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A few year later, miners and citizens of his city brought his body back for burial in Juneau, a belated honor, but well deserved.
By David B. Stone and Charles C. Hawley, 1999
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Joe Juneau (prospector)
Joseph Juneau (1836–1899) was a miner and prospector from Canada who was born in the Quebec town of Saint-Paul-l'Ermite (later renamed Le Gardeur and now incorporated into the city of Repentigny) to François Xavier Juneau dit Latulippe and Marguerite Thiffault Juneau.
His Native American guide in southeastern Alaska was Chief Kowee.
Photo from Alaska's Digital Archives.
Joseph Juneau, born May 28, 1833 in Repentigny, Quebec, Canada, was the second and most adventurous son of Francois and Marguerite Juneau. When they returned to Pilz empty-handed, he promptly sent them back to the Juneau area.
Joseph and Harris were sent with Kowee by George Pilz, an entrepreneur from Sitka. Joe Juneau reportedly bought drinks for fellow miners to persuade them to name the city in his honor.
Joe Juneau traveled to Dawson City, Yukon during the Klondike Gold Rush of the 1890s. The voters may have been influenced by Joe’s offers of free drinks.4) Juneau made about $18,000 from his claim on the Gastineau Channel, and was broke again within two years.5)
Juneau was in Circle City, Alaska around 1894 and then he moved to the Klondike after the gold strike there.
Juneau was back on the creek in early October, and this time he and his partner proceeded up Snowslide Gulch and dropped into a basin cut by hundreds of gold-bearing quartz veins.
In thirty years of mining and prospecting, Joe Juneau had never seen its equal in terms of the immense size of the gold-bearing zone. It has been the political capital of Alaska since 1906. Today, a creek on Douglas Island is named Kowee Creek.
After the discovery of gold in the area, Harris and Juneau carried approximately 1,000 pounds of gold ore back to Sitka.
The settlement founded by Juneau and Harris was originally called Harrisburg or Harrisburgh, and then Rockwell.
He searched for gold in California and the Cassiar district of British Columbia.
Before he left his namesake townsite, Juneau conceived a child with a young Tlingit girl known as Susie. Juneau died of pneumonia in Dawson; his body came back to the town that now bears his name in 1903. The baby was Mary Andrews Marks, matriarch of many descendants in the Juneau area.
From his boyhood on, he heard of his illustrious cousin, Laurent-Salomon Juneau, who had followed the fur trade before settling down to found the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. There, Kowee took them beyond Gold Creek (which today flows beside the city's United States Federal Building[1] (http://westjuneau.com/federalbldg.htm)) to Silver Bow Basin.
Before tackling the rest of Gold Creek, the men returned to Sitka.