Juneau is the only U.S. state capital with no road access to the rest of the continent — you arrive by air or by sea.
The gold itself was mostly low-grade and locked in rock, which made Juneau a hard-rock town of stamp mills and tunnels rather than gold pans. Across the channel on Douglas Island, the Treadwell complex grew into one of the largest gold-mining operations on Earth — hundreds of stamps thundering day and night, company swimming pool and all — until April 1917, when the workings under the channel collapsed and the sea poured in. The Alaska-Juneau mine on the mainland carried on until 1944, and its ruins still climb the mountainside above town.
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.
