Digital Bob Archive

Monuments can do much to dress up a town, and to give both its residents and its visitors a sense of history. Thus, it is doubtful that anyone will quarrel with the program to erect another monument to Joe Juneau and Dick Harris, discoverers of gold hereabout in 1880. But that does only half of what is needed. Harris and Juneau have one monument on Glacier Avenue, but two other men who played a large part in the gold discovery have no monument at all.

Harris and Juneau appear in bas relief on the monument erected by Igloo No.6, Pioneers of Alaska, and unveiled on May 30, 1940, by Miss Genevieve Juneau, a grandniece of Joe Juneau, and Miss Margaret Harris, granddaughter of Dick Harris. But George Pilz and Kola Kowee are virtually unrecognized for their part in the discovery.

Pilz was a mining engineer who learned his trade in his native Germany and engaged in lode mining in California before he came north in 1878 to install Alaska's first stamp mill at Silver Bay near Sitka. He grubstaked several prospectors, including Juneau and Harris, to look for gold in the northern part of Southeastern Alaska. In August, 1880, Juneau and Harris failed in their first attempt to ascend Gold Creek. It was Kowee of the Auks who went to Sitka and persuaded Pilz to send them back for another try. Then Kowee led them over Snowsilde Gulch to the rich quartz outcroppings in Silver Bow Basin.

Pilz, lacking capital, was unsuccessful in developing a mine here at Juneau. He returned to California and served a jail term for fraud when a mining promotion failed. After trying his luck in Mexico, he went to the Klondike after that discovery, and later was on the Fortymile, at Katalla and elsewhere in the North. \"Hard Luck George\" was a fitting nickname and he died broke at Eagle on the Yukon on September 15, 1926.

Chief Kowee, a leader of his people, moved with them into Juneau after the town was founded and owned a prominent house on what is now Village Street. He was appointed to the Indian Police force in the years before civil government, when the Navy was in charge and was wearing his police uniform when he died at Juneau on June 3, 1893. On June 7 his body was cremated on a pyre near the present Evergreen Cemetery. A bronze plaque of Fallen Raven marked the approximate site for many years. It is now in storage but I understand will be replaced.

The hard-rock mining industry itself, the economic mainstay of the Gastineau Channel area for more than 60 years, should have more readily visible monuments, and perhaps the most meaningful ones would be some of the machinery used in the industry. Scattered from Windham Bay to Point Sherman are prospecting mills, batteries of stamps and other such hardware.

The first step would be to compile an inventory of what is available. The next would be to raise funds to hire modern lifting equipment to bring some of it out, and the third would be to scrape it and paint it and set it up around town, with suitable signs to tell the uninitiated what it is and how it was used. An advantage for that kind of museum piece is that no building is necessary, no attendants or upkeep once it is in place.