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Capitol Building exterior, showing Liberty Bell. Alaska State Library, ASL Place File Photos, ASL-Juneau-Capitol-Building-17-22.

The Liberty Bell reproduction was dedicated June 29 in front of the Federal Building, which is now Alaska’s Capitol. The bell was a duplicate of 52 others, which were on tour throughout the United States as part of the Independence Savings Bond Drive which came to an end on July 4. (Note: the bell was rung to celebrate Alaska’s statehood at a special ceremony July 4, 1959.)

An accomplice from a 1946 grocery robbery/murder case was hanged at the federal jail, the last hanging in Juneau and the only case in Alaska history in which two men were hanged for the same crime, the murderer having been hanged two years earlier. In 1957 the territory abolished the death penalty for capital crimes.

A rash of icebergs dotted Gastineau Channel for a period in March, moving in and out with the tide and providing a hazard for small craft and landing airplanes. Some of the icebergs stood more than 20 feet out of water.

The Juneau Civil Air Patrol squadron received an L-5, 185-horsepower, two-place airplane January 23 to be used in search and rescue missions.

The federal Bureau of Mines station was opened June 7 on Juneau (aka Mayflower) Island at Douglas. The island was once reserved as a Navy coaling station, which was never built, and later it became a recreation park and zoo. Access to the island via a causeway was constructed across Sandy Beach to connect to the Douglas street system.

An ordinance setting up a one percent sales tax for the City of Juneau was approved by Juneau voters June 20. This was Juneau’s first sales tax ordinance.

Ground was broken March 7 for construction of 11-story Mendenhall Apartments. The 134-unit structure would cost about $1,500,000.

The Juneau Spruce Corporation property, extensively damaged in a major fire a year ago, was purchased by a local group organized as the Juneau Lumber Company and the sawmill re-built and re-opened for business.

“Floating” libraries would soon be established in Southeastern Alaska in the spring by Sears, Roebuck & Company and co-sponsored by the Rotary Clubs of Juneau and Ketchikan. The libraries, stocked with 2,000 books as a starter, would place books in villages around the Panhandle, and later picked up again by boats of the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, mission boats and mail boats.

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