Digital Bob Archive

The Red Dog Saloon has been a major tourist attraction as well as a popular local drinking place ever since its swinging doors swung wide for a gala opening two days before Christmas in 1950 and across the street from its present location. Earl Forsythe and Ray Mansfield had that fall purchased the license and taken over the location of what had been Bailey's Cafe and then Bailey's Bar in what oldtimers knew as the Germania Building, a holdover from pre-prohibition days. The Royal Cafe next door had recently closed and they took over that part of the building, knocked out a partition, nailed some log slabs to the street wall, spread a couple of loads of sawdust from Tom Morgan's Columbia Lumber sawmill on the floor, and opened as an old-timey drinking place.

In the years when Hattie played ragtime piano and the cruise ships were limited to the Prince George, the Princess Patricia and a couple of smaller vessels, the place was always packed when the boats were in, and that is saying a good deal because it had an immense floor area. It didn't do badly at other times, either, and was for one thing the meeting place of the Upper Yukon River Press Club, now existing only in fond memory.

One feature of the place, in the old Germania half, was an embossed tin ceiling that must have dated back before the turn of the century. At that time, before there were license fees for any business establishments, there were dozens of saloons in Juneau. When the licensing law arrived in 1899, most of them closed but the Germania was one that did not. It had been started, apparently about 1896, by a man named Chris Heinecke. A few years later it was acquired by a pair of Irish brothers, Jack and Jim McCloskey, who had made stakes in the Atlin gold diggings.

The brothers must have foreseen how the ballots would be marked when the Alaska's voters went to the polls in November, 1916, to decide on prohibition for the Territory. They sold out to W.A. Ferguson who renamed it Ferguson's Place and ran it until December 31, 1917. when all the saloons went out of business. A man named A. Scataylini occupied the site for a year or so, then Mary Young moved her Arcade Cafe there from farther down Lower Front Street, as South Franklin was then known. In December, 1930, Chris Bailey, who had operated the Poodle Dog Cafe in Ketchikan for many years, moved to Juneau and bought the Arcade. He kept that name for a year or two, then changed it to Bailey's Cafe.

When the Alaska Bone Dry Law was repealed in 1933, the Legislature created a variety of liquor licenses, one of which was a dispensary license. Dispensaries could sell beer and wine by the drink, but not hard liquor. It was the Walker Law ()f 1939 - for Norman R. \"Doc\" Walker of Ketchikan - that brought back the saloon, or cocktail bar. Most of the dispensaries took out the new license, and by the tall of 1939 there were seven saloons in Juneau. And at the end of the year, Chris Bailey closed his restaurant and opened Bailey's Bar.

After the Red Dog opened, its owner for many years was Gordon Kanouse and it was he who moved the business across the street to its present site in the old Butler Mauro Drug Store Building. And long may it remain and prosper!