Digital Bob Archive

The Juneau Cold Storage fire may not have been the most costly fire in Juneau's history, but with the possible exception of the Alaska Juneau mill fire, which was not combatted, it was the longest. The cold storage fire was a sad event during the 100th anniversary year of the Juneau Volunteer Fire Department.

For very nearly 74 years the Juneau Cold Storage plant, in two different locations, has been a waterfront landmark, and during most of those years it was an important factor in the Juneau economy. In fact, in the years between the shutting down of the Alaska Juneau mine and the growth of big government, which mostly came after statehood, the cold storage can be said to have been a mainstay of the economy.

Thousands of tons of ice were manufactured there and sold to vessels of the fishing fleet. Millions of pounds of halibut and salmon and black cod were frozen or mild cured or canned or, in some years, shipped fresh from the plant.

The first plant of the Juneau Cold Storage Co. was built on the north edge of the City Dock, where the ferry terminal is now. That was in 1913 and the original plant sufficed to take care of the business until the first section of the new cold storage was built in the summer of 1927. It began freezing fish on October 15 of that year. An addition was made the following year, nearly doubling the storage capacity, and other additions were made in later years.

The fire on May 24 was not the first at the Juneau Cold Storage. On a cold winter day, January 17, 1956, during the noon hour, fire broke out in the ice crusher room of the fish house on the wharf at the plant.

The cause was thought to be electrical; a steamer had recently rammed rather heavily into the dock and some connections may have been loosened. The ensuing fire destroyed the fish house which also housed the shrimp and salmon cannery, only recently completed, and the retail fish and meat market.

Hard hit by that fire were the owners of 16 vessels of the local halibut fleet who had their gear store on the second floor of the fish house. That loss was put at $50,000 and the loss of the fish house at half a million.

There is an odd thread connecting the two cold storage fires and those in some other Juneau buildings. The first cold storage was built by contractor A.W.
Quist. The next year he built the Goldstein Building in downtown Juneau, and in 1927 he built the second cold storage. A year later he built a cold storage addition and in 1939 he built the Baranof Hotel.

The Goldstein Building burned in 1939 but the walls withstood the flames and were used in the present Goldstein Building. In 1956 the cold storage fish house, at least partly built by Quist, burned; in 1959 the original cold storage burned in the Juneau Plywood Plant fire, and over the years the Baranof Hotel has had more than its share of fires. The most recent of the Quist building fires occurred on May 24. Presumably it is just one of those odd coincidences.