Digital Bob Archive

Juneau was in a deep economic slump in the first years of this century. Mining in the Gold Creek Valley was dwindling, the fishing industry was barely getting started, and the move of the capital from Sitka gave the town some prestige but not much in the way of business.

The turn-around came when the two largest mining companies in the valley decided to build reduction mills on the shore of the Gastineau Channel. At the head of the valley the Alaska Perseverance Gold Mining Company had lost its 100-stamp mill by fire in December, 1912. The property was taken over by the Alaska Gastineau Mining Company which prepared to build a big mill at the mouth of Sheep Creek, a place that became known as Thane.

The Alaska Juneau Gold Mining Company had a 30-stamp mill on some of the first lode claims staked by Richard Harris and Joe Juneau but were unable to operate it during the winter months. The company decided to drive a haulage tunnel through the mountain and build its mill on the mountainside just south of downtown Juneau.

Those two projects, aided by the coming of territorial government and expansion of the local halibut fishery, touched off a building boom in downtown Juneau.
Hotels, apartment, office and store buildings, and dwellings were constructed and it became obvious that the town needed to expand. But expansion was not an easy matter. To the north the only access was via narrow, twisting Calhoun Avenue which had been laid out solely for access to Evergreen Cemetery. Widening it along the hillside would be expensive and as an alternative the city built Willoughby Avenue, most of it on pilings. When it was finished there was much residential construction north of Gold Creek.

The business community looked to the south for its primary expansion, and that was not easy, either. In 1881 Commander Henry Glass, the Navy officer in charge of keeping order in Alaska, as a peacekeeping measure had settled the Auk Indians north of town and the Taku Indians to the south. The Takus got the worst of that deal; as the timber was cut off the mountainside, snowslides and landslides became a constant plague and by 1913 most of the Takus had moved to Douglas Island. But some Indians land was occupied south of Juneau, and the Pacific Coast Steamship Company had title to a very large chunk of land. There were also other claims that made many land titles dubious.

Some myth makers to the contrary, until after 1912 the Juneau business district ended at the A. Goldstein store, where the Filipino Community Hall is today. South of that, on tidelands, there were some wharves, a couple of boat ways and machine shops, a sawmill and an oil dock.

In 1912 the steamship company began to sell off some of its land holdings, the Alaska Juneau company went to court to clear up some other land titles, and the whole area to the south of downtown Juneau began to sprout new buildings.