Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
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Southeast Idyll
THE ONLY TIME I'VE
ever been to Haines was in 1972, when my UAF Reporting of Public
Affairs class went to Juneau to report on the legislature. We drove from Fairbanks to
Haines to catch the ferry to Juneau, and repeated the trip in reverse to get home. This was
February or March and it was dark for most of the day and for me Haines was just a ferry
terminal, not an actual town.
This year my friend Irene invited me down to a remembrance gathering in honor of six
members of the Gaanaxteidi family. Irene grew up in Haines, and her friend Jill was going
to be adopted into the Raven clan, and Jill and Irene and Irene's cousin Rose and I would
be driving down together.
It sounded like fun so I went. This is my year for road trips (see previous Alcan
columns).
Almost 800 miles by road from Anchorage, located at the top of the Lynn Canal at the
top of Alaska's Inside Passage, Haines began life as a summer fish camp for the Tlingits
who lived in Klukwan, about twenty miles up the road from Haines. Naturalist John Muir
showed up in 1879, and along with missionary S. Hall Young finessed a Ms. Francina
Haines of the Presbyterian Home Missions Board out of enough money to finance a mis-
sion there (hence the name of the new town). In 1902 the US Army built Fort Seward to the
west of the townsite, named for William H. Seward, the secretary of the Interior who en-
gineered the Alaska Purchase from Russia (two cents an acre, don't forget, still the best
deal the U.S. ever made). Almost immediately they had to change the name to Port
Chilkoot to avoid having all their mail sent to the city of Seward on the Kenai Peninsula,
and the locals still call it Port Chilkoot today.
