Digital Bob Archive

19 May 1978 issue

SEPTEMBER 8, 1913-Hatcheries are the solution of the salmon supply problem according to E. A. Sims who is interested in the Hoonah Packing Company and in the floating cold storage plant ?Glory of the Seas.?

Mr. Sims points out that Washington State has 24 hatcheries which this year released 400,000,000 young salmon. He expects these to come back to form a bigger run than this years very large one. Hatcheries are much more efficient than natural spawning, Mr. Sims believes, and he expects that Washington will have large salmon runs perpetually.

SEPTEMBER 3, 1913-Professor W. G. Beattie, superintendent of Indian Schools for Southeastern Alaska, has received instructions to close the government hospital here and this will be done on the 5th. Arrangements have been made with St. Ann?s to take over the cases now in the hospital and all future cases. There are now two patients at the government hospital which has operated for three years. There was no appropriation this year for its continuation. The building belongs to St. Ann?s and has been leased by the government.

JANUARY 2, 1913-The Cyanide Ball, the annual New Year?s eve dance given by the men of the Treadwell cyanide plant, was without reservation the most brilliant affair of the season.

The large rooms of the Treadwell Club took on the appearance of fairyland, with evergreens and subdued lights. The ball program, of 12 pages, each with a bit of verse and a suitable etching, told the whole story of the cyanide process.

Special ferries carried people from Juneau to Treadwell for the ball and home again when the affair ended.

MAY 21, 1891-Last week a large snowslide occurred in Snow Slide Gulch this side of the Coulter mill. Thousands of tons of snow came crashing down the mountain sides, sweeping everything before it into Gold Creek. Mr. Van Buren, a miner, was asleep in this cabin when the slide struck it and together with the cabin was carried a distance of about 100 feet. Strange to say, he escaped without serious injury and only a few scratches, but he does not care to try such rapid transit again.

MAY 18, 1917-Juneau lost one of its oldest and most loved residents last night or early this morning with the death of China Joe, also known as Joe the Baker. He had a Chinese name, too, listed in various records as Ah Hie, Hi Chung, and Ting Tu Wee, but China Joe was the name he was known by in Juneau for nearly 36 of his more than 80 years, and he was known to everyone and he liked everyone.

Joe was especially fond of children and always had cookies for those who visited his little bakery at the northwest corner of Third and Main. Joe?s building, where he also lived, was never molested by children on Hallowe?en. He was their friend. And each year on Chinese New Year he held open house for his many adult friends, with many exotic goodies.

Joe was born somewhere in China and he landed at Victoria, B. C., in 1864. From there he went to the mining camp of Boise, Idaho, and spent some 10 years in that area. Then cam the rush north to the Cassiar district, north of the Stikine River, in 1874, and Joe joined the thousands who made that trek. He established a bakery at one of the main camps, Laketon, and apparently did well.

Then came the event that greatly influenced his life and well-being later. One autumn the Stikine froze up early and the last supply boats could not get up the river to Glenora. In addition, hundreds of prospectors and miners who had planned to leave for the winter were frozen in around Dease Lake. There was enough fish and game to prevent starvation, but barely enough, and there was a shortage of most staples, including flour. In fact, China Joe at Laketon had the only large supply of flour as well as some shortening and sugar. He held a virtual monopoly on those items, but he did not take advantage of it. Instead of raising his prices he portioned out his stock to all comers on a share alike basis, even to those who could not pay. The only public recognition he received for this great generosity at the time was a brief mention in a Victoria newspaper the following summer, but he was repaid some 10 years later.

Meanwhile, however, when the gold of the Cassiar began to play out, Joe moved to Wrangell. There he acquired an abandoned river steamer, the Hope, which had been beached in front of the town. He fitted it out as a boarding house, renting the staterooms and providing meals, and several present residents of Juneau lived on the Hope. In 1879 there was a minor stampede to Sitka as a result of a lode gold discoveries at Solver Bay, and Joe moved there. He remained until 1881 when the new discoveries along Gold Creek brought him to what is now Juneau. On July 18, 1881, he paid Mike Duquette $60 for a 50 by 50 foot lot and put up the little building that has served him ever since.

In the summer of 1886 the Gastineau Channel area succumbed to the wave of anti-Chinese sentiment that was sweeping the Pacific Coast. Some 80 Chinese in Juneau, Douglas and Treadwell were rounded-up, loaded aboard two small sailboats and told to leave and never return. The round-up included all of the Chinese on the channel, except one. The one was China Joe. At that time there were many of the old Cassiar men in this vicinity and they remembered the starvation winter on Dease Lake. Joe?s generosity was at last repaid.

China Joe, whose age is shown in some records as 87, died alone in his little house, but he did not die unloved. He will be buried in Evergreen Cemetery where he will join many of his old comrades from the Cassiar and from the early days in Juneau.

SEPTEMBER 6, 1913-At last night?s meeting the City Council passes a street naming and numbering ordinance. Street signs will be erected on each corner and each house in the city will be assigned a number.

?Lower Franklin Street? is abolished and it will become part of Front Street. Streets in the new Casey Shattuck Addition have been assigned numbers and letters, with A Street at the upper end of the addition.

The Council also voted to change Farnum Street to Distin Avenue in honor of W. L. Distin, Surveyor General and ex-officio Secretary of Alaska, soon to retire.