Historic Building Survey - City and Borough of Juneau

Development in the fledgling town continued with the construction of the Log Cabin Church in
1881, the Northwest Trading Company which was thefirst retail store in Harrisburgh, and the
military post Rockwell. George Pilz shipped a pre-framed building from Sitka which became the
first structure in town. In March 1881, Master Gustave Carl Hanus, a Navy officer from Sitka,
ran lines to formally survey the new town which extended from the waterfront to a prominent
ridge less than a mile away. The ridge area was later called Chicken Ridge. By the end of
1881, the town had a code of local laws, a Board of Public Safety to enforce them, and a post
office.
Construction proceeded at a steady pace and soon the town began to take shape. The downtown
business district developed almost immediately. Court House Hill, later known as Telephone
Hill, and nearby sections were quickly settled and as the population grew additional land was
staked and cleared. Scattered houses were constructed on the wooded hillsides northeast of the
business district. A Native village was established on the waterfront on the current site of
Willoughby Avenue. Cabins for miners began. to appear on Starr Hill, a working class
residential area and by 1893,. the area of Chicken Ridge was being settled. In the nine years
following the discovery of gold, Juneau's population grew 800 percent from 150 to more than
1,200.
Gold mining was the driving force behind this growth. At first the land was placer mined; then
prospectors attempted towork the larger, higher grade quartz veins they encountered by drilling
and blasting to break the gold-bearing quartz from the surrounding waste rock. Eventually, the
prospectors began to consolidate adjoining properties and attack the deposit of quartz veins on
a larger .scale. By the 1890's, several of the small mining companies consolidated on a large
scale and out ·of this came the Treadwell, Alaska Gastineau, and the Alaska Juneau mining
companies.
As mining grew and large companies expanded the workings, it became apparent that Juneau
would not be just another "boom and bust" gold camp. Rather, it enjoyed a growing prosperity
built in the mines, with their great mechanized mills, and large payroll. The three large mines,
the Alaska Gastineau, the Alaska Juneau, and the Treadwell drove the economy..The latter two
became the largest gold producers of low grade ore in the world, recovering more than $130
million from the mountain rock stamped to dust in the huge mills.
The Treadwell closed in 1917 when three of its four operating mines collapsed in a saltwater
cave-in andthe Alaska Gastineau closed in 1921. The Alaska Juneau closed in 1944 due to the
fixed price of gold, high ·operating costs, and a war-related labor shortage.
For more than 60 years gold mining dominated the identity of Juneau and influenced its growth
but the growth of government kept Juneau's economy thriving after the decline of the gold
mines. The business of government had come about in 1900 when the town had been
.incorporated and Juneau was designated the temporary seat of government of the territory. At
this time, Juneau had the appearance of a thriving city and wooden buildings lined the streets.
Residential areas had developed to house both miners and a growing number of white collar
workers which comprised part of the nearly 2,000 people in the town.'
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