I’m in one of America’s best-known state capitals, watching a black bear hoist a fat salmon from a suburban creek. Dinner!
Not a sight you’d see in most cities.
But Juneau is exceptional, as is the state in which it’s the capital, Alaska. The latter perennially shows up in the top five most popular cruise destinations on Earth. And at 32,000 residents, the city and borough of Juneau is the third most populous in The Great Land. Its sheer size—2,704 square miles—makes it not only Alaska’s third largest, but it’s also bigger than most counties in the Lower 48.
There’s a catch, yes: As a place whose immense landscape remains largely undeveloped, Alaska is not partitioned into counties. Instead, the “boroughs” enfolding its cities serve a similar function, encompassing vast swaths of land that stretch from shopping-center lowlands to austere, windswept peaks or trackless boreal forests, which are technically “urban” but are actually part of the wilderness. Outside the boroughs, Alaska is utterly “non-urban,” and if you were dropped blindfolded into raw wilderness or borough boundary, you couldn’t tell the difference.
Inside Juneau, however, you can easily detect the difference from other urban areas: This is a place where history, historicity, nature, scenery, and human culture collide. In short, Juneau is one of the most interesting cities anywhere.
Clasped between the 3,500-foot peaks lining the narrow Gastineau Channel, Juneau’s compact city center can become as densely populated on high-season days as any Lower 48 metropolitan area. With up to five massive ships in port, that’s about 10,000 visitors. More than 1.2 million travelers arrive here from late April to early October—most via boat—and when a conclave of big ships is in town, it feels like visitors outnumber residents. In some places, it can literally be difficult to get around, and the fact that most port calls are just one day heightens the challenge.
Rich in Nature
Alaska gold rush history began not in the Klondike in 1896 but in Juneau in 1880, when a Tlingit chief showed a couple prospectors where to find the shiny metal in a local creek. That’s not just dead history: A massive present-day mine, the Kensington, has 28 miles of tunnels in the nearby mountains.
You can see how things were done at the dawn of Alaska’s legendary gold industry with tours to the now-abandoned AJ mine, or a guided visit to “Last Chance Basin” on Gold Creek above the city, where you’ll scrape your own “paydirt” from the frigid creek, learn the difficult art of gold panning, and be guaranteed to go home with a few flakes of humanity’s most fabled treasure.
How can they “guarantee” that? Ah, do you doubt the richness of Alaska, pilgrim?
Last but not least is bear-watching. Fly-out tours to nearby Admiralty Island’s Pack Creek offer travelers a lifetime-memory chance to see massive coastal brown bears from just yards away; it is one of the world’s best wildlife watching venues because at Pack Creek the humans are confined and the bears run free, for the safety of both. Day trips allow cruise visitors just enough time, but tours must be booked far ahead as visitor numbers are rigorously limited.
One need not fly anywhere to see bears, though. In Juneau, a 20-minute taxi ride does the trick.
Our salmon-stuffing bear this fine August afternoon is not patronizing a wilderness stream. He’s at Steep Creek, which flows into Mendenhall Lake, which is itself at the terminus of Mendenhall Glacier, whose half-million or so annual visitors make it almost certainly one of the most-visited glaciers in the world. On any given day you might see paddleboarders and kayakers gliding over the platinum waters of Mendenhall Lake, perhaps venturing as close as possible to the ferocious torrent of 377-foot Nugget Falls on the east side.
Most travelers cluster on the shoreline below the Tongass National Forest’s Mendenhall Glacier Interpretive Visitor Center, gawking at the massive wall of ice. Binoculars may reveal tiny specks on the glacier itself, adventurers taking advantage of the fact that this is one of the easiest glaciers of all to get to. Hiking tours offered by Above & Beyond Alaska take small groups to the glacier’s surface, where the constant rush of water, symphony of sound and ice, and sense of implacable mass and geological power are all otherworldly.
Culture and ‘History’
Juneau also offers the chance to experience one of history’s most colorful and confounding facets—myth. Several of the city’s best-known sights are as dubiously “historic” as the many inns George Washington supposedly slept in. A sawdust-strewn old tavern near Juneau’s waterfront may or may not date back to the 19th century, and the pistol on display there may or may not have belonged to famous gunslinger Wyatt Earp. The bar has moved several times since the turn of the 20th century—so decide for yourself what’s authentic, if you can find room among the many other tourists packed inside looking for a whiff of long-gone glory.
The expansive Alaska State Museum is the home of one of the world’s finest collections of historic indigenous art; an exquisitely beautiful carved cedar hat depicting a frog is a 200-year-old Tlingit artifact. The Kik.sadi hat had fallen into private hands long ago, but it was restored to its clan when the state cooperated with Native groups to buy it in 1981. Though now on display at the museum, it is occasionally “checked out” by the clan for ceremonial use—likely the first such arrangement for repatriation of cultural artifacts on Earth.
Just up the street is an entirely different approach to myth. At Sealaska Heritage Institute’s Arts Campus, the many carved works depict the demigod spirits of Alaska Native culture: Raven the Trickster, Thunderbird, Octopus, Whale, Salmon—the giver of life and sustenance and mainstay of humankind here back beyond recorded history.
Just wooden spirit myths, right?
When you closely admire the skill and intensity of the carvers’ work in cedar and spruce, a force shines through the golden wood. What they have captured is the same force that clasps Juneau in its mountain-ringed cleft along the North Pacific coast, the force that pulses in and from Mendenhall Glacier, the force that has drawn people here for treasure of all kinds for 30,000 years.
How to Spend One Day in Juneau
8 a.m.: Disembark from the ship and head uphill a few blocks to The Rookery Cafe, James Beard-nominated chef Beau Schooler’s cafe, for breakfast—amazing French toast, eggs Benedict, the one-of-a-kind adobo loco moco.9 a.m.: Luckily, it’s downhill back to the Alaska State Museum, whose collection of historic Northwest Coast indigenous art is among the world’s best.
10 a.m.: Check out the jaw-dropping hand-carved woodwork on Sealaska Heritage Center’s clan house, featuring 1 million adze marks painstakingly made by hand using this special wood-carver’s chisel tool.
11:15 a.m.: Poke your head in the Red Dog Saloon and decide for yourself whether this is an authentic Wild West outpost.
Noon: Meet your guide for the 2.5-hour Juneau Food Tours excursion through the city’s diverse culinary offerings. It’s a walking tour, so that cancels out all the calories. Right?
3 p.m.: Grab a taxi to the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center. Be sure to check out the bear-viewing platform (most active in July and August) and take the short hike out toward Nugget Falls.
5 p.m.: Head back to the city for the late afternoon gold-panning tour to Last Chance Basin, where you’ll probably strike it rich as the sun’s last light turns the mountain peaks themselves golden.
7 p.m.: Wind up with dinner at Salt, Juneau’s premier seafood restaurant. Best choices are local Taku River salmon, sablefish, calamari, and the crab bisque.
