SITKA, Alaska — Sitka plays down its lusty history of saints and sinners. The little Alaskan town that was a gateway to the 1897 Klondike gold rush opts instead for the beauty of snowcapped mountains reaching down to Pacific waters, a sleeping volcano, a summer music festival and sport fishing that reels in enough salmon and halibut to fill the cargo holds of flights back to the Lower 48. All this comes with a rich Russian history and a poignant American Indian heritage.
The former capital of Russian-ruled Alaska sits on Baranof Island, named after Alaska’s first Russian governor, Alexander Baranov. It’s part of southeast Alaska, the skinny appendage that looks like a strip of salmon hanging down the west coast of British Columbia. The island is on the outer side of what’s known as the Inside Passage.
Four hours south of Juneau by fast ferry and an anchorage for cruise ships, the town purposely keeps its harbor small enough to bar whale-size cruise vessels.
Although the temperature rarely drops below freezing in winter, summer is the best time to visit, with almost round-the-clock daylight (though prepare for rain), the salmon run and the Sitka Summer Music Festival held each June.
Despite an infrastructure of only 14 miles of paved roads and two traffic lights, Sitka boasts a great performance venue — Harrigan Centennial Hall. Built for the 1967 celebration of the U.S. purchase of Alaska, the wall-to-wall windows behind the performers frame a backdrop of mountains and water. Eagles ride the air currents and ravens swoop by the hall, banking up and out at the last moment. A concert in this setting is one of the great musical experiences.
Whether you’re in Sitka for a few hours or a week, the Sitka National Historical Park Visitor Center at the end of town is a fine place to start. The park sign has an eagle on one side, a raven on the other — the birds identified with the two divisions of the matriarchal Tlingit tribe.
Ranger tours of the park’s totem pole trail reveal the quintessential Sitka — deep, misty rain forest hugging the shore, the smell of the sea and the caw of ravens.
The trail through the hemlocks leads to the 1804 battleground where the Russians defeated the Tlingit after being humiliated two years earlier. This time the Tlingit’s fierce defense failed. Their fort was destroyed and the tribe had to flee.
Today Alaskan natives are part of the local population and American Indian handicrafts are on sale — along with “Baitful Dead” T-shirts and “Bling Cod” refrigerator magnets. The finest craftsman of them all, Tlingit master carver Tommy Joseph, 47, carves totem poles for the National Park Service, restoring old ones and creating new ones. In December 2007, he was at the White House when one of his wooden ornaments made it onto the first family’s Christmas tree.
The visitor center museum is worth a visit, for its history and the magnificent totem poles in a separate roofed area. The bookshop sells an excellent, slim volume on the Sitka totem poles for a self-guided tour as well as books on local hiking trails.
Just before the park, the Sheldon Jackson Museum has a collection of native artifacts dating to 1888. The museum houses the collection of the Rev. Sheldon Jackson, a Presbyterian missionary who was the first general agent of education for Alaska. The drawers in the main exhibit hall contain exquisite Eskimo miniatures.
Lincoln Street, stretching from the waterfront past the onion-domed St. Michael’s Cathedral to the Sitka National Historical Park, encompasses Sitka’s religious history. In this town of 8,800 where aluminum siding seems to be the major architectural statement, St. Michael’s, the Russian Orthodox cathedral, stands out. The Sitka icon straddles the main street with green, rounded roofs and triple-bar golden crosses. The original 1848 structure burned to the ground in 1966 but was faithfully restored and still houses 17th-century golden icons snatched from the inferno. Church bells can be heard throughout Sitka. The town’s one saint — inventor, linguist and passionate believer in universal education, St. Innocent of Alaska and Siberia — came from mother Russia to establish the church and translated the local tribal languages into the Cyrillic alphabet.
HISTORIC CHURCHES
Across from St. Michael’s, a plaque commemorates the original Lutheran church, built by the Finns, whom the Russians imported as shipwrights. Down the road, near Finn Alley, St. Peter’s by-the-Sea Episcopal Church boasts a rose window with a Jewish star at its center.
Somehow the order for a giant circular window with Christian symbols took an ecumenical turn back east in the days when returns were dicey at best so the church window with the Jewish star stayed. Nearby, the Russian Bishop’s House, restored by the National Park Service, gives visitors a taste of a 19th-century log building so elegant that Bishop Innocent called it an ecclesiastical palace.
When cruise ships are in port, the New Archangel Dancers, an all-woman troupe, performs traditional dances celebrating the Russian past. When the women first asked their men folk to join them, the men had better things to do, so the women donned male and female costumes and have been performing ever since. Performance listings are posted at Centennial Hall.
Wildlife boat trips, kayaking and whale watching outings abound. For landlubbers, the Alaska Raptor Center and the Fortress of the Bear are the places to view wildlife nurtured by humans. The raptor rehabilitation center, walking distance from town, cares for wounded eagles, hawks, owls and other damaged birds of prey. Even behind its chain link fence, the bald eagle is an awesome sight.
A DIFFERENT NOTE
The Fortress of the Bear, housing bears in the giant, drained clarifier tanks of the town’s old pulp mill, was lovingly created by Les Kinnear. Orphaned bears saved from starvation, now too humanoriented to let loose, romp in captivity.
During a recent Sitka Summer Music Festival, cellist Armen Ksajikian, a true bear of a man, serenaded two brown bears from atop a tower in their enclosure. They weren’t much for the high notes but were charmed by the cello’s dark, growling sounds. And the Daily Sitka Sentinel newspaper photo by James Poulson went viral (cello.org/bearconcert.jpg).
The three-week classical music festival is one of Sitka’s claims to fame with dozens of top-flight musicians in residence every June. It’s not too early to start thinking of next year’s Sitka Summer Music Festival since accommodations go quickly during the summer fishing season.
By night, chamber music performances take place in Centennial Hall. By day, musicians perform over breakfast coffee, “Bach’s Lunch” and mix “Music and Martinis.” After 40 years, founder, artistic director and violinist Paul Rosenthal is handing the festival over to master cellist Zuill Bailey, whose recording of Bach’s Cello Suites hit No. 1 on the Billboard classical chart. (Bailey played with the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra in September 2008.) Planning ahead, longtime festival-goers check the site’s program postings starting in March, then make their reservations.
In February there’s the Sitka Jazz Festival and the Sitka Music Festival Alaska Airlines Winter Classics Concert series, in March the Sitka ArtiGras and in July the Homeskillet Music Fest.
GOURMET FAVORITE
Over the years, the musicians have figured out where to eat. Bear charmer Ksajikian is a regular at lunchtime chowder cart Ludvig’s Bistro. Named after the owner’s dog, it is Sitka’s gourmet dinner spot. Chef-owner Colette Nelson, who worked on a Sitka fishing vessel before studying in Spain, prepares Mediterranean cuisine with freshly caught fish. Reservations are absolutely necessary in this tiny, exotically decorated restaurant.
Shoppers will find that the sexiest thing for sale in town is probably the tacky fur bikini in one of the stores lining Lincoln Street. But the goodtime girls and the brothels that blossomed farther north with the Alaska gold rush probably won’t be missed by today’s travelers.
Along with the one saint, Sitka had a few beloved sinners. On April 1, 1974, Porky Bickar hired a helicopter to drop 100 old tires, oily rags and smoke bombs on Mount Edgecumbe, Sitka’s sleeping volcano. He then doused everything with kerosene and the good people of Sitka awoke to a flaming, smoke-belching volcano with 50-foot spray-painted letters proclaiming “April Fool.” Unfortunately, Bickar had forgotten to alert the Coast Guard, and the admiral had the region on full alert before the source of the volcanic eruption was discovered.
Saints and sinners — Sitka can accommodate them all, especially with the leavening influence of pure air, stunning mountains and ocean, a rich history, sweet music and fresh fish.
For more information, phone the Sitka Convention & Visitors Bureau at (800) 557-4852 or visit sitka.org. For the travel guide and maps, visit travelsitka.com. Dates for the 2012 Sitka Summer Music Festival have not been chosen, but check out the festival’s website at sitkamusicfestival.org or call (907) 747-6774.
Travel, Pages 52 on 08/07/2011