Sitka Alaska Home Sitka FREE Alaska Adventures Sitka Alaska Paydirt Pay Dirt Sitka Gold Claim For Sale Coins - A Work of Art Sitka Alaska Friends
Pick Alaska

SITKA ALASKA

Sitka was originally settled by the native Tlingit people. Old Sitka was founded in 1799 by Alexandr Baranov, the governor of Russian America. Baranov arrived under the auspices of the Russian-American Company, a "semi-official" colonial trading company chartered by Tsar Paul I. In 1802 a group of Tlingit destroyed the original establishment known as Redoubt Saint Michael (an area today called the "Old Sitka") and killed most of the Russian inhabitants. Baranov was forced to levy 10,000 rubles in ransom for the safe return of the surviving settlers.


Baranov returned to Sitka in 1804 with a large contingent of Russians and Aleuts with the Russian warship Neva. The ship bombarded the Tlingit fort but was not able to cause significant damage. The Russians then launched an attack on the fort and were repelled by Tlingit fighters and marksmen. However, the Tlingit gunpowder reserves had been lost before the Russian assault and the Tlingit were forced to leave the fort. Following their victory at the Battle of Sitka the Russians established a permanent settlement in the form of a fort, named Novoarkhangelsk (Russian: Новоархангельск), or New Archangel, a reference to Arkhangelsk, the largest city in the region where Baranov was born. The Tlingit re-established a fort on the Chatham Strait side of Peril Strait to enforce a trade embargo with the Russian establishment. In 1808, with Baranov still governor, Sitka was designated the capital of Russian America.

Cathedral of St. Michael, the seat of the Bishop of Kamchatka, the Kurile and Aleutian Islands, and Alaska was built in Sitka in 1848.


The original church burnt to the ground in 1966, but was restored to its original appearance, with the deliberate exception of its clockface, which is black in photographs taken prior to 1966, but white in subsequent photos.

Bishop Innocent of the Russian Orthodox Church lived in Sitka after 1840. He was known for his interest in education, and his house, parts of which served as a schoolhouse, the Russian Bishop's House has since been restored by the National Park Service. Swedes, Finns and other Lutherans worked for the Russian-American Company, and the Sitka Lutheran Church, built in 1840, was the first Protestant church on the Pacific Coast. After the transition to American control with the transfer of Alaska from Russia to the United States in 1867, influence of other Protestant religions increased, and St. Peter's-By-The-Sea Episcopal Church was consecrated as "The Cathedral of Alaska" in 1900. There are twenty two buildings and sites in Sitka that appear in the National Register of Historic Places.

Sitka was the site of the ceremony in which the Russian flag was lowered and the United States flag raised after Alaska was purchased by the United States in 1867 after the sea otter pelt trade died out. The flag lowering and raising event is re-enacted in Sitka every October 18 (Alaska Day). Sitka would serve as the capital of the Alaska Territory until 1906, when the seat of government was relocated north to Juneau. The state's first newspaper, The Sitka Times, was published by Barney O. Ragan on September 19, 1868.

While gold mining and fish canning paved the way for the town's initial growth, it wasn't until World War II, when the Navy constructed an air base on Japonski Island (bringing 30,000 service personnel to the area), that Sitka finally came into its own. Today Sitka encompasses portions of Baranof Island and the smaller Japonski Island (across the Sitka Channel from the town), which is connected to Baranof Island by the O'Connell Bridge. The O'Connell Bridge was the first cable-stayed bridge built in the Western Hemisphere. Japonski Island is home to Sitka Rocky Gutierrez Airport (IATA:SIT, ICAO:PASI), the Sitka branch campus of the University of Alaska Southeast, Mt. Edgecumbe High School — a state-run boarding school for rural Alaskans, Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium's Mt. Edgecumbe Hospital, a U.S. Coast Guard air station, and the port and facilities for the USCGC Maple.

The home rule charter of the City and Borough of Sitka was adopted on 2 December 1971 for the region of the Greater Sitka Borough, which was incorporated on 24 September 1963.

This information from Wikipedia: For more info. go to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchorage,_Alaska

A Message From Our Webmaster:

We need more information about this area including a photograph and any services available that visitors could participate in.

If you are able to provide this information please click “Contact”

Sitka Alaska Home Sitka Alaska Home Sitka Alaska Sitka Sitka pickalaska.com/Sitka www.pickalaska.com www.pickalaska.com/Sitka PickAlaska Alaska Pick Alaska for Pick Alaska for business vacation travel fishing hunting AK gold and gold mining coins treasure diamonds ruby emerald silver gold platinum uranium Arctic Village land homes for sale and houses business property for sale rent lease buy purchase for rent for sale cabin log logs truck car heavy equipment dozer backhoe back hoe bulldozer wash plant dredge sluice highbanker gold claim airline airplane taxi hotel motel room rooms find business home house homes land rent rental car AK hotel for sale land property cheap dirt property commercial  gold adventure residential resort hotel motel rent lease house homes home vacation travel fishing hunting gold and gold mining coins treasure land homes coin collectibles antique hotels air flying airline lakes rivers streams trees forests parks moose hotel coins AK oil star stars tv acting sing singing dance dancing model modeling Disney Universal Studios Six Flags Hollywood California vacation the game games for sale rent board game vacation airline books guns ammo hunt ferry boat vacation resorts lodge hotels for sale lease land for sale boat truck dozer backhoe car airplane for sale fishing hunt hunting moose caribou bison deer elk black bear grizzly fox lynx coyote wolverine squirrel rabbit marmot fish for salmon Coho chum rainbow grayling operate equipment excavator dozer backhoe back hoe Eskimo Indian Ahtna Athabaskan Tlinket mukluk oogarook muktuk cheechako sourdough prospect miner prospector for sale job jobs work construction job gold mining jobs operators miner see a million creeks lakes streams enjoy your vacation lodging collect Trans Alaskan Pipeline Coins and Alaska Medals and Tokens or see the oil gas Pipelines collect rare earth elements silver rhodium iridium gold mining adventures tour tours rafting raft canoe canoeing flying flightseeing vacations resorts travel destinations Alaska Visitor Destinations gold adventures coins friends gold adventures paydirt pay dirt AK gold Duffy’s Adventures Porcupine Creek Alaska Gold Paydirt gold pay dirt adventure Visitor Vacations and Destinations and Free Alaska Gold Adventures For Sale Alaska Sitka Alaska

Anchorage, Homer, Valdez, Palmer, Fairbanks, Tok, Glennallen, Chitina, Slana, Fox, Delta Junction, Paxon, Willow, Talkeetna, Sutton, Huston, Eagle River, Kenai, North Slope, Yukon, Chicken, Dawson, Juneau, Platinum, Mt. McKinley, Montana Creek, Seward, Nome, Wales, Prudhoe Bay and other Alaska cities. What can you do in Alaska? You may: Relax in your room; swim in the pool or soak in the Jacuzzi; have a five course dinner; go gold mining or gold prospecting or find gold and stake your own gold mining claim; go hunting or fishing; camp along the thousands of creeks or lakes or miles of beaches; go hiking, bicycling, ATV riding, trail riding or even horse back riding; go on a cruise on one of the hundreds of tour boats or sightseeing from a bush plane; go on a tour of the Wrangle, St. Elias National Park and Preserve - the largest in North America; visit abandoned villages and gold mining camps; see the Yukon River, the midnight sun, cross the Arctic Circle or visit Alaska Native Villages and Eskimo Igloos; see moose, caribou, grizzle and brown bears, black bear, fox, ptarmigan, salmon, wolverines, coyotes, lynx, mink, otters, seals, walrus, geese, ducks and hundreds of other birds including the Bald Eagle, the Raven and the infamous Camp Robber; go on sled dog rides or see Musk Ox and Reindeer; rent 4x4 ATV’s for trail rides or canoes for a ride down the river; see Mt. McKinley, the largest mountain in North America or visit places that have been here since before Alaska became a state such as Duffy’s Roadhouse at mile 63 on the Tok Cutoff Highway or you may visit the hundreds of other historic places that are on the maps; and you could go to museums, plays, theatres, shopping, antique stores and pawn shops or visit Russian Orthodox Churches built over a hundred years ago or visit fishing villages where the villagers have fished for hundreds of years; and, you could even learn the meaning of the words such as “cheechako”, “sourdough”, “muktuk”, “oogarook” or “cuspuck”.

Click Here to go back to Pick Alaska Home

Contact

Click Here to go back to Pick Alaska Home

* We are not realtors. All land and property shown is for sale by the owner or by real estate companies and will include their contact information. Do not contact us - we are not realtors. Please read our Terms and Conditions. Also see Privacy below. When you use our site you agree that you agree with out Terms and Conditions “information” provided and you also agree with our Privacy Policy - see Privacy below.

Copyright: 1982 - 2002 - 2012 - 2013 - 2014 - 2016  - 2018 by Mac Turney - all International Rights Reserved and

All images, script, software, advertising and more owned by others belong to them and may not be copied.

Privacy: We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here. DoubleClick DART cookie:

Mining Adventures & PayDirt - Secure PayPal Cart

Play to view our Alaska Videos: Caribou, Gold Mining, Gold, Earthquake, + more