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Juneau
 Alaska's
capital and currently its third city in population, is located on
Gastineau Channel at Latitude 58 degrees 18 feet North, Longitude 134
degrees 24 feet west. The townsite was staked October 18, 1880, and
settled in December of that year. The town had two names, Harrisburg and
Rockwell, before December 1881, when it was named for Joseph Juneau. In
the original record of the townsite location the name is spelled
Harrisburgh. It is generally believed that Richard Harris, one of the
two locators, named it for himself. In 1900 he wrote, however, that he
named it for the capital of Pennsylvania. (See Harris Street.) On
February 10, 1881, the miners at the new camp held a meeting "for the
purpose of renaming Harrisburg." The name "Rockwell" received 18 votes,
"Juneau received 15, and "Harrisburg" only one. In the meanwhile, two
applications for a post office had been filed in Washington. One was
sent by Wm. Gouveneur Morris, Special Customs Agent for Alaska, who
asked that the post office be named Pilzburg for George Pilz, the mining
engineer who had helped grubstake Joe Juneau and Richard Harris. The
Post Office Department granted the second application which asked for
the post office of Harrisburg and the office was established on April 8,
1881, with Edward DeGroff as postmaster. The town was scarcely five
months old and already it had two names. The miners, to be safe, used
both in their mining records, usually calling it "Rockwell" also known
as "Harrisburg." Charles Henry Rockwell, for whom it received one of its
names, was born at Chatam, Massachusetts, April 29, 1840. He entered the
Navy in 1862 and took part in numerous engagements during the Civil War,
receiving several promotions. In 1879 he was a lieutenant commander when
he came to Alaska on the U.S.S. Jamestown. Early in 1881 he was sent to
the new mining camp on Gastineau Channel with a detachment of 22 men to
keep order and was active in establishing the town. The downtown area
was laid out and platted by one of the Navy men, Master Gustave C. Hanus.
In addition, Rockwell took up several mining claims and retained mining
interests here for several years. He left Alaska in 1882, reached the
rank of captain in 1899, and retired as a rear admiral in 1902. He died
at his home in Chatham, Mass., in 1908. A brief biography of Richard T.
Harris, the other man for which the town was first named, can be found
under Harris Street. The town continued with its dual name until
December 14, 1881, when, at another miners' meeting, it was moved that
those present ballot on a new name. There were 72 ballots cast, of which
47 went to "Juneau City," 21 to "Harrisburg" and 4 to "Rockwell."
Richard Harris moved to call another meeting for the express purpose of
naming the town but lost on a vote of 23-43. The postmaster was
requested to notify the Department of the action of the meeting and must
have done so promptly for on January 10, 1882, the post office was
officially designated Juneau. The Department dropped the "City" but
local usage retained it for many years and one of the early newspapers
was the Juneau City Mining Record. As the center of a mining district
that extended to Windham Bay on the South, Berners Bay on the north, and
Admiralty Island on the west, Juneau had a steady growth, reaching a
population of 1253 in 1890 and 1864 in 1900. In 1910 it slumped to 1644
but it climbed back to 3058 in 1920, 4043 in 1929, 5729 in 1936, and
5956 in 1950. Joseph Juneau, for whom the town was finally named, was
born in Canada near the city of Quebec in 1826. His family soon
afterward moved to Wisconsin where an uncle, Solomon Juneau, had
established himself in the fur trade. This uncle built the first log
cabin on the site of Milwaukee. A park in Milwaukee was named for him
and so was the city of Juneau, Wisconsin. Young Juneau grew up hunting
and trapping in Wisconsin and in 1849 followed the gold trail to
California. He engaged in mining and later acquired a ranch near Oakland
where he raised horses. He gave that up to go prospecting again in
Oregon, Idaho, and Montana, and is said to have moved north to the
Omineca in 1870 and the Cassiar in 1875. In 1879 Joe Juneau was working
in a store at Wrangell when Richard Harris arrived there from the
Cassiar. The two acquired a canoe and prospected along the coast. One
account says they first visited Gastineau Channel that year. They
eventually reached Sitka, where Juneau staked a number of claims at
Silver Bay and both men worked for George Pilz, who was attempting to
develop a mine. Pilz and others grubstaked Juneau and Harris and sent
them on a prospecting trip in the summer of 1880. They found gold at
Silver Bow Basin and staked the beach as a townsite. Joe Juneau mined on
Gold Creek for several years, getting rid of his gold dust about as fast
as he took it from the ground. In the spring 1895 he went to Circle City
and made a few thousands of dollars there. He went to San Francisco in
the fall of 1896 and returned north to Juneau early in 1897, but soon
left for the Klondike. In March, 1899, he died of pneumonia at Dawson.
His remains were later returned to Juneau and he was buried in the
Evergreen Cemetery on August 16, 1903.
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