Digital Bob Archive

Norris Glacier is just west of Taku Glacier and is a remnant of the Juneau Ice Field. The Tlingit name is said to be Kadischle. Navy officers in 1886 named it for a Navy Surgeon, Dr. Basil Norris, about whom no biographical information has been learned. In 1890 the U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey gave it the name Windom Glacier for William Windom, a U.S. Secretary of the Treasury. The Survey at the same time put the name Foster Glacier on what we know as Taku Glacier. Local usage rejected both names, perhaps showing disdain for Treasury Secretaries.

Hole in the Wall Glacier and Twin Glacier, on the eastern side of Taku Glacier, are local names. Wright Glacier, on the east side of the Taku River and straddling the International Boundary, feeds the sizeable Wright River. It was named in 1891 by C.W. Hayes of the U.S. Geological Survey. Hayes that year accompanied Frederick Schwatka on his exploration of the Taku-Atlin Lake route.
He was a graduate of Oberlin College and named the glacier for George Frederick Wright, a professor of language and literature at Oberlin College and of theology at Oberlin Theological Seminary. Wright, who was born in 1838, served for a short time in the Civil War and was an assistant geologist in the Pennsylvania Survey and the U.S. Geological Survey before he turned to teaching and the writing of a number of books. He died in 1921.

A longtime resident of the Juneau area is commemorated by Carlson Creek which flows into Sunny Cove on the west side of Taku Inlet. John L. Carlson was born in Stockholm, Sweden, on December 9, 1847, and came to the United States in 1874. He became a fisherman and canneryman at Astoria, Oregon; made a trip to Alaska in 1890 to look for a cannery site, and moved north in 1900. In subsequent years he operated salmon canneries at Taku Inlet, Chilkat Inlet, Taku Harbor and Auke Bay. He died on August 9, 1921.

A short distance up Taku Inlet from Carlson Creek is Annex Creek which flows from Annex Lakes and is the site of a hydroelectric power plant operated by the Alaska Electric Light & Power Co. When Joseph MacDonald, the superintendent of the Treadwell mines, filed a claim to the water of the creek for power purposes in 1901, he called it Sumer Lake. The source of that name is unknown, and the place names dictionary says only that Annex is \"a local name published by the U.S. Geological Survey in 1916.\" The permit for the present power plant was granted in 1915 to the Alaska Gastineau Mining Company which was building a reduction mill at Thane. A dam was built, machinery installed, and the plant went into operation in January, 1916. The dam carried away in 1935 and was rebuilt the following year.

Bullards Landing is, or was, on the east side of Taku Inlet, below Taku Lodge. The name has unfortunately disappeared from most modern maps and in the place names dictionary is classed as an obsolete name. Benjamin Bullard, who was born in Michigan in 1848, came north in 1897 and was a resident of the Juneau area for more than 30 years. He homesteaded on the Taku in 1910 and lived there until his death in 1933. Bullards Landing should be marked as a monument to a real pioneer.