Digital Bob Archive

Bishop Point and Greely Point mark the entrance to Taku Inlet, but neither has any particular association with the area and its history.

What is now Bishop Point was named Point Salisbury in 1794 by Captain George Vancouver, RN, for the Bishop of Salisbury. The bishop was James Douglas, for whom Vancouver named Douglas Island. And James Douglas got his name on the Alaska map not because he was a distinguished English prelate, but because he had edited the journal of Captain Cook's second voyage, of which Captain Vancouver was an officer. When the Vancouver's charts were made up, the name Salisbury was accidentally transferred to another point, some three miles to the west. W.H. Dall of the Coast & Geodetic Survey put the name Bishop Point on the map in 1883.

Greely Point, on the east side of the entrance to Taku Inlet, was named by Lieut.-Commander H.B. Mansfield, USN, in 1890 while he was in command of the Coast & Geodetic Survey ship Patterson. He named the point for General Adolphus Washington Greely who was born in Massachusetts on March 27, 1844. During the Civil War he rose from private to captain and brevet major and after the war he remained in the regular Army. In 1881-1884 Greely commanded the International Polar Expedition to Lady Franklin Bay in northern Canada and was one of its seven survivors.

In 1887 Greely was promoted to brigadier general and became the chief signal officer of the Army. In that capacity he oversaw the building of thousands of miles of telegraph lines in the western part of the country, including Alaska. In 1906 he was placed in charge of relief operations after the San Francisco earthquake. Greely was author of many articles and books, including \"Handbook of Alaska,\" published in 1925. He died on October 20, 1935.

Another name placed on the map of Taku Inlet by Lieut.-Commander Mansfield in 1890 is Cooper Point on the west shore of the inlet. There is no documentation of his source. Most of the officers on C&GS ships in those years were from the Navy, and the commanding officers frequently named geographic features for the officers serving under them. No officer named Cooper is listed as serving in the Patterson in the years 1889-91 when Mansfield was her commander. A possible source for the name is Philip Henry Cooper, USN, who graduated from the Naval Academy three years ahead of Mansfield. The two men may have served together on a survey in Mexico in 1871.

Cooper was born in Camden, New York, in 1844, and graduated from the Academy in time to serve in several sea battles of the Civil War. He had two tours as a teacher at the Naval Academy and was its superintendent in 1894-98. After that he commanded the cruiser Chicago during the Spanish American War and retired in 1904 after serving as commander-in-chief of the Asiatic Fleet. He died in December, 1912.

A prominent Taku Inlet place name without a clue to its origin is Turner Lake which in 1890 was reported by the Coast & Geodetic Survey simply as a \"local name.\"