Gastineau Heritage News

Staff of the DAILY ALASKA EMPIRE in front of the Empire Building on Main Street Juneau. Alaska State Library, Winter & Pond Photo Collection, P87-1265.

EXTRA, EXTRA – READ ALL ABOUT IT!  In the GASTINEAU HERITAGE NEWS…
Our latest edition is now available (Fall/Winter 2025) Life on the Slime Line, a history of the Juneau Cold Storage, is the fascinating centerpiece of this fall’s newsletter. Written by “citizen historian* and lifetime resident Kimberly Metcalfe, who worked four years at the JCS, she recalled that, “the seafood processing plant stunk, but to her it “smelled like money.”

Spring/Summer 2025 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!

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 2024 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 2024 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.

GCHS wins another History Award!
For the fourth consecutive year, the Gastineau Heritage News has received prestigious awards for its local history reporting. Our Fall/Winter 2023 newsletter won First Place in the 2024 Best Alaska History Reporting category of the Alaska Press Club. Previously the paper had won three separate annual awards from the Alaska Historical Society. The award recognized the issue’s coverage of the controversial event about the burning of the Douglas Indian Village (“Once Thriving Douglas Native Community Dispossessed by Fire and Bureaucracy”). Kudos again to our newsletter team of Laury Scandling, writer/editor, and Paula Johnson and Rich Mattson, researchers!

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