Digital Bob Archive

8 September 1978 issue

AUGUST 16, 1894-Manager B. M. Smith of the Alaska Electric Light & Power Company has been actively engaged since his arrival from Portland in pushing the work of building the plant. He brought with him all the wire, machinery and wood pipe needed for the plant and now awaits only the Pelton wheel. A power house 16 by 30 has been constructed on the flat beyond Chicken Ridge and 2,000 feet of wooden pipe, 20 inches in diameter, will be laid from the power house to the source of supply on Gold Creek. The main transmission line and branches will require 8 miles of wire. Rates for residence will be $1 for a month. The commercial rate will be $1.50 a month on the 10 p.m. circuit. $2 a month for all night service.

FEBRUARY 4, 1895-Father John Althoff, who has been a resident of Juneau for nearly 10 years, is about to leave Alaska. He first came north to Wrangell in 1879 and built a church there. During the early days of this camp, he made frequent visits to Juneau and he moved here in Juneau, 1885. Father Althoff selected and claimed Block 25 in the townsite and set to work to clear it of timber and put up a building. The building was finished that summer and was an unpretentious structure which housed a chapel on the first floor and living quarters above. Three Sisters of Saint Ann arrived the following summer and a hospital was opened in the old building on September 26, 1886. That year it served a total of six patients. In its first full year, 1887, there were 36 patients and last year there were 89. Additional rooms and buildings have been added from time to time to satisfy the needs of the community.

AUGUST 13, 1913-The main tunnel of the Alaska Juneau Mine has been completed and the work of putting in the raise to the old workings will soon start. The traffic line is also practically completed from the mine to the mill site on the mountainside overlooking Gastineau Channel. A start has been made in clearing the mill site. It is estimated that 1,500 men will be employed next season.

JANUARY 28, 1914-Juneau is experiencing an acute fuel shortage. The city coal bunkers, to which most residents look for their fuel, are empty and so are those of the Pacific Coast Company. Last week the steamer Latouche discharged 250 tons of coal and it was gone in three days. Willis Nowell, agent for the Alaska Steamship Company, announces that the freighter Cordova has been diverted here to discharge 100 tons of coal. This was consigned to the Copper River Railroad at Cordova and is all that can be spared. Mayor Charles W. Carter says that the city has been unable to get delivery of the quantities of coal is has ordered. Wood is greatly in demand but is also in short supply.

SEPTEMBER 3, 1914-Jack Benson, longtime guide on the Chilkoot Trail, who is more commonly known as Chilkoot Jack, is near death St. Ann?s Hospital where he was brought from Skagway several months ago. Jack, whose Tlingit name is ?Kayich,? says that he took George Holt over the trail in 1873 and went with him as far as Lake Teslin and the Hootalinqua River. Holt is said to have been the first white man to cross the pass. Then in 1878 Jack Benson again started over the trail with a small party of white miners but they were turned back by other Chilkats. Benson was taken to task by the other Chilkats and his life was even threatened if he should persist in guiding whites over the trail. They feared that the whites would disturb and destroy their fur trade.

But Jack held firm and in 1880 he guided the Edmund Bean party, consisting of more than 20 miners, over the trail. Still later Benson spent an entire summer with Bean, prospecting along what is now known as the Dalton Trail.
Benson?s adopted daughter, Miss Cora Benson, recently arrived from Skagway to be with him.

SEPTEMBER 30, 1916-A house-warming at the new Perseverance school house in Silver Bow Basin last evening also served as a welcoming reception for Miss Thelma Ninnis, the teacher at this new territorial school.

OCTOBER 13, 1916-Two mails a day instead of one will hereafter be delivered at the Douglas and Treadwell post offices. The Juneau post office will send mail to the two offices on a morning and an afternoon ferry except on Sunday when there will be only one delivery.

NOVEMBER 27, 1922-It has been decided to leave the seaplane Northbird in Juneau for the winter, according to Roy Jones, owner and pilot. It has been planned to fly the craft to Ketchikan on November 10 after it had been in Juneau for more than a month, making flights here. A total of 45 passengers were carried during the local operations . Bad weather has prevented the flight south and the plane will be disassembled and stored in the Union Machine Works building. Jones, who will himself spend the winter at Ketchikan, plans to install a new Hall-Scott motor in the Northbird in April or May, after which he will be ready to carry passengers to all points in Southeast Alaska.

AUGUST 20, 1934-Visitors are now being permitted aboard the hulk of the steamer Islander, beached at Green Cove, Admiralty Island. The owners, the Curtis-Wiley Marine Salvage Company, are now thinking of taking the hull south to be sold for scrap metal. She would make the trip lashed to one of the barges used to raise her, either the Griffson or the Forest Pride. About $40,000 is said to have been recovered, a small return on expenditures of approximately half a million dollars by various salvage companies since she went down in 1901. About $20,000 was recovered in gold dust, the remainder in the form of jewelry, trinkets, and 150 tons of coal.