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Bruce Oliver - Enfield, CT |
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Bruce Oliver - Enfield, CT |
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Juneau, AlaskaAug-Sept, 2002Juneau - MAPIn 1880 Tlingit Chief Kowee and two of his guides brought gold prospectors, Joe Juneau and Richard Harris to the area know known as Juneau, Alaska. Initially, Juneau was known as Harrisburg because it believed that Harris was the only one who knew how to read and write and he recorded it that way. Once 300 prospectors from Sitka arrived, the area was renamed Rockwell. Finally the name of Juneau was adopted. Alaska's first significant roads, bridges and electrical plants were built here, well before the Klondike Gold Rush. By 1882 gold fever turned into gold production and the world famous Treadwell Mine began it's expansion. People associated gold with Juneau and the town became an important center for commerce and politics. In 1881 the territory's first political convention took place during the long summer. In 1944, the government shut down gold mining and production because of manpower and conservation issues. By the time Alaska became the 49th state in 1959, Juneau replaced much of the commerce left by the closed mine. Juneau is the seat of government for the State of Alaska. It is a small but modern city with government buildings, museums, restaurants, shops and historical buildings and cemeteries. As a matter of fact, the bodies of the founders: Juneau, Harris and the chief are buried in the Evergreen Cemetery. All three died penniless. Within minutes you can take a helicopter to two famous near by glaciers. The Mendenhall and the Hubbard. Many people go to Juneau to hike along over 100 miles of groomed trails and kayake in the rivers and streams. A small part of the Juneau Icefield, the Mendenhall Glacier is located just 13 miles from downtown Juneau. It's massive ice face is 100 feet tall, 1.5 miles wide, and is over 6 miles long. It's not surprising that the Mendenhall is one of Juneau's most popular attractions. During our trip we flew over the Mendenhall and several other glaciers in the 1,800 square mile Juneau Icefield to land on the Hubbard Glacier. The Hubbard is another one of the interconnected glaciers that make up the fields of ice in the mountains behind Juneau spreading from the Taku River in the east of town to Berners Bay in the extreme western part of town. Just 37 miles to the west of Juneau, one can see the Hubbard Glacier spill into Glacier Bay. A couple of days after leaving Juneau, our ship brought us to the site and got the closest that the captain has ever been able to maneuver the ship to the Hubbard Glacier, 90 feet. What a site. As we floated in the bay, we hear the thunderous crack and witnessed large chunks of ice fall from the face of the glacier to produce small ice bergs that floated in the bay. The following shots were taken on our helicopter tour with Ryan our pilot. I felt special knowing that we were among the fifty groups of people that would be allowed to land on the Hubbard Glacier in 2002. There we stood on ice that was 800 feet in depth.
We continued our trip after visiting the Hubbard Glacier to visit an Alpine Mountain top and see Dall Sheep grazing in the fields on the side of the mountains below two glaciers. HUBBARD GLACIER MAP
The mountains behind Juneau hide the immense glaciers that are in the region.
The "Legend of the Sea" sits in the Bay
©1994-2010 Bruce L Oliver, Enfield, CT NewsUnable to open RSS Feed http://news.google.com/news?um=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&source=hp&q=juneau&cf=any&output=rss with error HTTP ERROR: 503, exiting |
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