1909 Cathcart Trip - Port Simpson, Kitchikan, Wrangell, Juneau

Anna, Celia & William Cathcart
 ca 1910

16 year old Celia Cathcart is traveling with her parents, Anna and William Cathcart, and "grandmother." We're assuming this was Emma Sconce. Friday, July 9, 1909 the party boarded a ship in Seattle, Washington and headed north to Canada and then Alaska. Celia is my father's mother. 

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Tuesday July 13

Tuesday the weather was as good as usual. The cloud effects we saw on this day were particularly fine. In places, the low dark stratus clouds would envelop the mountain in a maze of darkness, while above them the cirrus clouds would break away to disclose the last rays of the sinking sun. The sun never sets in this country until 9:30 or 10:00. Its reflections on the water are superb in their coloring. We also saw quite a number of porpoises. A porpoise is a large fish, from 3 to 5 ft in length, with a reddish colored body and light green fins and tail. It spouts water like a whale does. They are fond of racing along with a steamer, being sometimes known to swim a mile by the side of the vessel. Port Simpson was the next stop after Prince Rupert. The Alaskan towns are all very similar. They are built up on piles high above the water. The streets and sidewalks are all of boards which on account of the climate are nearly always damp and slippery. The houses are built on either side of the street, and are merely shelters, beauty not being considered. The walls seemed to be patched up with all sorts of boards, sticks, or mud. In front of most of the houses were totem poles. Kitchikan was reached about 3:00 Tuesday afternoon. It is also built on piles, at the side of a mountain. In the town is a little falls, which in the right season is crowded with salmon. About 3 miles from the town is another falls, greater than the first. This we saw from the boat. Large lumber mills and a shingle mill are located here. ; [sic] About 11:00 the boat stopped at Wrangell, remaining there until 7:30 Wednesday morning. Some very hideous totems were seen here. Small pieces of ice were now frequently seen in the water, having broken off from a nearby glacier of great extent. About 8:00 we landed at Juneau, the capital of Alaska. It is very pretty as a town, nestled in at the foot of two lofty snowcapped mountains. Clean-looking restaurants, fashionable jewelry stores and up-to-date vegetable markets characterized the place. The public building is located on a hill overlooking the city. Just across from Juneau, on Douglas Island, are the famous Treadwell mines and stamp mills. The Glory Hole, a great cave in the rocks where an entrance to the mines is effected, is plainly seen from the boat. I neglected to state that about 4:00 on Wednesday afternoon before reaching Juneau, we passed a great glacier known as Sumturn glacier. It is said that only 1/8 of the total glacier is in evidence, the remainder being submerged in the water. A little farther down our course stood a great iceberg which had probably broken off from the glacier as had other smaller pieces of ice. The coloring of the iceberg was gorgeous, it being a greenish blue in places and a whitish yellow other. It was a very irregular mass, much resembling a cave in the side of a detached hill.

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map from Alaska by Ella Higginson, published 1909

Port Simpson, British Columbia, Canada - The Tsimshian people spent winters in this area. Then Fort Simpson was built and changed the lives of the native people. "In the village surrounding the fort there gathered more than 2,000 Tsimshian ..." source more information here

Kitchikan/Ketchikan, Alaska - more information here. Image - Ketchikan in 1908; source 

"Ketchikan's History dates back to 1883, when a man named Snow built a salmon saltery. Two years later, businessmen from Portland, Oregon, hired Mike Martin to investigate possibilities for building a salmon cannery on the banks of Ketchikan Creek. By the early 1900's, Martin and the cannery's manager, George Clark, had set up a partnership and had opened a saltery and a general store. Two years later, with the fishing trade flourishing, Ketchikan was definitely in business. And by 1900, with a population of 800, the town was officially incorporated." source

Wrangell - "Wrangell is the third oldest community in Alaska, and the second oldest community in Southeast, and the ONLY city in Alaska to be ruled by four nations and under three flags... Tlingit, Russia, England, and the United States." source Click here to see totem poles from around 1909. More about Wrangell here and here

Juneau - ca 1909; source  The area that became Juneau was a long time fishing ground for the Tlingit Indians. In the late 1800s gold was found and that started a stampede. The town of Juneau was laid out. The boomtown became a mining center. In 1906, just three years before the Cathcarts' visit, Juneau became the state capital. Juneau was named after Joseph Juneau, a Canadian prospector. Read more here. 

Douglas Island - Treadwell Mines & Steam Mills - "The Treadwell gold mine ... was in its time the largest hard rock gold mine in the world, employing over 2,000 people. ... Although John Treadwell had twelve years of experience in both placer and lode mines, he was a carpenter and builder by trade who had come to Alaska prior to the Klondike Gold Rush." Wikipedia   Read more here

Glory Hole - massive pit that resulted from gold mining

Sumturn Glacier - unable to locate information on this

Color of glacier ice - "Majestic glaciers and thick snow banks act like filters that absorb red light, making a crevasse or deep hole appear blue." Read more about light, color, and glaciers here. 

Check the list of August posts on the right for more posts from Celia's diary.