2/2/2024 0 Comments Sentinel islandAfter a week of repairs in Juneau, she continued her journey south. Efforts to float the vessel off the island at high tide failed, so sliding ways had to be built and rock blasted away before the Princess May was finally pulled free on September third. The passengers were safely off-loaded on the island where the keepers did all they could to make them comfortable. Early in the morning of August 5, 1910, the Princess May was southbound from Skagway carrying eighty passengers and a crew of sixty-eight when she ran aground on a reef just off the northern end of Sentinel Island. Navigating Lynn Canal was still treacherous even with a light on Sentinel Island. Sentinel Island could not stake sole claim as Alaska’s first lighthouse as Five Finger Islands Lighthouse, located at the entrance to Stephens Passage some eighty-plus miles south of Juneau, went into service the same day. Sentinel Island Lighthouse was activated on March 1, 1902, though substantial work was still needed to complete the station. A second hoist house containing the equipment for pulling a wheeled cart along the tramway.A 360-foot tramway, constructed of steel rails and wooden ties, that connected the dock and lighthouse.A hoist house, adjacent to the boathouse used for transferring the station’s boat to and from the water. A one-story fog signal building, outfitted with a third-class Daboll trumpet that sounded a five-second blast every thirty seconds.In addition to the lighthouse, the following outbuildings and structures were built at the station: The focal plane of the lens was forty-two feet above the island, and eighty-two feet about the surrounding water at high tide. Atop the tower stood a helical-bar lantern room that housed a fixed, fourth-order Fresnel lens, manufactured in Paris by Henry-LePaute. The lighthouse consisted of a square wooden tower attached to the center of the westerly front of a keeper’s duplex, which was a large, two-story building with hipped cross gables. The original Sentinel Island Lighthouse was the only one of its kind built in Alaska. To reach the six-and-a-half-acre island from Juneau, one had to sail along Gastineau Channel to Auke Bay, and then follow Favorite Channel to its northern end where it joined Lynn Canal, a total distance of twenty-three miles. George James, a Juneau resident, was awarded a $21,267 contract for the construction of Sentinel Island Lighthouse, and work on the project commenced on July 25, 1901, when men and materials were landed on the island. All eleven of the lights recommended for Southeast Alaska would be built over the next five years, but those at Five Finger Islands and Sentinel Island were considered the most important. The inspector and engineer of the Thirteenth Lighthouse District sailed for Alaska on Jto select lighthouses, and after their return in August, they submitted a joint report recommending eleven lighthouses in Southeast Alaska and four in Western Alaska. The following year, an additional $200,000 was granted, and the task of lighting Alaska’s coast was gaining momentum. Congress, however, only budgeted a paltry $100,000, which was dedicated towards lights at Five Finger Islands and Sentinel Island. Something had to be done to improve navigation, and the Lighthouse Board requested a hefty sum of $500,000 in 1900 for constructing several lighthouses in Alaska. Strong currents, fog, rain, and a rocky shoreline made navigating the Inside Passage most challenging, and in 1898 alone, over three hundred maritime accidents were reported along the twisting waterway. In observation of the centennial of the Gold Rush, Alaska issued colorful license plates depicting the determined gold seekers threading their way up to Chilkoot Pass en route to the Klondike.īefore the influx of people produced by the gold rush, Alaska’s waterways were marked by an occasional buoy, but the United States had yet to build a lighthouse along the vast coastline it had acquired in 1867. From Skagway, the goldseekers still faced an arduous 600-mile trek before they could start panning in the frigid Klondike waters. The route taken by most of the stampeders led them to Skagway, situated at the northern terminus of Lynn Canal and the Inside Passage. Soon, however, an army of fortune seekers surged northward from Seattle and other Pacific port cities to try their luck in the gold fields. In 1896, when George Carmack and his two brothers-in-law discovered the precious metal where Bonanza Creek flowed into the Klondike River in Canada’s Yukon Territory, the area was almost uninhabited. Cries of “Gold! Gold in the Klondike!” sparked one of the greatest gold rushes in history.
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