'TELEPHONE HILL - City and Borough of Juneau

TELEPHONE HILL
EURO-AMERICANHISTORY
mountain and continued up the side.'
There were 40 saloons, gambling houses and
houses of prostitution" (Anonymous 1973).
In 1900 Juneau became an incorporated town and the new capital site for the
di strict .government. By that time the town had undergone three name changes:
Harrisburgh, Rockwell and Pilzburgh. Miners voted in 1881 to permanently
rename the town Juneau, in honor of Joe Juneau.
The mining district was named
for Richard Harris. Despite disagreements on the name, the town became the
center of gold quartz mining in a 100-mile region along
the coast from' Windham
Bay to Berner's Bay, its northern boundary.
The gradual expansion from mining camp to mining town continued for 60
years after Juneau and Harris' initial gold discovery.
Sound business decisions
utilizing the area's natural resources are credited with Juneau's stable growth.'
Gold prospectors consol idated adjoining properties and jointly developed hard
rock mining. Continued consolidation of mineral mining and milling reduced
production costs (Stone 1980).
The Treadwell
Mine on Douglas Island was the first gold mining company to
prosper around 1890. The site, originally discovered by IIFrench Pete ll Erussand,
was successfully developed under the ski 11 ed 1eadershi p of John Treadwell, a
miner from the California gold fields. By 1915 the 960-stamp mill crushed 5,000
tons of ore daily, a world production record at that time.
Two years later the
operation shut down overnight after the mine caved in (Stone 1980).
A second area of consolidated mining activities took place in Silver Bow
Basin, site of Perseverance Mine and early pioneers' gold claims. Edward
Webster, Richard Harris, George Harkrader, John McKinnon and .George Pilz held
claims in the basin. Perseverance Mine, established in 1885, grew until the
quality of retrievable ore dropped to an unprofitable level in 1921 (Stone
1980) .
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