John Muir's Places to Visit Around Wrangell
When John Muir came to Alaska in 1879 and 1880, he made Fort Wrangel his home. He intended to study glaciers, but he found himself making friends with missionaries, observing the Tlingit, and taking in the sights around Wrangell Island.
Here are some of the places John Muir visited in Wrangell that you can visit today.
1. The Wharf
On July 14, 1878, John Muir arrived at Fort Wrangel aboard a steamship. The ship left for Sitka after a few hours, but Muir returned a few days later on July 20. When he disembarked, he didn’t have a place to stay. A passing missionary took pity on him. In Travels in Alaska, Muir wrote:
“Thanking him, I ran down to the sloppy wharf for my little bundle of baggage, laid it on the shop floor, and felt glad and snug among the dry, sweet-smelling shavings.”
TODAY (Map): The “sloppy wharf” described by Muir was demolished long ago, but modern-day City Dock sits near the same spot at a slightly different angle. This is the place to visit to see how John Muir first saw Wrangell. You can find City Dock at the north end of Front Street, near the Stikine Inn. It is where many large vessels like cruise ships and yachts tie up when visiting Wrangell.
2. Etolin Harbor
In 1879, life was built right to the water’s edge. For both the Tlingit and gold-rush settlers, homes and businesses were constructed along the curves and bend of the coastline. Inside the coastline is Etolin Harbor, a natural body of water created by a peninsula which sticks out in front of the town. John Muir found the whole settlement inhospitable and wrote a glaring letter about it to his fiancé, Louie Strenzel:
“...a rickety falling scatterment of houses, dead and decomposing, set and sunken in a black oozy bog, the crooked trains of wooden huts wriggling along either side of the street, obstructed by wolfish curs, hideous Indians, logs, stumps and erratic boulders, the mud between a little too thick to sail in and far to soft to walk in.”
TODAY (Map): Extensive fill has added square footage to Wrangell’s downtown, but you can still experience the old coastline by walking down Front Street, continuing onto Case Avenue, and taking a right onto Peninsula Street. The Tlingit village of Ḵaachx̱ana.áakʼw began near the south end of Front Street and extended through Case Avenue out to the end of the peninsula to a spot known as Shutack’s Point named for the Tlingit man of the Taalkweidí clan who lived there.
(source: American Museum of Natural History)
3. Kaats’litaan
Before the Russian-American Company arrived in the 1830s to trade furs with the Tlingit, Kaats’litaan was a village near the southwest corner of Wrangell Island occupied by hundreds of Tlingit. By Muir’s time, the place dubbed “Old Town” had been unoccupied for nearly fifty years and was well-overgrown. In his unpublished journals, Muir wrote:
“The site of the village is marked most interestingly by carved totem pillars, now moss-grown, and some of them picturesquely planted with tufts of grasses and bushes. One carved post is surmounted by a bear, life size; others are carved along the whole column into human forms, and are said to have been the receptacles of the ashes of the dead.”
TODAY (Map): Kaats’litaan has long since slipped beneath southeast Alaska’s thick brush and dense foliage. You won’t find any heirlooms or artifacts here. Although it is abandoned, Kaats’litaan is still an important cultural site for Wrangell’s Tlingit community. In recent years, there have been ceremonies held here. It should remain undisturbed, but if you go, have someone help you navigate matters of showing cultural respect.
4. Fort Wrangel
The U.S. Army completed construction of the Fort Wrangel garrison in 1869. By the time John Muir arrived one decade later, the Army had abandoned the post twice. The second time, the Army handed control of the buildings to Presbyterian missionaries who used the buildings for homes and as a boarding school for Indigenous girls. In Travels in Alaska, Muir wrote:
“The fort was a quadrangular stockade with a dozen block and frame buildings located upon rising ground just back of the business part of the town... In the fort and about it there were a few good, clean homes, which shone all the more brightly in their sombre surroundings.”
TODAY (Map): While the fort is long gone, Uncle Sam continues to use the property. The former two-story school building was replaced by the modern U.S. Post Office. The old footpath path through the fort is now a paved sidewalk. Walk the outer sidewalk in front of the Post Office, and you’ll be around where John Muir used to sleep on the floor of the families who took him in.
5. Shakes Island
Shakes Island sits inside of Etolin Harbor and is the ancestral home to the Naanya.aayí clan. By the time John Muir arrived in 1879, the clan’s long-serving leader Kaawishté had been dead about one year, and his nephew Gush Tlein was still near the beginning of his time as “Shakes.” Gush Tlein invited John Muir to a large party on Shakes Island featuring food, dancing, and storytelling. In Travels in Alaska, Muir described thoroughly enjoying himself:
“After the dinner we assembled in Chief Shakes’s large block-house and were entertained with lively examples of their dances and amusements, carried on with great spirit… The floor of the house was strewn with fresh hemlock boughs, bunches of showy wild flowers adorned the walls, and the hearth was filled with huckleberry branches and epilobium. Altogether it was a wonderful show.”
TODAY (Map): No visit to Wrangell is complete without a trip to Shakes Island. The same was true in John Muir’s time, as well. A recently reconstructed clan house sits on the island, accessible by a long boardwalk. While the inside of the clan house is only open on special occasions, the grounds outside of the clan house make for an enjoyable walk with a view of the Wrangell harbor.
6. Crittenden Creek
Crittenden Creek is on the mainland east of Wrangell Island. It is named for Rudolph D. Crittenden, Fort Wrangel’s Collector of Customs during John Muir’s visit. Crittenden took Muir here during his visit in 1879. In Travels in Alaska, Muir wrote:
“A little excursion to one of the best huckleberry fields adjacent to Wrangell, under the direction of the Collector of Customs, to which I was invited, I greatly enjoyed. There were nine Indians in the party, mostly women and children going to gather huckleberries.”
TODAY (Map): To get to Crittenden Creek, you’ll need a boat and some way to get yourself ashore. It is still a place in the wilderness, and you should take precautions to visit safely. There is most certainly an original Tlingit name for this creek, but I regret I am unable to find it.
This photo shows Mt. Dewey’s view of Fort Wrangel near the turn of the century, about two decades after Muir’s visit.
7. Mt. Dewey Overlook
John Muir’s most infamous deed in Fort Wrangel came one dark, stormy night in September 1879, when he climbed the hill behind the town and lit a bonfire so large it lit up the sky above the town and was visible to the Tlingit on the ground. In Travels in Alaska, Muir wrote:
“It was wonderful,—the illumined rain and clouds mingled together and the trees glowing against the jet background, the colors of the mossy, lichened trunks with sparkling streams pouring down the furrows of the bark, and the gray-bearded old patriarchs bowing low and chanting in passionate worship!”
TODAY (Map): The Mount Dewey Trail is a popular hike for Wrangell locals and visitors. While the trail is well marked with wooden boardwalks and stairs, it is sometimes steep and twisty. If you want to take the hike, you’ll enjoy a nice time in the thick southeast Alaska underbrush and emerge at the top at the overlook, with an incredible view of Wrangell and the Zimovia Strait. Today, fires are strictly prohibited.
John Muir’s time in Alaska involved long voyages in search of glaciers and a remarkable canoe voyage into Chilkat country, described in Across the Shaman’s River. But his time in Fort Wrangel was substantial, enough so that he covered a great deal of ground on Wrangell Island and the areas nearby.
If you’re interested in learning more about John Muir’s time in Fort Wrangel, check out our podcast, John Muir and the Fire on the Mountain.
