Digital Bob Archive

Rockwell was the name the miners picked, on February 10, 1881, to replace the name Harrisburgh for the mining camp on the shore of Gastineau Channel. Harrisburgh got only one vote that day, Juneau got 15 and Rockwell carried the day with 18.

Lieut.-Commander Charles H. Rockwell, USN, attached to the ship Jamestown, anchored at Sitka, and a contingent of sailors and Marines had traveled to the new camp in a Navy steam launch, and he had held a couple of meetings with the miners. The new name would cause some confusion because the Post Office Department was already in the process of establishing a post office with the name Harrisburgh. During the next year or so letters often arrived addressed to \"Harrisburgh, also known as Rockwell\" or to \"Rockwell, also known as Harrisburgh.\" The Navy, however, adopted the name Rockwell and, later on, Camp Rockwell.

After a visit to Rockwell at the end of April, Commander Henry Glass of the Jamestown decided that the camp should have a permanent Navy garrison. He picked a site for a camp and in May sent over from Sitka in the mail steamer California a contingent of officers and men under Lieut.-Commander Rockwell, with lumber and other building material, supplies, small arms and a Gatling gun.

The boundaries of the Navy reservation were surveyed, trees were cut down and two buildings were erected. One of them measured 16 by 30 feet, the other 12 by 20 feet, according to a report by Lieut.-Commander Rockwell (the plans on the opposite page are evidently not to exact scale). In addition to the two buildings shown in the photograph on the cover, there was a large tent and a small log cabin. The Navy men moved in on May 31.

The photograph of Camp Rockwell was taken by Henry H. Brobeck of Walla Walla, Washington. In April 1881 he entered into a contract with the Oregon Railway & Navigation Company, which had the Alaska mail contract. He was to travel to Southeast Alaska on the company steamer and take a series of photographs which were to be used, apparently, for tourist promotion. Brobeck also made some arrangement with the Northwest Trading Company, headquartered in Portland, which had trading posts at Sitka, Killisnoo, Hoonah, Pyramid Harbor and perhaps at other places. In Southeast Alaska he traveled on the company steamer, the Favorite, and took pictures of company trading posts.

The date the picture was taken is not known but it was either in June or early July as Brobeck was back in Walla Walla on July 23. The entire garrison, including the drummer, is probably in the picture, and there are a couple of civilians, a man and a woman.

In October Commander Glass in the USS Wachusett visited Rockwell, found all quiet and reduced the garrison to ten Marines. He returned on December 7. On the 14th, at a miners' meeting, it was voted to change the name of the town to Juneau, and the following day Commander Glass took aboard all the men and equipment from Camp Rockwell and declared it closed. The buildings were turned over to the postmaster and the deputy Collector of Customs. The hilltop remained a government reserve.