Digital Bob Archive

Dr. Sheldon Jackson was in Juneau in May, 1885, to get the town's first public school started, and while he was here he took the first steps toward a permanent school location. The miners, with the help of a Navy officer, had laid out the streets and the blocks of land from the waterfront up the hill to what they called Chicken Ridge, along 7th Street. By 1885 most of the timber had been cleared from the hillside, for firewood and cabin building, but there were only a few small cabins above Fourth Street.

Block 23, was and is above Fifth Street, between Seward and Franklin, and when Dr. Jackson began looking for a school site in 1885, the block was vacant except for a small cabin on Lot 5. Adjoining Lot 6 had also previously been claimed and those two claims were valid and the lots eventually were purchased by the City of Juneau. Dr. Jackson filed a claim to the entire block as \"a reserve for school purposes\" and had a fence built around the block.

In the meanwhile for the school year 1886-87 classes continued in the log cabin at Third and Main with Dr. F.F. White, a physician and surgeon, as the teacher. Dr. Jackson wrote of the school: \"Attendance at the beginning of the year was largely Americans and Creoles as the Natives were away preparing their winter food. Total attendance increased as the Natives returned, but that of the Americans and Creoles fell off. It was the old story of mixed schools. The first and second chiefs of the Auke tribe were at times daily attendants and their children were among the most regular of the pupils.\"

Block 23, surrounded by its fence, was described as swampy and full of stumps, and no other claims to it were filed until the spring of 1887. Then news came from Washington that the appropriations bill included $5,000 to construct school houses at Sitka and Juneau. Immediately after the news was received, four people claimed lots within the school block. Two of them were J.C. and F.E. Howard, father and son and proprietors of the town's only newspaper, The Alaska Free Press. These claims were not mentioned in the paper, nor for that matter was the school house itself mentioned when it was built that fall. But all four new claims to the land were rejected.

The architect for both schools, which were identical, was paid $15. Material for the Juneau school was purchased from John G. Brady who had a sawmill at Sitka and had recently opened a store in Juneau. The cost was $1,133.74. E.B. Crawford had the construction contract, at $1,132.26. Cost of the Juneau school, then, would have been approximately $219 under budget.

The Juneau school house was built on the upper part of the lot, which may have been the least swampy part. It was 34 feet square and a story and a half high although the upper part was used only for storage. The building was divided in half by a partition of sliding panels and each room had an outside entrance. For the first time Juneau had a real school house.