Curious Juneau

“The fact is that after 1902, all of the people who were executed in Alaska were either racial minorities or ethnic minorities,” said attorney Averil Lerman. The last three men executed in the territory were an Alaska Native and two black men.

Many people are familiar with the story of Robert Stroud, one of the country’s most famous inmates of the last century, and how he spent over half his life in solitary confinement and gained fame for his careful study of birds and bird diseases. But many people probably don't know that Stroud was initially sent to prison for a murder he committed just a few short blocks away from the present-day Alaska State Capitol in downtown Juneau.

Curious Juneau examines why Gastineau Channel isn't maintained as a through waterway. Instead most vessels have to take the long way around Douglas Island.

The eye painted on Mount Juneau as it appeared in 2016. (Photo courtesy Mikko Wilson)

In this Curious Juneau, we look into the origins of the eye glaring over downtown.

“When I first moved here in 1974, as a kid in the playground at Harborview we’d look up and all the kids would always wonder what that eye was,” local Paul Prussing said.

Prussing was one of many people that asked Curious Juneau what the story is behind the bloodshot eye painted on the side of Mount Juneau.

“Was it something scary looking down on us? Was it the mountain looking down?” Prussing said. ”Of course it always ended up being something scary and suspicious.”

Is the eye a high school prank? Part of an underground rock climbing club’s initiation? A Masonic conspiracy?

Curious Juneau stars you and your questions. Every episode we help you find an answer. Subscribe to our podcast, catch up on past episodes, ask your own question on the Curious Juneau page.

Listen to the Curious Juneau segment about the Mount Juneau eye:

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ktoo/2017/06/15EYE.mp3

The eye is an age-old symbol of the divine and all-knowing. In parts of Europe and the Middle East, the evil eye is an emblem of misfortune. In George Orwell’s “1984” it symbolizes government surveillance and omnipotence. The Eye of Providence on the dollar bill is a source of conspiracy theories and “National Treasure” films.

Here in the capital city, it seems like everyone has a theory about the Mount Juneau eye.

“I was always thought it was a group of seniors a couple years ago just went up there and painted it,” Amber Rounds-McPherson said.

Fred Triem thinks an avalanche caused it.

We picked up the story with the Juneau-Douglas High School class of 1970.

“All I know about that spot is that it’s been kind of a spot for mountain graffiti for many years,” Skip Gray, a longtime Juneau resident who sometimes work for us in television production. “Dating back to when I was a senior in high school. Somebody in my class wrote a big ‘70 up there for the graduating date of our class. ”

Before it was an eye, it was a huge, fluorescent ‘70. Gray cautiously put me in touch with a classmate who claims he originally painted the rock face.

In the spring of 1970 my best friend and I, Joe Smith, took a day off from school and a case of fluorescent orange spray paint and hung off the rock on the side of the mountain and painted a big 70,” said John MacKinnon.

He was skipping school, but MacKinnon said it wasn’t exactly vandalism. He claims they had permission.

“We researched that and discovered that was a claim,” MacKinnon said. “We went to AJ Mines and talked to a very nice old gentleman …  and he typed up a permission to paint Class of ’70 on the rock up there. … Class of ’70 had a tremendous amount of class spirit and there were spirit competitions in high school and that particular class won it every year from freshman to seniors. And this was just another show of our class spirit.”

Today, an eye’s been painted over that same rock face. Up close, it looks pretty rough. It’s barely recognizable as an eye.

The pupil looks like it might be the face of a black bear, and its gaping maw could be the zero in a faded “2010.”

We couldn’t confirm MacKinnon was the first to paint the rock. And a lot of longtime Juneau residents with fuzzy memories had conflicting accounts of when it became an eye.

Paul Prussing likes to think it’s always been there.

“Well, I’d like to always think it was like the ever watchful eye of hope on Juneau,” he said. “One of my friends, I remember, in grade school said his dad said it was when the federal building was built it was the eye to watch the feds.”

Whatever it means or wherever it came from, it’s probably not as exciting as the stories dreamed up here at ground level.

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In this concept art, a helicopter prepares to land at a proposed Mount Juneau tramway complex where Chuck Keen envisioned a hotel, restaurant and performance stage. His widow, Karen Keen, says she has the concept art hanging on her wall. (Image courtesy Karen Keen)

In this edition of Curious Juneau, we answer another question about Mount Juneau.

Listener Joann Flora writes about “that piece of hardware atop Mount Juneau, how did it get there and what is its purpose?”

Curious Juneau stars you and your questions. Every episode we help you find an answer. Catch up on past episodes, or ask your own question on the Curious Juneau page.

Listen to the Curious Juneau segment about the Mount Juneau tramway project:

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ktoo/2017/06/09cjkeenpkg.mp3

When we got in touch with her, Flora said she was asking about the big microwave reflector on the side of the mountain which we found out on a previous edition of Curious Juneau.

But that got us thinking about the other stuff, including the unfinished building that was left at the summit you can’t see from downtown Juneau.

We’ve got an answer for that, too.

Many longtime Juneau residents may remember before the Goldbelt Mount Roberts Tramway, there were plans to build the Mount Juneau tramway.

Chuck Keen had the idea for the project. The local character was a U.S. Marine, hard rock miner and timber faller before becoming a freelance cinematographer working for such clients as Disney. He also spent time in Vietnam capturing footage of the war.

“Chuck Keen’s experiences traveling the world led him to a vision of Juneau’s future as a tourist destination,” said a narrator in a short documentary produced by Pat Race in 2006.

“Keen had purchased property on the top of Mount Juneau in 1970 and dreamed of a tram leading to a beautiful alpine setting which would host a hotel, a two-story revolving restaurant, a museum, and a stage for performances, as well as access to the mountain trails and the icefield,” the narrator explained.

The original plan called for a lower tramway station on South Franklin Street, with a mid-point tower on Gastineau Ridge. The upper tramway station with the hotel and restaurant would be at the summit of Mount Juneau.

The project began to stall in the mid-1980’s after one of Keen’s companies filed for bankruptcy protection.

Keen and the City and Borough of Juneau also became embroiled in a big dispute over mining claims and property he had purchased for the project.

Keen claimed the city was trespassing because they were using an old AJ Mine tunnel under his mining claims as a water reservoir. The dispute dragged on and eventually ended up before the Alaska Supreme Court.

Keen also missed the project’s permitting deadlines and conditions. The tram project was eventually canceled in 1991.

The Mount Roberts tram opened six years later.

“I think he always felt that if he could build his tram, the other tram would just dry up and blow away,” said Chuck Keen’s son Mike in the documentary video.

At the very top of Mount Juneau, Keen had a heavy-lift helicopter haul up a backhoe, some shipping containers, and other equipment for the project. He also started construction on a bunkhouse for workers. That was all left on the mountain when the project fell apart.

Then, Keen died in 2003.

George Schaaf remembers that Karen Keen, widow of Chuck Keen, contacted him in 2009 for help in cleaning up her property at the summit.

“She had a desire to get all of that off of the mountain and try to return it back to its natural state as best as we could,” Schaaf said. “We told her that we would help her out with that.”

Back then, Schaaf was head of Trail Mix, the local trail rehabilitation group.

“We were grateful for her permission to get access up on the m…

The AT&T Alascom microwave reflector is located at an elevation of 3,012 feet on Mount Juneau. (Photo illustration by Matt Miller/KTOO)

In this edition of Curious Juneau, we answer a question about one of the Capital City’s most imposing landmarks: Mount Juneau.

Listener Chris Murray writes, “What in the world is that billboard looking structure on top of Mt. Juneau that can be seen from all over downtown and Douglas?”

A telephoto view of the AT&T Alascom microwave reflector on Mount Juneau as seen from North Douglas. (Photo by Matt Miller/KTOO)

If you look through binoculars, you can see what appears to be a large metal frame subdivided into four smaller panels and angled slightly downward.

Curious Juneau stars you and your questions. Every episode we help you find an answer. Catch up on past episodes, or ask your own question on the Curious Juneau page.

Listen to the Curious Juneau segment about the microwave reflector:

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ktoo/2017/06/02cjreflectpkg.mp3

It certainly looks like a billboard or perhaps a drive-in movie theater screen. The assembly is held up by what appears to be a metal support framework.

We checked with the City and Borough of Juneau, and their cartographer Quinn Tracy said the structure is probably 25 feet wide by 16 feet high, based on a light detection and ranging, or LIDAR, survey done in 2013.

After checking property maps, we discover that the panel sits on an L-shaped parcel at an elevation of 3,012 feet. The owner is listed as AT&T in New Jersey.

We tracked down somebody with AT&T Alascom who told us it was used as a passive repeater for microwave communication signals.

Alascom used to beam telephone and video signals from their downtown office about 1.4 miles up to the panel. The signals were reflected nearly 14 miles to a satellite uplink station at Lena Point.

Our source at AT&T Alascom did not want to be identified or quoted because he didn’t have permission to speak for the company. And, no one at their Anchorage offices got back to us.

So, we turned to Gray Haertig, an electrical engineering consultant based out of Portland, Oregon, who also worked on the White Alice communications system in Hoonah during the Cold War.

(Gray Haertig works as a consultant for several public radio stations in Alaska, including KTOO.)

He explained that telephone lines were impractical over long distances with no roads.

High frequency radio had limited capacity and only one call could be made at a time.

“In the mid- to late-50s, AT&T developed microwave systems, which operated at a much higher frequency,” said Haertig, who works as a consultant for several public radio stations in Alaska, including KTOO. “That system probably operated in the 2 gigahertz region.”

Microwaves could carry multiple telephone channels at once. But there was one big drawback.

“At 2 gigahertz, radio waves don’t go around corners very well. If you run into dirt, they stop,” Haertig said. “They had to figure out a way to get a signal from one place to another place when there was no way to see them, see one end to the other.”

Haertig wasn’t sure when the reflector was installed on Mount Juneau, but this is how it worked.

“If you imagined that the reflector was a mirror – nice and shiny and optically wonderful – if you stood at one end of the microwave path and somebody else stood at the other end of the microwave path and you got out your binoculars, you should be able to see each other. That’s how these things worked. (They) worked effectively optically even though it was microwave frequencies.”

The microwave signal from downtown Juneau would be sent up and bent down to the receiver at Lena Point.

Haertig said microwave communications later gave way to satellites in the 1970s and then fiber optic cable. The r…

A street in Juneau is a popular locale for residents and tourists alike. South Franklin Street particularly is home to several bars, shops and a rich history. But some wonder how that street got its name.

Ashwin Kiran was visiting Juneau in February when he noticed something was missing from the local entertainment scene. "Why are there no strip clubs in Juneau?" he wondered aloud.