Juneau History News & Upcoming Events

GASTINEAU CHANNEL HISTORICAL SOCIETY’S NEWS AND UPCOMING EVENTS

Save the date! Please join us for our annual meeting presentation, “Life on the Slime Line: A Visual History of the Juneau Cold Storage,” Sunday, Nov. 9, 1 -3 pm at the Valley Library.

LIFE ON THE SLIME LINE:

 We are fortunate to feature citizen historian* and lifetime resident Kimberly Metcalfe who worked four years at the JCS. Metcalfe wrote the fascinating centerpiece of this fall’s newsletter (due out soon!). As she says, the seafood processing plant stunk, but to her it “smelled like money.”
This presentation is free and open to the public — from anywhere in the world. (For the Zoom link and passcode scroll to the bottom.) It will be followed by our annual meeting which will include updates on the Society’s many initiatives. (Bring a friend — and an historical object to share — if you like). Refreshments served.
*Metcalfe is the editor of In Sisterhood: The History of Camp 2 of the Alaska Native Sisterhood

SHIPS + SIPS: DRINK UP, SENTINEL ISLAND!

Stay tuned for an early-in-the-year beer sampling and in-person presentation about the historical lighthouse on Sentinel Island. For thirty years, the Society, under the direction of President Gary Gillette, has overseen the renaissance of the 90-year-old lighthouse. Lighthouses are popular, as evidenced by the thousands who have visited Sentinel each of the last three summers (via Juneau Lighthouse Tours and a new gangway). Those visits have made possible a much-needed (but expensive) paint job. Gary will share the results of that very specialized work and you can sip the new Sentinel ale from Alaskan Brewery. BTW, you can give the gift of Sentinel Island — check out the unique, local items (on the attached flyer) you can order, just in time for the holidays.

NATIONAL HISTORY DAY INTRODUCED TO JUNEAU EDUCATORS

The Society has engaged Dr. Corey Weiss, principal of Juneau Community Charter School, to solicit teachers to involve students in National History Day. NHD provides a framework for kids to dig deeply into a local or Alaska topic and to compete at the state and national level if they wish to. An Alaskan team from Anchorage placed in the top 20 in the nation last spring with a project on “The Boarding School Era in Alaska.” See the one-hour presentation on Sealaska’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BubKIkVXZ88&list=PLGoKk-JZWo1MmiYBheRLklQLW-u068x7d&index=4

SPRING EDITION: 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF ALASKA’S CONSTITUTION

In the winter of 1955-1956, fifty-five men and women gathered on the Fairbanks campus to hammer out the nation’s newest state constitution. Six delegates were from Juneau, half of them women. In addition, Katie Hurley and Tom Stewart of Juneau served as staff to the historic convention. You’ll meet these exceptional Alaskans next spring.

GOT A MINUTE? PLEASE RENEW NOW FOR 2026

We deeply appreciate our members’ continuing support of GCHS. We’ve been preserving, promoting, and publishing history for 41 years — and counting. Keeping local history alive is our mission — through our bi-annual newsletter, Last Chance Mining Museum, Sentinel Lighthouse, contributing to local projects, and publishing carefully-researched and beautifully-produced books. Please take a moment to renew your membership now for 2026 at juneauhistory.org Memberships are for a calendar year. (We do not have an auto-renewal system; we depend on real humans!) And, special thanks to all of you who contribute above the basic membership level!

Hope to see you at our annual meeting!
Yours in local history,
Gastineau Channel Historical Society
Gary Gillette, President
Rich Mattson, Vice President, Web Manager
and Board Member, Alaska State Historical Society
Malin Babcock, Treasurer + Membership
Kathryn Cohen, Co-Treasurer
Kristi Swanson, Secretary
Paula Johnson, Archivist + Researcher
Laury Scandling, Newsletter Editor

Topic: Gastineau Channel Historical Society Annual Meeting
Time: Nov 9, 2025 01:00 PM Juneau

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Sentinel Island Lighthouse is shining bright again! This spring a team of  lighthouse restoration experts came out to Sentinel Island to repair, paint, and generally restore the historic lighthouse to give it new life and look again. Funded by various grants, private donations, fund raising events, and Gastineau Channel Historical Society funds, the work has been completed.  Society President Gary Gillette said, ” “From the beginning of our involvement, we wanted to restore the historic buildings and share the history and place with locals and visitors,” Gillette added. “With the new paint job, the lighthouse is all dressed up to celebrate its 90th birthday.” Read the full story here

Last Chance Mining Museum: The museum is now closed for this season, but will open for next year’s tour season in mid-May 2026. For more information, click this link.

Special invitation to local volunteers:  would you be interested in sharing local history with summer visitors one afternoon a week in beautiful Last Chance Basin? The volunteer-run Last Chance Mining Museum welcomes visitors late May until early September. If you’d like to know more about volunteering at this historic site, call (907) 780-4355 or email juneauhistory@gmail.com

EXTRA, EXTRA – READ ALL ABOUT IT!  In the GASTINEAU HERITAGE NEWS…
Our latest edition (Spring/Summer 2025) is now available and features the history of Juneau’s “golden age of hydropower”. Gold put Juneau on the map, but waterpower turned into electricity kept it on the map, with the legacy of early cutting-edge technology of the times still churning out the volts today. Learn how Juneau got “turned on” – it was amazing!

Coming up next! Our spring edition due out mid-May will feature the Juneau delegates and staffers who participated in the historic Alaska Constitutional Convention.

Gastineau Heritage News Celebrated 40 Years! 2024 was the 40th anniversary of the award-winning Gastineau Heritage News and both editions (Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter) commemorated four decades of accomplishments and great stories the Society has generated, thanks to scores of dedicated volunteers. The fall/winter edition documented broadening inclusion and how research has been revolutionized by the internet over the past 20 years. Plus, find a few surprises. Did you know the Southeast Alaska State Fair started in Juneau? Perhaps you remember the sawmill whose smoke and steam shrouded much of downtown for years. How about the military base at Duck Creek? Ever heard of Gastineau City or wondered about the transformation of the shoreline Juneau Indian Village?

.The Spring/Summer edition featured headline stories including top Juneau area events of ’84, big-time baseball along the Channel, “milk ranches”, when the Soapbox Derby was Juneau’s biggest sporting event, and Alaska’s worst mining disaster.  Our prize-winning newsletters are one of the unique benefits of membership, so why pay more for them separately when you can get them free twice a year as a member!  Not a member?  Go to membership

PLEASE RENEW YOUR MEMBERSHIP
Now’s the time to join or renew for 2026 membership – it’s easy to do! Just go to membership on this site, Or, you can copy the membership form on that page and use it to mail your check to PO Box 21264, Juneau, AK, 99802. Membership is for a calendar year (do it now and you get full membership through 2026!) and there are various levels and rewards. (Individual: $30; family or business: $50, with higher levels for contributing extra support.)  Remember, a GCHS membership is a unique and special gift for someone else, too, which includes twice-yearly editions of our award-winning Gastineau Heritage News.

The 2024 GCHS Annual Meeting was held Saturday, Nov. 16, at the Douglas Library. The History of the Douglas Indian Village was presented by board member Laury Scandling, with first hand accounts of the village burning in 1962 given by Jackie Schopert and Robert Paulo. The thriving village and its eventual dispossession by a city-ordered burning in 1962 was documented in the 2023 Fall/Winter edition.

The 2023 Annual Meeting was held via Zoom on Sunday, November 5 and featured a special presentation  “25 Years of Preservation: Sentinel Island Lighthouse” by President Gary Gillette.  Recounting the history of the station and a brief overview of Alaskan lighthouse operations, Gillette focused on the society’s acquisition, renovation, and future plans of the facility.  When finished, a link for the talk will be posted on our website.

Check out our timeline:  A timeline of area history is now accessible at juneauhistory.org. under the Juneau History menu. This major work follows from pre-colonization until the year 2000 and is organized by decade and year. The series is searchable. Public contributions, corrections, additions, and edits are encouraged and should be forwarded to juneauhistory@gmail.com. This is the only site where a single local timeline is available.  Check it out!

Exciting news for local history fans – we have reprinted three of our most popular and valuable histories of the Juneau Goldbelt area!   These are:  Earl Redman’s The Juneau Gold Belt, A History of the Mines and Miners, the definitive volume on Juneau area mines big and small; Robert “Bob” DeArmond’s Old Gold, Historical Vignettes of Juneau, Alaska, a unique window into life in early Juneau; and even more exciting, David Stone and Brenda Pugh’s classic Hard Rock Gold, the Story of the Great Mines that were the Heartbeat of Juneau.  Written in 1980 as part of Juneau’s centennial year celebration, the volume had long been out of print and had been commanding rare book prices (see our publications page).  These volumes are now available in local bookstores, the Juneau-Douglas City Museum, and can be ordered direct or wholesale through Wild Spruce Artworks