Art of the Americas

Juneau, Alaska

Juneau ( JOO-noh; Tlingit: Dzántik'i Héeni [ˈtsʌ́ntʰɪ̀kʼɪ̀ ˈhíːnɪ̀] transl. Base of the Flounder's River), officially the City and Borough of Juneau, is the capital of the U.S. state of Alaska, located along the Gastineau Channel in Southeast Alaska. Juneau was named the capital of Alaska in 1906, when the government of what was then the District of Alaska was moved from Sitka as dictated by the U.S. Congress in 1900. On July 1, 1970, the City of Juneau merged with the City of Douglas and the surrounding Greater Juneau Borough to form the current consolidated city-borough, which ranks as the second-largest municipality in the United States by area and is larger than both Rhode Island and Delaware. Downtown Juneau is nestled at the base of Mount Juneau and it is across the channel from Douglas Island. As of the 2025 census, the City and Borough had a population of 31,454, making it the third-most populous city in Alaska after Anchorage and Fairbanks, but the sixth-least populous U.S. state capital. Juneau experiences a daily influx of 16,000 people or more from visiting cruise ships between the months of May and September. These cruise ships have a positive impact on Juneau's local economy, bringing in $375 million of direct spending in 2023. The city is named after a gold prospector from Quebec, Joe Juneau, although it was once called Rockwell and then Harrisburg (after Juneau's co-prospector, Richard Harris). The Tlingit name of the town is Dzántik'i Héeni (transl. Base of the Flounder's River), and Auke Bay just north of Juneau proper is called Áak'w (transl. Little Lake) in Tlingit. The Taku River, just south of Juneau, was named after the cold t'aakh wind, which occasionally blows down from the mountains. Juneau is unique among U.S. state capitals in that there are no roads connecting the city to the rest of the state or to the contiguous United States. Honolulu, Hawaii, is the only other state capital which is not connected by road to the contiguous United States. The absence of a road network is due to the extremely rugged terrain surrounding the city. In turn, Juneau is a de facto island city in terms of transportation; all goods coming in and out must be transported by plane or boat despite the city's location on the Alaskan mainland.

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See also

• ▸Archaeoastronomy
• ▸Dhives Akuru
• ▸La Llorona

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Text from Wikipedia; plate via Wikimedia Commons. Text CC BY-SA 4.0; plate freely licensed (see Commons). Source record. Images and catalogue data are reproduced from open-access collections.