Digital Bob Archive

The great bulk of Alaska - all of it west of Sitka - was totally without regular mail service during the first 24 years under the American flag. It was not until July, 1891, that a small steamer left Sitka with mail for Yakutat, Nuchek (a trading post on Hinchinbrook Island), Odiak (a cannery at the present site of Cordova), Kodiak, Unga, Humbolt Harbor (a codfish station in the Shumagin Islands), Belkofsky, and Unalaska. It was nicknamed \"the fur seal route\" because it followed the path used by the fur seal herd enroute to the Pribilof Islands each spring, and for some years the contract called for mail service only during the six months April-September.

The vessels used for the westward mail run were small. Very little cargo was offered because both the trading companies and the canners had their own vessels, carrying both freight and passengers. All of that changed in 1895, however, with the discovery of gold along Resurrection Creek and Six Mile Creek, both of which flow into Turnagain Arm of Cook Inlet. That touched off Alaska's first gold rush. It wasn't a Klondike or a Nome, but it brought hundreds of men to Alaska and the area produced some $780,000 worth of gold by the end of the century.

The Cook Inlet Rush brought changes in the mail route, notably a year-around service. And several new ports of call were added. One was at Portage Bay, Prince William Sound,. where the town Whittier is today. From there the goldseekers could climb over a glacier and down again to the head of Turnagain Arm. A second one was at Tyonek, near the upper end of Cook Inlet. From Tyonek passengers and freight were transported to the mining towns of Hope and Sunrise on Turnagain Arm.

The Kenai Peninsula gold mines generated a good deal of marine traffic. A larger vessel was placed on the mail run and another company began sending a steamer to Portage Bay and Tyonek, with a stop at Sitka, and Sitka merchants laid in larger inventories of the supplies desired by the miners. That was not overlooked by Juneau merchants and soon there was a lobbying effort to have the eastern terminus of the mail route changed from Sitka to Juneau.

The Post Office Department, a slow motion outfit, might never have made the change had it not been for the Klondike Rush. It changed the entire steamboat traffic pattern; instead of stopping first at Sitka, the boats headed directly for Lynn Canal, with a stop at Juneau. Many of them bypassed Sitka entirely. So Juneau became the home port of the western mail steamer; it picked up mail, freight and passengers here, made a brief stop at Sitka, then went on to Yakutat and ports west. Theretofore Juneau's only marine mail route had been up Lynn Canal to the mining camps of Jualin and Comet, then on to Haines, Skagway and Dyea. The mail route to Unalaska, in 1897, marked the beginning of a fleet of mailboats out of Juneau.