The land was never empty. The A'akw Kwáan — the "Small Lake People" of the Tlingit — and the T'aaḵu Kwáan of the Taku have lived along this channel for millennia, fishing Auke Bay and the salmon streams, naming every water: the flats at Gold Creek were Dzántik'i Héeni, "river where the flounders gather." Captain George Vancouver charted Gastineau Channel in 1794 and sailed on; for most of another century the channel stayed Tlingit water under a thin Russian claim, sold unseen to the United States in 1867.
Juneau today is a capital of about thirty-two thousand that hosts well over a million cruise visitors a summer, a government town and a Tlingit cultural center at once — every two years, Celebration fills the streets with Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian dance in one of the largest Native gatherings in Alaska. The borough sprawls over three thousand square miles of ice, forest, and channel; the town itself is a few steep blocks you can walk in an afternoon.
Why People Visit Juneau Alaska
Juneau is the capital of Alaska as a civic destination and a wilderness port in one — the only U.S. state capital with no road access, the 1931 Capitol, a walk-to glacier, whales in the channel, and gold-rush ruins on the mountainside. People come by ship and plane for the ice and the whales, and find a small stubborn capital that likes being hard to reach.
