Digital Bob Archive

Telephone Hill is the name it is known by today, but looking back over the years, it might well be called the hill of many names. The names Chicken Ridge, Telegraph Hill and Knob Hill were mentioned last week. The Juneau townsite was surveyed by a Navy officer, Gustave Hanus, In 1881, and he platted Blocks 1, 6 and 7 on the hill. At least 16 of the lots in those blocks were claimed that year, mostly by miners, but few of the claimants built houses and in fact very few of them stayed around Juneau for more than a year or two.

A Navy contingent was sent here from Sitka in 1881 and that year it put up two log dwellings on the hill, one for officers and one for enlisted men, on a part of the area now occupied by the State Office Building. Navy Hill, or sometimes Garrison Hill, became the name for that portion of the hill and continued in use after the contingent returned to Sitka after a year or so.

Sometime in the early 1880s William I. Webster and his son Edward Webster put up the first sizable dwelling on the southern part of the hill. With several additions, the building still stands and a part of it is undoubtedly the oldest structure in town. The Websters installed and operated the first stamp mill on Gold Creek; the father was deputy Collector of Customs here for several years and was for nine years the Juneau agent for the Pacific Coast Steamship Company. The son had a pile driving business and, with a partner, founded the Juneau and Douglas Telephone Company. The southern part of the hill became known as Webster's Hill or Webster Heights.

Although the Navy had moved out, it continued to own the buildings until 1884 when they were turned over to the new civil government. They had been built of green logs and were rotting away by then. Once the civil government was in place, Juneauites began clamoring for a public building and in 1893 they got one in the shape of a federal court house and jail, built on the old Navy site. The name Court House Hill immediately came into use and continued to be used, especially for the part of the hill north of Third Street, even after fire destroyed the court building in January, 1898. A replacement was not built until 1904.

The court rooms and Justice Department offices moved to the new Federal and Territorial Building (now the State Capitol) early in 1931, leaving only the jail and an apartment for the U.S. Marshal In the building on the hill, which was sometimes referred to as Jail House Hill.

A number of news stories in the early years of the century used the name Horseshoe Hill, apparently because the Horseshoe Building stood on Main Street just below First. And that building got its name from the fact that a part of it was occupied by the Horseshoe Saloon. Another occupant, from 1900 until 1915, was the Juneau and Douglas Telephone Company. Owner Ed Webster enlarged his house on the hill and moved the telephone company into it in 1915, and the name Telephone Hill at once came into use and has continued despite the fact that the telephone exchange moved off the hill thirty years ago.

When, one wonders, will Telephone Hill become Capitol Hill?