Digital Bob Archive

It was the mining industry that was in great part responsible for building both Juneau and Douglas, with their homes, business houses, schools, churches, fraternal organizations and all the other elements that go to make up a town.

And it was mainly mining that generated a sizeable local maritime industry. For more than twenty years Gastineau Channel had the largest fleet of small commercial vessels of any port in Alaska, and that despite the fact that the channel at times had some very bad weather and no harbor at all.

In less than two years after the first gold discovery in the Gold Creek Valley, stamp mills were at work on both sides of the channel, and this soon created a demand for transportation back and forth between the two sides. Ferry service developed to meet that demand, but there was a lot more to the local maritime industry than just cross-channel ferry service.

For one thing, mines required lumber and timbers and two early sawmills began supplying them. One was at Douglas, the other at Sheep Creek, and they got their logs from as far away as Seymour Canal and even Wrangell Narrows. Towboats were required to bring in the log booms, and these vessels often doubled as ferries or as freight and passenger carriers on other routes.

These other routes resulted from further gold discoveries: at Snettisham, Windham and Sumdum to the south; at Funter Bay to the west; in the Berners Bay area to the north and, farther away, in the Yukon Valley. Until after the Klondike discovery in 1896, Juneau was the chief outfitting and jumping off point for men heading for that vast area to prospect for gold.

The first prospectors went into the Yukon Valley from Sitka in 1880. During 1881, after the Juneau discovery, they worked in this area, but beginning in 1882 an increasing number each year went by boat to what was then called Yukon Portage but later became known as Dyea. From there they packed their outfits over Chilkoot Pass to the headwaters of the Yukon River. During the spring of 1887, which was the first year Juneau had a newspaper, at least 100 men left here for the Yukon. By 1893 the local paper counted more than 300 men who had \"gone inside\" from Juneau.

Carrying those men and their outfits everything they would need for three to six months of prospecting - kept more than a few local steamboats busy. And in the fall they were busy again with Yukon prospectors coming \"outside\" to spend the winter at Juneau or Hoonah Hot Springs (now Tenakee Springs), or to catch a steamboat for Seattle.

In time still another source of revenue was added to the towing and the freight and passenger business: carrying the U.S. mails to a multitude of places throughout the northern half of Southeastern Alaska. For more than half a century the mail boats, a great variety of them, were a familiar sight on Gastineau Channel.