Digital Bob Archive

Dynamite blasts were no novelty to residents of Gastineau Channel in the 1920s, but 21 blasts evenly spaced in succession were a little out of the ordinary.
Even the fact that the blasts were fired from the hillside near the Alaska Juneau mill instead of deep inside the mine caused no great surprise. It was 65 years ago and the Navy transport Henderson was steaming slowly up the channel on that Tuesday morning, July 10, 1923.

The dynamite blasts were fired by Alaska Juneau miners as a salute to President Warren G. Harding, who was aboard the Henderson and on the third day of a 20-day tour of Alaska. Although their salute was properly recognized locally, the miners did not get credit in the national press, which attributed it to soldiers from Chilkoot Barracks.

President Harding was the first U.S. President to visit Alaska while in office, and the only one to this date to make a tour, although others have traveled along the coast in a warship or touched down during an airplane refueling stop. Such a long and leisurely tour of a remote corner of the nation is almost inconceivable today. Traveling by ship and rail, the President visited, in order, Metlakatla, Ketchikan, Wrangell, Juneau, Skagway, Seward, Anchorage, Matanuska, Chicaloon, Wasilla, Nenana, Fairbanks, Valdez, Cordova and Sitka, as well as numerous whistle stops along the Alaska Railroad. He \"drove\" the train from Wasilla to Willow and at Nenana he swung a hammer on a golden spike to officially open the railroad. He fished in the Russian River on the Kenai Peninsula (he didn't catch anything) and along the route he shook hands with thousands of Alaskans.

The Alaska visit was billed as a fact-finding trip and with the President were three of his cabinet officers: Work of Interior, Hoover of Commerce and Wallace of Agriculture, as well as a number of White House staffers. Speaker Frederick H. Gillette was also aboard, as were Alaska's Governor Scott C. Bone and our Delegate in Congress, Dan Sutherland. Other high officials of various departments joined the party along the way. Cabinet officers and others of the party held many meetings with the public and listened to hours of testimony about Alaska's problems.

Also on board the Henderson were no fewer than 21 reporters from newspapers and press services across the country. Eight of these reporters were members of the Gridiron Club in Washington, D.C., and at Fairbanks they held a special meeting with Governor Bone, who was also a member.

As the Henderson arrived at Juneau, the President had already suffered one disappointment that morning. It had been announced the evening before that she would enter Taku Inlet and would fire her five-inch guns at the face of Taku Glacier to encourage calving. The President arose early to view the spectacle, but it didn't happen. A fog shut down, completely obscuring the glacier from view and no shots were fired.