarily to the Teen Age Club on South Seward Street.

Rev. Herbert Hillerman, Juneau Rotary Club president, announced at the August 28, 1945, meeting shortly after World War II ended that building a library as a memorial and tribute to area veterans of the World Wars would be the Club's top priority.

The next year, under the leadership of B. Frank Heintzleman, Ben D. Stewart, and James C. Ryan, the Rotary Club purchased the Olds family property at the corner of West Fourth and Main streets and hired architects Ross and Malcolm to design a building to be the community library.

The federal Public Works Administration advanced funds to pay for architectural services. The architects completed the drawings in 1946 and the Juneau Memorial Library Board of the Rotary Club sold the land that year for $2,500.00 to the city.

In 1949 a new Alaska Public Works program allowed the architects to increase the size of the building and add the basement to the plans. The Rotary Club then called upon members of the community for donations to construct the building. "Want to buy a ticket?" was heard throughout town. Service clubs, fraternal organizations, church groups and members of the community sold tickets to bazaars, hosted home cooked food sales, dinners, card parties, dances, white elephant sales, minstrel shows and even peddled chances to win an automobile. The Alaska Native Brotherhood and Sisterhood performed tribal dances and the Filipino Community held a special dance and costume exhibition.

Residents raised $82,000 and the federal Public Works Administration provided another $71,000 for construction. Ann Coleman, longtime and beloved community librarian, broke ground for the building on September 10, 1950.

At the dedication ceremony November 11, 1951, Heintzleman said, "this project represents I think the finest example in this territory of community spirit and enterprise working for a cultural project to benefit 'old and young, rich and poor'".

The construction of the library was the first major community effort to "obtain a facility of major size by the direct method of public contributions," making it an example of community planning and development in Juneau. Heintzleman insisted the library serve some twenty smaller communities in the Juneau area as well.

Many local residents view the building as a landmark in the community and have fond memories of it. In 1951, Mike Blackwell was eleven and remembers being paid twenty-five cents an hour to work for Miss Lomen, the librarian, after school each day for two hours and on Saturday afternoons.

The first floor housed fiction and non-fiction and had a high shelf with books children were not allowed to check out. Blackwell remembers that one could examine the loan record in the books, and he often looked at who had checked out a particular book. He also recalls that the new building was spacious and "for a long time there was a lot more room than books."

The library was designed to house 18,000 volumes. The children's section in the basement was called the Ann Coleman Room.

Today, the building is home to the Juneau-Douglas City Museum. According to former librarians Donna Pierce and Barbara Berg, because of the strong emotional attachment to the building the City Museum was the only suitable tenant.

At the May 16, 1989, assembly meeting, local Veterans of Foreign Wars and Donna Olds Barton suggested the building be rededicated as the Veterans Memorial Building. The rededication ceremony was held July 1, 1989, as part of the opening of the Juneau-Douglas City Museum in the building. The building is now dedicated to "all the men and women of the Juneau Area who served in our country's Foreign Wars."

On the library property is the Alaska Statehood Site, significant as the official site of the statehood ceremony and first raising of the 49 star flag on July 4, 1959.

Non-voting territorial delegate James Wickersham introduced the first bill for Alaska statehood in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1916. Low population, geographical separation from the other states, and how Alaskans would pay the expenses of statehood delayed statehood for more than forty years.

Finally, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the proclamation admitting Alaska as the 49tb state of the union on January 3, 1959. By executive order the new 49 star national flag did not become the official ensign until July 4th of the year.

An estimated three thousand people stood at attention as the first 49-star flag was raised in front of the Juneau Memorial Library by a military honor guard on July 4, 1959.

Author, lecturer, world traveler and New Yorker, Lowell Thomas was master of ceremonies. At 3:00 p.m. Governor Bill Egan spoke to the crowd while the flag was being raised. One of the territorial governors, Waino E. Hendrickson, was present. The site, marked with a commemorative plaque between the flagpoles, was dedicated at the ceremony.

Two large weather balloons carrying flags of Alaska and the nation were released in the hopes they would carry the news of Alaska statehood to the rest of the world. A parade went past the front of the library after the ceremony.

The July 6, 1959, edition of the Juneau newspaper reported "Special guests from across the nation observed the 49th star flag raising ceremonies from stands at one wing of the State Office Building. The State signs were carried by members of a delegation of Westinghouse appliance dealers who flew to Juneau for the ceremonies." The flagpoles at the site fly a 49 star flag and an Alaska flag and the plaque can be read by people passing on the sidewalk.

Only two other sites in Alaska associated with Alaska statehood have been documented and designated historic places. Constitution Hall on the University of Alaska campus at Fairbanks was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on November 3, 2005, for its association with the 1955-1956 Constitutional Convention.

The American Flag Raising Site at Sitka, designated a National Historic Landmark on October 15, 1966, is another site of an official statehood ceremony, but it is better known as the site of the ceremonial transfer of Alaska from Russian to U.S. administration in 1867.

Two totem poles, Harnessing the Atom by Amos Wallace installed in 1970 and Four Story-Pole by John Wallace installed in 1994, are on the property and counted as non-contributing objects to its placement on the National Register of Historic Places.

National Register of Historic Register Nomination Form

Juneau Memorial Library Photos

The Valentine Building, built in two phases in 1904 and completed in 1913, is significant for its Frontier Alaskan architectural character, its recognized importance as Juneau's most prestigious office building
during the first half of this century, its association with Emery Valentine and other prominent pioneer Alaskans and significant historic events.

Emery Valentine arrived in Alaska in 1886, possessed of a strong degree of entrepreneurial ambition. At the age of 10, he had already crossed the midwest plains with his pioneering parents.

He followed the Rocky Mountain gold fields as prospector and miner, and lost a leg lost in an early Colorado Territory mining accident.

Still following the gold trails, Valentine arrived in the raw gold camp of Juneau only six years after that significant 1880 Gold Creek discovery by Joe Juneau and Richard T. Harris. He learned goldsmithing—which led him into the gold jewelry trade.

John Olds, one of the first sourdough prospectors following Juneau and Harris, recalled that,"We landed our canoe on November, 1880, at the foot of where Seward Street new is. . ."  This site, just at the-tide mark, was registered, in 1881 as a mining claim, the Boston Lode.

In 1896, yhe year after Valentine's Alaskan arrival, Ernest Ingersoll's best-selling book, Gold Fields of the Klondyke, proclaimed "Juneau, a town of 3,000 is rightly called the metropolis of Alaska Territory. Whether she will retain this prestige remains to be seen. If so, one of two things must occur.  She must plane down
the side of her mountains or erect skyscraping buildings with elevators to accommodate her populace, for nearly every foot of available ground is already occupied. . ."

Emery Valentine was foremost among the developers who found a better way.

When he arrived in Juneau, Front Street was the high tide beach of Gastineau Channel. Emery Valentine, accordingly, was among those who set progress by filling in ground along this derelict beachline. This enabled Valentine to build the first segment of his first building.

"Walking up the stairs to the second floor of the Valentine Building . . . is a trip back into what was the most prestigious business building of Juneau in the early 1900's, built by one of Juneau's colorful pioneer characters ..."  according to Toni Croft & Phyllis Bradner's Touring Juneau; Back Streets, Bawdy-houses, Bars & Bodacious Biographies.

In 1913, the Valentine Building block was advantageously enlarged to in­clude the prime corner lot at Seward and Front Streets. The 1904 structure not only doubled in size, but its impact was vastly enhanced by the most prominent corner location of two streets—rather than only one.

Emery Valentine had come to Alaska in 1886 to satisfy a lifelong desire to develop North America's "Last Frontier." Valentine founded Juneau's finest jewelry store which occupied the city's test retail site at the corner of Seward and Front with exposure on both streets.

Valentine became highly active in Alaskan politics and civic activities. He was Chairman of a city council-type organization called the Juneau Board of Safety, and underwriter and private financier for the first Juneau Fire Department. Valentine served six successful terms as Mayor after Juneau was incorporated in 1900.

Emery Valentine proved his deep commitment to development of Southeastern Alaska. As one of the largest property owners in southeastern Alaska, he helped found the Alaska Steamship Line, the foremost freight and passenger ocean line with service to Seattle. He founded the Peoples Wharf Company Docks at Skagway and Juneau, which so affected shipping charges in these ports, that coal and lumber prices dropped to almost half of the exorbitant rates paid before 1900.

Valentine wanted to erect "a quality structure that would give Juneau a truer air of urbanity."

The Valentine Building was the first in Alaska where office space was intentionally separated from retail space. The building's reputation for quality offices, gained over the years, and its ideal central downtown location, as well as architectural quality, provided elite tenancy for the first half of the century.

Architecturally, the Valentine building is an outstanding example of frontier Commercial architecture that recalls a pioneer Alaskan tradition of quality craftswork; the design responding and interpreting the contemporary archi­tectural developments of the late 19th century West Coast.

Despite intentions to the contrary, the building is a vernacular one; yet impressive in its execution of style. The isolation of Juneau at that time, plus the popularity of pattern books as architectural design aids, provided the fine ornamentation of the building which was available from Seattle millworks).

Stylistically, Valentine Building provides documentation of an historic design evolution.

It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.

National Register of Historic Places Nomination form

William Henderson was a charter member of the Juneau Men's Igloo,

Henderson was born in Nova Scotia, Canada in June of 1865. He immigrated to the United States in 1890.

He came to Juneau in May 1894 and worked at the Ebner Gold Mine in Gold Creek as a mill man in the quartz mill.

1900 U.S. Federal Population Census

Charles W. Wells was a charter member of the Juneau Men's Igloo.

Wells was born in Pennsylvania July 17, 1847. He came west to California in 1867, and later moved to Washington Territory. In 1870 he went to the Omineca mining district of British Columbia and then to the Cassiar in 1874.

In 1879 he went to Sitka and was hired by George Pilz as a blacksmith and worked on the construction of a stamp mill at Silver Bay. Wells was one of the first to come to Juneau from Sitka in the late fall of 1880. He staked both lode and placer claims along Gold Creek some of which later became part of the Ebner Mine and paid Wells good dividends.

Wells claimed a town lot on Main Street, now partly occupied by the Seventh Day Adventist Church, and bought half of another lot at the corner of Front and Main from George Pilz. He put up one building on the water side of Front Street and was ordered by a town meeting to remove it.

It was desired at that time to keep the waterfront open so canoes and rowboats could be pulled up there. Wells also leased a portion of a lot on Front Street from Pierre Erussard, put a blacksmith shop on it and operated there for nine years.

In addition he continued to do a good deal of prospecting and staked a number of claims that he later sold.

On December 21, 1894, Wells married Miss S.B. Fisher at Juneau. He became active in politics and in 1905 was named a member of the Republican territorial Committee, serving on it until his death which occurred in Seattle on January 12, 1917.

The Founding of Juneau, R.N. DeArmond, 1980, p 200

Alaska Native Tlingit and Haida people reportedly occupied Southeast Alaska for hundreds of years prior to European contact.

The Haida lived primarily in the southwestern portion of Southeast Alaska, while the Tlingit resided in the rest of the region. The Auk, Taku and Sumdum tribes of Tlingit people lived in what is now the City and Borough of Juneau at the time George Vancouver's crew noticed smoke from a campfire at an Auke Bay village. This first recorded account of the Auks was in 1794.

In 1867, The United States bought Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million dollars. Gold was known to exist in Southeast Alaska as early as the 1860s located in a string of highly mineralized deposits along the coastline from Windham Bay to Berners Bay.

George Pilz, a Sitka miner, was convinced that gold existed in the Gastineau Channel area when Chief Kowee of the Auk people brought him ore from the mouth of what was to be called Gold Creek. He outfitted two prospectors, Richard T. Harris and Joseph Juneau, and sent them to investigate. Following the creek to its headwaters in Silverbow Basin, they staked a claim on October 4, 1880.

Harris and Juneau established a 160 acre townsite at the beach near the mouth of Gold Creek on October 18, 1880 and named it Harrisburg. In early 1881, a town meeting resulted in the name being changed to Rockwell in honor of the Naval Commander that was sent to the area to establish law and order. By the end of 1881, Joe Juneau lobbied the local miners, complaining nothing in the district had been named for him, and it was agreed to change the town's name to Juneau. In 1900, Juneau was incorporated and named the seat of government for the Alaska Territory.

As early placer mining operations gave way to large underground mines, transportation of vast amounts of goods, materials, and people became increasingly important. The glacial, mountainous, and coastal terrain surrounding the Juneau area made overland transportation impossible. The only reasonable options were by sea and later air.

Juneau's harbor developed with a number of ship docks to handle the influx of commerce to support the growing community. By1901, the Pacific Coastal Steamship Company had a wharf and warehouse facility at the subject site. The facility served the shipping needs of the community until 1924, when Pacific Coastal was purchased by Admiral Line, a competing shipping company, and moved to another location on Juneau's waterfront.

The Juneau Motor Company purchased the property in 1924, and erected a garage and office on the wharf to serve their new business. This was Juneau's first Ford dealership as automobiles became popular.

Aviation history was made on April 15, 1929, when Enscel Eckmann flew into Juneau in his Lockheed Vega named "Juneau." It was the first non-stop flight from Seattle to Alaska. Shortly after arriving, Eckmann formed Alaska-Washington Airways, Juneau's first airline. Alaska-Washington Airways operated out of a hangar built atop a large log raft anchored in front of the Juneau Motor Company facility. During the 1930s there were a number of companies providing float plane service out of the Juneau Harbor. These included Alaska Southern Airways, Pacific Alaska Airways, Panhandle Air Transport,Alaska Air Transport, and Marine Airways.

In 1936, the Juneau Motor company's building and dock were demolished by Alaska Air Transport (AAT) to make way for a hangar and repair shop. Local investors funded the hangar which was built to house five planes. The 5,000 square foot hangar was used in conjunction with a floating hangar already owned by AAT. A wood and steel ramp connected the new hangar to the sea level floating dock allowing loading/unloading of passengers and cargo.

In addition, a lift system, composed of a long boom, slings, pulleys and railroad tracks,was developed to lift planes out of the water and transport them into the hangar on the wharf. The 'crane' was designed by Shell Simmons and used for the first time to lift AAT's Bellanca on August 27, 1936.

Fire destroyed the Alaska Air Transport hangar on June 10, 1938. The Daily Alaska Empire (currently Juneau Empire) reported the fire started from a welding torch that ignited the fabric of a Bellanca Skyrocket float plane. Damage from the fire was estimated at $25,000 and included destruction of the Bellanca Skyrocket, substantial damage to the buildinq, and destruction of machinery, parts and tools. The buildinq was insured and plans were made to rebuild.

Sheldon "Shell" Simmons, owner of Alaska Air Transport, was quoted as saying, "We're in the flying business, same as usual."

Between 1938 and 1939,a new Alaska Air Transport hangar was constructed. In July 1940, Alaska Air Transport and Marine Airways merged to become Alaska Coastal Airlines. After the merger the new company purchased the hangar from the private owner from whom they had been leasing. In 1946, the building underwent a major renovation including a hangar addition of approximately 10,000 square feet. In addition, office space was added in 1951, and a baggage handling area was constructed in 1957. In the 1950's, Alaska Coastal Airlines served 33 towns throughout Alaska, only four of which had airports. Alaska Coastal Airlines was recognized as a model of independency because they were at least 1,000miles away from any repair-shop or parts department, thus all servicing and repairs were done in house.

In the July1959 issue of Popular Mechanics the article, "Alaska's Flying Bus Line", praised Alaska Coastal Airlines as being, "...a most unique air operation that's a tribute to old-fashioned American ingenuity." Many innovations came out of the Alaska Coastal Airlines hangar over the years, in order to combat the harsh Alaska climate and lack of available parts as well as making planes more efficient. Alaska Coastal Airlines retrofitted the first "Turbo Goose" by replacing the original engines with Pratt and Whittney PT6A turboprops.

Coastal Ellis Airlines continued their operations out of the Alaska Coastal hangar. They owned and operated the greatest exclusively amphibian airline in the world, with the largest fleet of the legendary Grumman Goose in private hands. Today five of Alaska Coastal Ellis Airline planes sit in museums around the world. These museums include the McChord Air Force Museum in Washington, DC, the National Canadian Aviation Museum in Ottawa, the Tongass Historical Museum in Ketchikan, the Yanks Air Museum in Greenfield,California, and the Swedish Air Force Museum in Linkoping.

In 1968, Alaska Airlines purchased Alaska Coastal Ellis Airlines. Alaska Airlines did not wish to continue float plane operations based out of the Alaska Coastal Airlines Hangar building, so Dean Williams and Bill Bernhardt formed Southeast Skyways in late 1968 to fill the void, renting the hangar facility from Alaska Airlines. Southeast Skyways was strictly charter until 1969, when Alaska Airlines asked Southeast Skyways to take over the former Alaska Coastal Ellis Airline routes.

In 1974, Henry Camarot, Louis Dischner, and Frank Irich purchased the Alaska Coastal Airlines Hangar. The building was remodeled for use as a retail center with restaurants, shops, and offices. They named the bulldinq "Merchant's Wharf" which continues to serve as a retail center today.

About this time Southeast Skyways was purchased by Wings of Alaska. Although the hangar and repair facilities have been converted to retail uses, Wings of Alaska continues to operate from a floating dock to serve the tourist trade. These floats and associated aircraft activity are reminiscent of former operations at this location and serve as a reminder of the history and historic events of this aspect of Juneau's past.

Alaska Coastal Airlines Hangar Historic Survey, September 2006

The Governor's Mansion was designed by James Knox Taylor. He was a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, then serving as the first Supervisory Architect for the U.S. Treasury Department.

Taylor utilized design premises which had succeeded in Eighteenth Century English and American Colonial country houses.

These houses were designed to produce the most usable space for the cost, with facilities to perform the formal institutional functions required, and spaces amenable to formal and informal living under the same roof.

The examples he appeared to have followed had succeeded in performing these functions. The modifications he designed into this building succeeded admirably. An additional virtue of his design is that it permitted the basic building to be constructed and pressed into full service, with additional finishing construction, furnishing and decorating accomplished over a long period of time, as funds and authorization were provided.

An Act of June 6, 1900, provided that the temporary seat of government for the District of Alaska would be established in Juneau "when suitable grounds and buildings are available." From the passing of this 1900 Act by Congress until the Mansion was completed and occupied in 1913, a series of events—dramatic when considered as a totality moved forward the concept of more self-government for the Territory.

Continued Congressional attention to Alaska resulted in an Act for the Protection of Game, June 7, 1902; an Act Creating Road Districts and Providing for Road Overseers, April 27, 1904; the long-sought Delegate in Congress Act, May 8, 1906. The site of the building had been reserved in 1911 by Executive Order of the President, Number 1331. The Second Organic Act, August 24, 1912 provided that the capital of the Territory ". . .shall be at Juneau."

The Governor's Mansion, already under construction when the Act became law, thus became the first public building constructed for the new permanent capital of the Territory. The Alaska Governor's Mansion was first occupied by the Territorial Governor, Walter E. Clark, and his family, on January 1, 1913.

The Act also created a legislature of twenty-four members—two Senators and four Representatives from each of the four judicial division—to convene "at the capitol at the city of Juneau, Alaska on the first Monday in March in the year nineteen hundred thirteen, and on the first Monday in March every two years there after." The first legislature convened in space rented in the local Elks Club hall.

Juneau was a busy community. It had been founded as a mining camp, and had flourished as a result of the mines on both sides of Gastineau Channel and the marine commerce spawned by traffic between the lower states and the greater Alaska to the north and west.

A. H. Humpheries, an official of one of the mines recalls what Juneau was like in the era when the Governor's Mansion was under construction and the Territorial Government was about to begin full operation in the town, "Juneau in 1912 was alive and booming.

I had gone there from "The Westward" as we called it, out around Cordova and Valdez, after two memorable years in the Kennecott copper and Valdez trail country. ...men were shaved and groomed. Businessmen were in city clothes. A great treat to us was to see women and children on the streets and in the stores. ...the streets were thronged with pedestrians on the sidewalks. Horsedrawn vehicles threaded the centers.

I had spent five years in New York City. It never appeared to me so civilized as Juneau did that first day in 1910. The stores were busy, and displayed good merchandise.

Both the raised sidewalks and the streets in the main part of the city were of planking. They were very clean with streams from fire-hose nozzles. There was an efficient sewer system, ample electricity, and a telephone exchange with "hello girls" who would trace a party for you anywhere they could be reached. ...

The morning following our arrival, after breakfasting..., we sought out the source of the town's activity—the office of the Alaska Gastineau Mining Co., in the Valentine Building . . . and walked out with jobs. My friend was to work with Herman Tripp at Sum Dum Mine. ...Ed Russell published the "Dispatch." . . . "The Juneau Empire"... later, founded by John F. Strong and John W. Troy, . . .They had been associated in Nome with the "Nugget," and much later became governors of the Territory. ...

There was a staff-house with "private mess" down by Gold Creek at the foot of the tram and a big bunkhouse and a mess hall up the hill near the mine.... The mine was in the development and construction stages. Everybody in the organization was new and came from some other place.... ...the Alaska Gastineau mine was being developed for 6.000 tons of ore daily output.

The Alaska Juneau Mine, with an even more modern reduction plant, was planned for 10,000 tons a day, while across the channel the thirty-year-old Treadwell Mine properties were producing enough ore to keep some 2.000 stamps continuously pounding it to pulp 363 days a year. All this activity made the Juneau-Douglas operations for a short time at least, rank as the hard-rock miners' capital of the world....

I was thirty in 1913.... The very recollection of . . . that period fills me with pleasure. We can never recover the feeling we had toward each other in that distant simple age. The nearest I can think of to parallel it, would be a cruise ship that had been long enough at sea for everybody to get acquainted. We had a feeling of being of the world, but separated by time and distance. We were constantly refreshed by the arrival of new people from "below." ... at that period I had never met an adult Caucasian born in Alaska....

In 1912, the only automobile in town was Bart Thane's official Model T. It was chauffeur operated. The streets seemed full of horse-drawn vehicles, buggies, delivery wagons, big Studebaker ranch wagons, a lot of them designed so runners could be substituted for wheels when snow descended on the town. The freighters used "common sense" bob sleds in winter. There was no snow removal at that time. We just tromped it down and wore it out.

There was no radio, and no television in that distant age. But there was plenty of diversion in the big social hall for those off shift. We formed the Ptarmigan Club, and invited the whole town to a house warming dance when the place was opened for business....

It was almost the last stand in Alaska and in the West of the now forgotten art of driving workhorses. . . a string of five or six four-horse or six-horse teams, hitched to heavy Studebaker wagons, loaded high and safety-lashed, teamsters sitting on top or even standing precariously for a better view fore and aft with a handful of lines, would pull out of Willoughby Avenue at a fast walk along Front Street and then, with infinite care make the sharp turn up Seward—hoofs pounding, chains rattling, harness creaking, wheels rumbling, every axle speaking its piece—the leaders prancing proudly with necks arched under their reached manes. One team after another, that was the scene twice a day for several years. . . .

Jay Hayes, Alaska Road Commission superintendent . . . had to keep roads up without money.... By 1915 a few more autos appeared on the streets, plus a few delivery trucks. . . . Cash Cole bought a little red Model T.  Doc Loussac, the druggist, had a black one shipped up....

Juneau was a busy seaport with big cargo and passenger ships docking nearly everyday and sometime three or four...."

National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form

Jualpa Mining Camp is located in Last Chance Basin which is part of the Gold Creek District, one of six mining districts in southeast Alaska's Juneau Gold Belt.

The city of Juneau is one mile to the west of the camp, and Silver Bow Basin is to the east. Last Chance Basin lies between Mount Roberts and Mount Juneau. There are many streams, avalanche slide paths, gullies, and colluvial slopes in the area.

Gold Creek flows west through the center of the basin.

Beginning in the 1880s, mining operations stripped the area of vegetation, but after mining ceased in 1944 many plants reestablished themselves and the area is now densely vegetated.

National Historic Register Application

Jualpa Mining Camp Photos