Juneau, the Capital of Alaska

Juneau, the Stunning Capital Of Alaska 

Home of the Mendenhall Glacier & the Bald Eagle, the City was established by Canadian miner Joseph Juneau 

By Bala Menon

The picturesque downtown of Juneau. Pic: © Bala Menon

A couple of bald eagles suddenly swoop down, level off  and soar away towards the wooded mountains behind a block of red and white painted buildings. The bald eagle has been the national emblem of the United States since 1982 and we are approaching the Alaskan home of this magnificent raptor.

Looking at it from aboard a ship cruising the Inner Passage of the Northern Pacific, the city of Juneau - built in the Gastineau Channel and the Alaskan panhandle, does not look anything like a metropolis. 

Another view of downtown Juneau. Pic: © Bala Menon

However, Juneau is the capital of the 49th US state of Alaska and the second largest city (by area) in the United States. Juneau is around 1,356 km from the commercial city of Anchorage. (Alaska itself is the largest of the US states.)

The city downtown is picturesque in the summer, with beautiful sidewalks and cycle paths bordered with brilliant flowering bushes. Traffic is sparse - and the cycle seems to be the favoured method of transportation. The tallest building is only 11 storeys high. 

Towering above the town is Mt. Juneau and other mountains surrounding the town include Mt. McGinnis, Mt. Jumbo, Cairn Peak, Gastineau Peak, Mt. Roberts, Thunder Mountain and several rolling, thickly-wooded hills. 

The magnificent Mendenhall Glacier. Pic: © Bala Menon

A cable tramway takes tourists right from the docks half way up on Mount Juneau to an alpine area which has homes with great views, hiking trails, flora and views of Gastineau Channel. This is also the site of the renowned Juneau Raptor Center that looks after lost, infirm and injured eagles and other birds.

From May to September, the town is a bustling market place with over a million tourists - from cruise ships - passing though Juneau during the four months, making tourism one of the mainstays of the city’s economy. Jewellery (gold and precious stones) stores abound, most of them closing after the tourism season, with the operators moving back to sunnier states in the US.

Although an American city, Juneau was established in 1881 by Canadian miner Joseph Juneau (1836–1899) who was born in the Quebec town of Saint-Paul-l’Ermite (later renamed Le Gardeur and then incorporated into Repentigny).  

He was one of the early pioneers during the Klondike Gold Rush and it is said that though he struck it reasonably rich, he spent the money as fast as he could. In the end, he opened a small restaurant in Dawson City in the Yukon and died there of pneumonia. Juneau’s cousin  Solomon Juneau is credited with founding the city of Milwaukee in Wisconsin.

The Mendenhall Visitor Centre. Pic:© Bala Menon

Juneau today is linked as a sister city to two Canadian cities - Whitehorse, Yukon,  and  Saskatoon in Saskatchewan.

Juneau became the capital of Alaska in 1906 and is one of most sparsely populated cities in the country - because there is no land access to the city. 

One has to fly in by seaplane or arrive by boat. It is inhabited mostly by state and federal government officials, fishermen and those involved in the logging and tourism industries.

One of the most famous sites in Juneau is the Mendenhall Glacier - located in the Juneau Icefield which has given birth to over 30 glaciers, including the Lemon Creek Glacier visible in the distance from Juneau’s main roads.

Bald Eagle - image <a href="https://www.peakpx.com">Peakpx</a>

We travelled by bus to the glacier -  about 20 km from Juneau. (There are helicopter rides available for those who want to set foot on the glacier.)  

The area is part of the almost 6,000 acres of the Mendenhall recreation area, a unit of the  heavily wooded federal Tongass National Forest. The ancient glacier is about 22 km long, travelling from the Juneau Icefield and ending at Mendenhall lake, formed naturally in the late 1920s from its melting ice. Sadly, the glacier is said to be retreating and scientists say its light blue crystal face is shrinking both in height and width, while the lake gets bigger with its new  ecosystem boasting an abundance of fish life, including salmon and trout.

Romeo - Taxidermy mount at the Visitor Centre. Pic: © Bala Menon 

The Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center perched atop a small hill provides stunning views of the glittering glacier and the surrounding area, bathed as it is in a late August early morning light. Short documentaries about the glacier and its flora and fauna  - especially wolves, bears, eagles and mountain goats - are shown in a small cinema at the centre, and there are several interpretative exhibits. 

Branching off from the centre are three wonderful trails - Photo Point Trail, the Steep Creek Trail and the popular 1.3 km East Glacier Loop Trail, the last of which leads to the rushing waters of the attractive Nugget Falls right near the face of the Mendenhall Glacier. 

There are signs warning of black bear activity during the summer months, when the animals come out to feed on sockeye salmon on the lakeshore and forest berries, in preparation for their winter hibernation. 

(We did not, however, see any bears - only their droppings and paw marks in wet muddy areas.) The undergrowth on the lakeshore is also home to beavers, porcupines and the waters have arctic terns and waterfowl. 

The gushing waters of Nugget Falls. Pic: © Bala Menon

Nugget Falls is a two-tiered gushing 

wall of water running off from the Nugget Glacier and dropping about 380 feet over a U-shaped small valley. It falls onto sandbars in the Mendenhall Lake, which feeds the Mendenhall River that empties into the Alaskan Inside Passage.

Bald eagles are everywhere in Juneau, You can see them perched on every lamppost, every tree stump and every piece of rock that juts out from the Mendenhall river. 

Of the estimated 100,000 bald eagles in the world, half of them fly around in Alaska. In Juneau alone, there are around 30,000 bald eagles with wingspans stretching to almost eight feet.  Researchers say these birds of prey can live up to 32 years of age. The bird is, along with the Alaskan wolf, also spiritually important for the territory’s First Nations people.

The Story of Romeo

JUNEAU, Alaska: One day in the winter of 2003, a young black wolf appeared on the inhabited shores of the Mendenhall Lake - in an area where dogs ran unleashed and children played games. The wild three-year-old animal was a lone survivor of a ive-member Nugget Basin pack; three had been trapped and killed, one was road kill.

The handsome wolf did not seem frightened or threatening and soon established bonds with other dogs and the people who named him Romeo because he apparently had a crush on a female Labrador. The name became famous across Juneau and soon people began arriving to see him - an extraordinary animal who is a feared predator in Alaska, playing with dogs.

Romeo did not want food, he only wanted companionship and to trot around the area where the evening crowd gathered to play on the lake ice. He also interacted with tourists and cross country skiers. Sometimes he would disappear for days, only to appear suddenly one day as his old playful self, gambolling, howling...

A plaque for Romeo on Nugget Falls trail. Pic: © Bala Menon

This continued for an amazing  six years when he vanished forever in September 2009, plunging the whole city in gloom. Forest officers later arrested two serial poachers who had shot Romeo at point-blank range for his rich, black hide.

However, the beloved wolf of Juneau today lives on - as a high quality taxidermy mount (see picture on the page) at the Mendenhall Centre, along with a sound wand that has his recorded joyful howls. A bronze plaque has also been affixed on one of the trees on the Nugget Trail where he liked to roam.

A best-seller “A Wolf Called Romeo” was written by Nick Jans, to whom Romeo’s love interest the Labrador named Dakotah belonged. “Nothing can take away the miracle that was Romeo and the years we spent in his company,” wrote Jans. “Love, not hate, is the burden we carry.”

©  Bala Menon Pics of Romeo and his plaque by © Bala Menon

In Salmon Country

Ketchikan - 'Salmon Capital' of the World

By Bala Menon

'Welcome to Alaska's First City' says the arch at the entrance to Ketchikan.

Ever wondered which waters boast the most salmon in the world?

From mid-July to mid September it is the waters of the Ketchikan Creek Falls in Alaska where mind-boggling numbers of feisty salmon migrate from the ocean and fight their way upstream to get to the gravel beds in calmer waters. 

There they spawn to continue their ‘dynasties’ and die. Newborn salmon then spend their early years in the river and then travel to the ocean where they grow into adults and on maturity return to their place of birth to spawn and die. The cycle of life thus continues. 

View of Ketchika city from the sea.

The salmon run is rich picking each year for Ketchikan’s fishermen, Alaskan bears and the thousands of bald eagles - all forming part of the food chain that have sustained life through the centuries in this frontier land.

Ketchikan, the southernmost port on the Inside Passage of the Pacific NorthWest is known officially as the ‘Salmon Capital of the World’. There is a sign that arches over the town entrance on the waterfront “Welcome to Ketchikan, Salmon Capital of the World”  which was first erected in the 1920s - making the title now semi-official.

 

Over a million tourists pass into the small town through the archway during the summer months after disembarking from the many cruise ships which make Ketchikan the first or last port of call during their fabulous Alaskan cruises.

 

The Ketchikan Creek with its legendary salmon runs, flows  through the town ending just a little distance away to the south and emptying into the Tongas Narrows (which is part of the Inside Passage).

The harbour for fishing boats in Ketchikan.

It is said that the town means ‘Thundering Wings of an Eagle’ in the indigenous Tinglit language (obviously referring to the bald eagles that sweep and soar during the salmon run). 

The town itself is a narrow strip of land stretching around 16 km along the waterfront and is surrounded by the thick woods of the Tongas National Forest. 

The 3,000-ft Deer Mountain towers over the downtown area. A few houses are perched along some of the green wooded hills overlooking the port.

 

The town was established by an entrepreneur Mike Martin who purchased 160 acres of land from a native chief in 1885 and soon lumber mills and fish processing plants brought in a measure of prosperity to the area.

Ketchikan has always been a fishing and logging community unlike the other Alaskan communities of Juneau (378 km away) and Skagway (508 km) which grew as mining towns during the Klondike Gold Rush of the late 19th century. Many residents are  employed in the canning and tourism industries or work for the government. 

A view of Ketchikan city with houses perched on a hill.

There are several small outfitters renting out canoes and small powerboats to tourists who want to experience or fish in the waters of the Ketchikan Creek.

Although there are local bus shuttles, most tourists prefer to walk through the town which has criss-crossing streets lined with small shops selling everything from indigenous art and handicrafts to jewellery. Small restaurants abound with the most famous being the Great Alaska Salmon house where people line up to get a taste of the local fare.

Another view of the city.

One of the fabled parts of the walking tour is Creek Street about three blocks from the port - which until the early 1950s was a red light district with bordellos  on either side patronized by seasonal loggers and fishermen.

The establishments were wooden structures built on pilings. Today, the street has gone upscale and we find shops, art galleries and eateries. The oldest building on the street is Dolly’s House museum, named after one of Ketchikan’s most notorious ‘madams’.

A sculpture of Ketchkan's pioneers at the Visitors' Centre.

Ketchikan is also famous for its totem poles. The Ketchikan Visitors Bureau says the town has the world’s largest collection of these magnificent standing  artefacts - spread throughout the area with the Totem Heritage Centre alone displaying several that have been recovered from abandoned First Nation villages and in the forests surrounding the town.

© Bala Menon

© All pictures by Bala Menon

Scenic Alaskan Railroad

Skagway's Whitepass & Yukon Route

One of world's most scenic railroads

By Bala Menon

The White Pass and Yukon Route narrow gauge railroad in Skagway, Alaska, is certainly one of the most scenic railways of the world, giving riders a panoramic view of the grandeur of the Alaskan mountains and the wilderness.

 The White Pass and Yukon Route narrow gauge train in the hills 

The railroad links the port of Skagway with Whitehorse in Yukon, Canada and dates to the time of the famed Klondike Gold Rush of the late 19th century.

(Watch the video shot by me from the train....)

https://youtu.be/x7I-cSxy0b4?si=OmLrWEVMaVZrp2oO

The port of Skagway on the Alaskan Panhandle is a popular halt for cruise ships travelling the Inside Passage along the coastal route from Seattle and Vancouver.(There is no land access to Skagway… it has to be through the port or by small aircraft. We reached Skagway aboard the Holland America Line’s cruise ship
The Volendam).

The train climbs into the clouds...

Although the borough of Skagway has a population of only around 1500 during normal times, it comes alive during the summer tourist season and it is estimated that almost one million people pass through the town every year to soak in the history of its legendary mining past.

Skagway has been the setting for several books and films including Jack London’s memorable classic, featuring a husky named Buck - The Call of the Wild. The John Wayne 1960s film North to Alaska was also filmed there.

Wikipedia says: “The name Skagway is derived from shԍagéi, a Tlingit (indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast) word which figuratively refers to rough seas in the Taiya Inlet, caused by strong north winds. (Taiya Inlet is an estuary which lies in a deep valley, with Skagway at its north end.)

One of the exhibits in the small museum in Skagway reads: “Follow in their Footsteps: Walk where gold seekers, gamblers, dreamers and entrepreneurs once walked. Today, you can experience the gold rush era through the places and stories preserved by the National Park Service,: the gold rush boomtowns of Skagway and Dyea; the trails that gold seekers took - Chilkoot and White Pass’ and the photographs, artifacts and memories of a great human drama.”

The Skagway harbour with its 'leaping dolphin' statue.

Let us delve into a little history:  An American adventurer George Carmack and his wife Kate (who belonged to the Tagish First Nation), her brother Skookum Jim and her nephew Dawson Charlie struck gold in the Bonanza Creek area of the Klondike region in the Yukon in 1896.. It was not a big quantity, but word reached Seattle and San Francisco and soon newspapers across the United States had screaming headlines about massive goldfields up north.

This was the second time in the 19th century that gold fever was hitting the US. In 1857 gold was discovered in the Fraser River and some 800 ounces of gold was sent to the San Francisco Mint by James Douglas (who later became the first Governor of British Columbia) This was the first gold rush with over 30,000 some dreamy eyed, some crazed prospectors from California, Mexico, Australia, Europe and China heading to Victoria and New Westminister and stampeding up the Fraser and into the dense wilderness of British Columbia to reach the Fraser and Cariboo gold fields.

Offices of the borough of Skagway.

•••••

History repeated itself when the Klondike gold was discovered. It is said that people in the US abandoned their jobs, homes and families to travel north - and most had no idea of the deadly bite of Canadian winters.

Official reports from those days say over 100,000 men embarked on the perilous journey from the Alaskan coastal towns of Skagway and Dyea, to traverse the Yukon River and then sail on to the Klondike River, a distance of some 4,000 kilometres.

Only 30,000 reached their final destination of Dawson City, many being forced to turn back sick and

hungry or killed en route on the treacherous ice-bound routes. There were two ways to Dawson City - one the famous Chilkoot Trail from the town of Dyea, which was shorter but steeper and more forbidding and the White Pass Trail from Skagway, which had its own set of dangers of narrow, snowy mountain paths and

rockfalls.

After reports of deaths reached the authorities, the Canadian government acted to ensure their survival. It was made mandatory that each miner carry supplies with them to last a year. The list included 150 lbs. of bacon, 400 lbs of flour, 15 lbs. salt, 2 pairs heavy trousers, a coffee pot and 1 dozen heavy wool socks… amounting to around 2000 lbs of supplies.

Tourists in Skagway's town centre.

The wealthier adventurers hired other miners or bought pack horses to cover the route. On the White Pass Trail, hundreds of these animals perished through sheer exhaustion and one of the landmarks is named Dead Horse Gulch.

Once they reached Bennet In BC, they had to face the dangers of crossing 800 kilometres through the frozen waters of the Yukon on crude, hand-built boats. When the winter waned and the ice began to thaw, some 7000 rafts took to the water at Bennet, most not knowing about the violent rapids along the Miles Canyon of the Yukon river. Thousands of boats were destroyed and hundreds of miners died in this last leg of their mad quest.

Of the 30,000 who reached Dawson city and the goldfields, only 4000 found gold and only a few hundred struck it rich. Hundreds more died in fires that raged often across shanty towns and in epidemics.

Other routes through Alaska and Alberta to the Yukon also attracted thousands of people, with hundreds perishing in the cold, trying to cross glaciers and later in the immense wilderness.

A building dating back to 1899.

Work on the railroad from Skagway began in 1898 at the height of the Alaskan-Klondike Gold Rush to prevent deaths of miners on the route and allowing them a safer passage instead of hiking the route on foot. However, the rush ended soon after when gold was discovered further afield and both Skagway and Dyea became ghost towns.

The White Pass and Yukon Route Railway says on their website: “...this narrow gauge railroad is an International Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, a designation shared with the Panama Canal, the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty.

“The $10 million project was the product of British financing, American engineering and Canadian contracting. Tens of thousands of men and 450 tons of explosives overcame harsh and challenging climate and geography to create ‘the railway built of gold.’The railroad was completed in 1901, along with a steel cantilever bridge (which was the highest in the world at the time) and which was abandoned in 1969. We can see this ‘bridge to nowhere’ standing forlorn on the route today.

From the late 1980’s until now the railroad has been used as a tourist draw. The classic train winds across 108 km to an elevation of 3000 feet “in just 32 km and features steep grades of up to 3.9%, cliff-hanging turns of 16 degrees, two tunnels and numerous bridges and trestles.”

We can see deep canyons, rushing streams in the valleys and majestic waterfalls cascading from the mountains topped by mini glaciers as the train climbs into the clouds.

The train makes a loop at Carcross Crossing (originally called Caribou Crossing) in Yukon, Canada, on Bennett Lake and Nares Lake with the Nares river flowing alongside as the train gets on the return track. A tour is also offered where passengers can pan for gold dust in the streams.

The old route covered 176 km from “Skagway to Whitehorse in the Yukon and on to northwest Canada and interior Alaska. Today, the WP&YR is Alaska’s most popular shore excursion carrying over 400,000 passengers from May to September operating on the first 108 kms (Skagway, Alaska to Carcross, Yukon) of the original line.” (Source: wpyr.com) The Chilkoot trail has become a popular, but gruelling hiking route in the summer.

Canyons and running streams - along the  Whitepass to Yukon route.

© Bala Menon.  All pictures © Bala Menon