40 Fun Facts About Juneau

Patsy Ann, a deaf dog who met nearly every ship docking in 1930s Juneau, was which breed?

Bull terrier Patsy Ann was named Official Greeter of Juneau by the mayor in 1934, and a bronze statue of her now overlooks the arriving cruise ships.

For April Fools' Day 2016, Juneau was temporarily renamed after which Mattel card game?

UNO took over the city's name for a day to promote new wild cards, and Mattel donated $15,000 to the Juneau Community Foundation in thanks.

No road links Juneau to the rest of North America, so how do cars and trucks reach the city?

By ferry or barge is the only way to bring a vehicle in, because steep mountains and an icefield the size of Rhode Island block every overland route.

Which family lost five sons in 1942 when the cruiser USS Juneau was torpedoed off Guadalcanal?

The Sullivans, five brothers from Waterloo, Iowa, had enlisted on condition that they serve together; 687 men died when the ship went down.

Which town was Alaska's seat of government until Congress ordered the move to Juneau, completed in 1906?

Sitka had faded as the fur trade declined while gold made Juneau boom, so a 1900 federal law told the government to pack up and move.

Juneau's Alaska State Capitol, opened in 1931 as a federal office building, lacks which statehouse feature?

A dome was never part of the plan because the building went up as the Federal and Territorial Building, with a courthouse and a post office inside.

Juneau's city limits cover more area than Rhode Island and which other U.S. state?

Delaware would fit inside Juneau's 3,255 square miles, a sprawl created in 1970 when the city merged with neighbouring Douglas and the surrounding borough.

Juneau's Red Dog Saloon displays a gun said to have been left behind by which lawman bound for Nome?

Wyatt Earp is said to have checked the gun and never claimed it; the saloon, founded in the mining era, is recognised as Juneau's oldest man-made tourist attraction.

Juneau is the only U.S. state capital that borders another country, meeting which part of Canada?

British Columbia begins at the borough's eastern edge, yet nobody drives there: an icefield separates Juneau from Atlin, the town on the Canadian side.

Which glacier, about 12 miles from downtown Juneau, shares its name with the valley, lake and river below it?

Mendenhall Glacier flows about 13 miles down from the Juneau Icefield, and the lake at its foot is young: it formed in the 20th century as the ice melted back.

Joe Juneau, the gold prospector whose name Alaska's capital carries, came from which Canadian province?

Quebec-born Joe Juneau won the naming rights at an 1881 miners' meeting, where his name took 47 of the 72 votes cast.

Joe Juneau, namesake of Alaska's capital, was a relative of the fur trader who helped found which Midwestern city?

Milwaukee grew partly from Juneautown, the settlement fur trader Solomon Juneau laid out east of the Milwaukee River before becoming the city's first mayor.

Which Irish-born prospector struck gold beside Joe Juneau in 1880 and saw the new camp briefly bear his name?

Richard Harris lost out when the miners voted on a permanent name in 1881: Harrisburg drew only 21 of the 72 votes.

Joe Juneau died in 1899 in which Klondike gold rush town, where he owned a small restaurant?

Dawson City was the last stop for a man who spent gold as fast as he mined it; his body was brought back and buried in Juneau's Evergreen Cemetery in 1903.

Juneau lies within which national forest, the largest in the United States at nearly 17 million acres?

Tongass National Forest covers most of Southeast Alaska, an area larger than ten U.S. states, and holds Earth's largest remaining temperate rainforest.

Which narrow waterway separates downtown Juneau from Douglas Island, reached by the Juneau-Douglas Bridge?

Gastineau Channel is slowly filling with glacial silt, so north of the bridge only small craft can get through, and only at high tide.

Which mountain do visitors ride up on a six-minute aerial tram from Juneau's cruise ship docks?

Mount Roberts rises straight from the waterfront, and the tram, running since 1996, lifts riders from just above sea level to about 1,800 feet.

Which Douglas Island operation near Juneau, once the world's largest hard rock gold mine, caved in during 1917?

Treadwell employed over 2,000 people until seawater leaked into tunnels dug below sea level; the only casualties were a dozen horses and one mule.

Part of Juneau's borough lies on which island, known to the Tlingit as the Fortress of the Bears?

Admiralty Island holds an estimated 1,600 brown bears, more than the entire lower 48 states, and they outnumber its human residents nearly three to one.

Alaskans voted in 1976 to move the state capital from Juneau to which small town, then refused to fund it?

Willow won 53% of that vote, but in 1982 Alaskans balked at a price tag of roughly $2.9 billion and the capital stayed put.

Which NBA forward and 2008 Olympic gold medallist grew up in Juneau, winning back-to-back state titles there?

Carlos Boozer moved to Juneau from Washington, D.C., as a child and led the Juneau-Douglas Crimson Bears before starring at Duke.

Which Juneau-born actor played Reggie Mantle in Riverdale before a Golden Globe nomination for May December?

Charles Melton, born in Juneau in 1991, took over the role in the show's second season and later acted opposite Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore.

Which Tlingit activist's testimony in Juneau helped pass Alaska's 1945 Anti-Discrimination Act and put her on a $1 coin?

Elizabeth Peratrovich spoke last at the hearing, and the law was signed in February 1945, nearly twenty years before the federal Civil Rights Act.

Janet Gardner, born in Juneau in 1962, became lead singer of which all-female glam metal band in 1983?

Vixen, sometimes called the female Bon Jovi, scored two Top 40 singles between 1988 and 1990 with Gardner out front.

Celebration, held in Juneau every two years, honours the cultures of the Tlingit, the Tsimshian and which other people?

Haida, Tlingit and Tsimshian dancers have gathered since 1982 for an event that began as a way to pass cultural knowledge on to children.

Juneau's Empty Chair Memorial recalls a seat left at a 1942 graduation for an interned student who held which honour?

Valedictorian John Tanaka was sent away a month before the ceremony, so classmates left a chair empty for him and for the other Japanese families taken from Juneau.

Juneau's St. Nicholas Church, built in the 1890s for hundreds of Tlingit converts, follows which Christian tradition?

Russian Orthodox worship arrived without Russian colonists, who never settled here: Tlingit leaders arranged for a priest themselves, and about 700 people followed them into the church.

Which U.S. president, the first to visit Alaska, was hosted at Juneau's Governor's Mansion in 1923?

Warren Harding was hosted by Scott Bone, a territorial governor he had appointed himself, in a mansion completed just eleven years earlier.

Which naturalist, a champion of Yosemite, explored near Juneau in 1879 and named a glacier there for the Auk people?

John Muir called it Auke Glacier, but the name did not stick: in the 1890s the ice was renamed for the head of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey.

Tahku, a life-size bronze sculpture in Juneau with a fountain that mimics streaming water, depicts which animal?

A humpback whale is shown mid-breach, 25 feet tall and weighing 6.5 tons, and the fountain replays the splash every thirty minutes.

A replica of which American icon, one of a set sent to every state in 1950, stands outside Juneau's Capitol?

The Liberty Bell replicas were handed out to drum up support for a savings bond drive, so Alaska got one nine years before it became a state.

What stands outside Juneau's Governor's Mansion, a New Deal commission from the Civilian Conservation Corps?

A totem pole was carved there in 1939 and 1940 by Charlie Tagook and William N. Brown, a New Deal commission that put Native carvers to work.

Juneau-born Hilary Lindh won an Olympic silver medal in 1992 and a world title in 1997 in which sport?

Alpine skiing came early: she learned to race at Eaglecrest, the city-owned ski area on Douglas Island, and became a downhill specialist.

Juneau-born actor Joshua Morrow began playing Nicholas Newman in 1994 on which daytime soap opera?

The Young and the Restless gave him his first role, and he later sang in the soul-pop group 3Deep with his former co-star Eddie Cibrian.

Which northern Canadian city, a territorial capital, is a sister city of Juneau?

Whitehorse became Yukon's capital in 1953, after a new highway reached it and the government left its old gold rush seat.

Juneau ranks as the largest U.S. state capital by land area and the lowest by which other measure?

Population density is only about 12 people per square mile, because the borough's boundaries take in icefields, rainforest and mountains where nobody lives.

Which Tlingit chief guided Joe Juneau beyond Gold Creek to the 1880 strike that founded Alaska's capital?

Chief Kowee had already carried ore samples to the mining engineer who sent the prospectors out, and a creek on Douglas Island now bears his name.

Which ominously named ice-dammed hollow above Juneau releases a glacial outburst flood on the city almost every summer?

Suicide Basin fills with meltwater until it bursts out beneath the ice; after the 2024 flood was declared a disaster, a levee of HESCO barriers blunted a record surge in 2025.

The Tlingit name for Juneau, Dzántik'i Héeni, refers to a river and to which fish?

Flounder gives the name its meaning, Base of the Flounder's River, and nearby Auke Bay keeps a Tlingit name too: Áak'w, or Little Lake.

What closed the Alaska-Juneau gold mine in 1944, after the company had spent decades mining low-grade ore?

A wartime labor shortage did what poor ore never had; afterwards the company kept earning by selling its hydroelectric power to Juneau's electric utility.