Digital Bob Archive

JULY 16, 1887-Not a stick of wood can be purchased in town. The Indians who ordinarily supply this commodity are either working for wages in the mines or out fishing.

JULY 23, 1887-Webster & Sons are busy erecting a 10-ton concentrator at their mill on Gold Creek.

Local prices this week: Flour, $3.25 per 100 lb.; bacon, 15? lb.; crushed sugar, 8 lb. for $1; ground coffee, 25? lb.; potatoes, 3? lb.; onions, 5? lb.; fresh beef, 25? lb.; ham, 18? lb.; beans, 5? lb.

AUGUST 6, 1887-Our waterfront has been busy. In addition to the comings and goings of the mail steamers and local small vessels, the English man-of-war Caroline dropped anchor for a few days and the U. S. Lighthouse Service buoy tender Manzanita, Captain Uriel Sebree, paid us a call. The Manzanita is placing buoys and markers at a number of danger spots along the steamship routes.

According to Frank Starr, our wharf builder, it takes just three men to run a piledriver, but there are generally about 96 others standing about telling the three how it ought to be done.

The Territorial Board of Education met at Sitka in July for the first time. The members, appointed by Secretary of the Interior L. Q. C. Lamar, are Governor Swineford, Dr. Sheldon Jackson and N. H. R. Dawson, U. S. Commissioner of Education. All three were present. It was agreed that sealed proposals for the construction of school houses at Sitka and Juneau will be received at the office of Judge Lafayette Dawson until 11 a.m., August 8. Miss Henrietta Jensen was appointed assistant teacher at Juneau. The salary of men teachers was fixed at $120 per month and of women teachers at $80 per month. It was also decided that the Juneau school building be put on Block 23 which had previously been claimed by Dr. Jackson for school purposes.

AUGUST 13, 1887-George Pilz, the German-born mining engineer, who was the first to become interested in the mineral prospects of this area and who sent Dick Harris and Joe Juneau here in the summer of 1880, is putting a small quartz mill on one of his lode claims at Silver Bow Basin. Some of the pieces of the mill and the pipe for water power are being carried to the site by packers, a distance of nearly five miles from the wharf.