Digital Bob Archive

Frank Starr may or may not have been the first man to live in the part of Juneau that is now known as Starr Hill. In 1893, in a document having to do with some of the land up there, he stated that he had been in possession of the land for more than nine years. Starr was certainly here in 1882 - he arrived early in 1881 - and the trail to the mining area in Silver Bow Basin meandered up toward where Sixth Street now ends, then over the ridge to Last Chance Basin. So what became known as Starr Hill would have been a handy place for a miner to live. But Starr was not a miner, although like nearly everyone else around here, he owned a claim or two. He was a construction man with a specialty of building wharves. He was said to have built the first wharf at Juneau and the first one at Treadwell, as well as several others around this part of Alaska.

Starr was from the State of Maine and he had served in the Civil War. He arrived in Alaska, at Wrangell, in 1873, and may have come there with the Army unit that then garrisoned the place. Later he went to the Cassiar mining district of British Columbia, and from there to Sitka where a census taken by the Navy early in 1881 put his age at 29.

In 1888 Starr operated a salmon saltery at Freshwater Bay on Chichagof Island, and he returned to Juneau from there just about the time George Garfield began to survey the lots and blocks above Harris Street. That area had not been included in the original survey made by a Navy officer. Gustave Hanus, in 1881. Starr claimed some of the newly surveyed lots and put up some houses. There is also an indication that he may have built a reservoir to catch water from some of the springs that later became the Nelson Water System.

By 1892 Starr's health had begun to fail and he could no longer do the heavy work he had been accustomed to. About that time one of his neighbors on the hill, Daniel Kennedy, moved to Kachemak Bay to work a coal mine. Kennedy was the town watchman and Starr got the job. Along with watching for roof fires and minor police work, he initiated what was probably Juneau's first wake-up service. By putting a note in the watchman's call box at Second and Seward, residents could arrange to be called at any hour of the night. Starr had to quit even that job after a year or so and he lived on his rents and his small Civil War pension until his death on November 8, 1898.

Daniel Kennedy, who was another 1881 Juneau pioneer, brought his family back from the Cook Inlet country after a year or so, resumed his night watchman's job, and built a big house at Sixth and Harris Streets. In 1888 he had claimed a 200 by 200-foot lot on Starr Hill and on it he raised vegetables for local sale. Kennedy had married Catherine Kvasnikoff at Sitka in 1878 and two sons were born to them there and three more in Juneau. One son, Dan, served in the Alaska Territorial Legislature, and a granddaughter, Kathryn Poland, served in the State Senate. Kennedy Street on Starr Hill commemorates Daniel Kennedy who died in 1913 at the age of 81.