Digital Bob Archive

The Klondike Gold Rush brought a lot of business to Juneau merchants, including B.M. Behrends. His lot at Third and Seward was completely filled with the original Hugh Wyman residence and a hodge-podge of additions to it, so when he needed more space for goods in 1897, he built a warehouse on the triangular piece of ground on Calhoun, just below his residence. And in 1898 he replaced, piece by piece, the entire conglomerate at Third and Seward with a new three-story frame building that remained on the site until it in turn was replaced, in 1966, by the present Behrends Building.

The banking department had been carried on in the store office, but in 1898 Behrends bought the building next to his store, on Seward Street, and in December moved the bank into its own separate quarters where it remained until December 1914.

In June 1900, Congress enacted legislation which, for the first time, enabled Alaska municipalities to incorporate. Juneau was one of the first cities to take advantage of the new law and when the election was held on June 29, 1900, B.M. Behrends was elected one of the seven members of the first City Council. He was elected to a second term in 1901. In addition to his membership on the City Council in 1900. Behrends was appointed City Treasurer, a position he was to hold for more than twenty years. In fact, for the next thirty years or so Behrends might well have been known as Mr. Treasurer. When an organization, fraternal, political or civic, required a treasurer, he was likely to be named. During World War I President Wilson named Behrends the Director of Savings for all of Alaska.

On the business front Behrends also continued to expand. He was one of the incorporators of the Ebner Gold Mining Company which operated in Gold Creek Valley, and a vice president of the Julian Berners Mining Company, north of Juneau. He was a stockholder in the Goldstein Glacier Fur Farm, Inc., in the Mendenhall Valley, as well as in several other local corporations. In 1904 Behrends incorporated his merchandising business and in 1914 incorporated his banking business. That was the year he built the concrete bank building on Seward Street opposite the store. The bank opened in its new quarters on December 21, 1914.

The Behrends store narrowly escaped destruction when the adjoining Juneau Hotel burned to the ground. Behrends broke out his entire stock of blankets, soaked them in water and spread them over his building which was charred but did not burn.

For many years the biggest rival to the Behrends mercantile business was the Goldstein Emporium, also on Seward Street, and this rivalry extended to the annual baseball game between \"Behrends Pickle Pushers\" and the \"Goldstein Ribbon Clerks.\"

Mrs. Behrends was taken ill aboard a steamer while returning to Juneau and died at Ketchikan on February 12, 1936. Later that year Mr. Behrends, making a tour of northern Alaska, was taken ill at Cordova. He died in the hospital there on August 12. Both were buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Juneau and Behrends Avenue was named in their honor.