Moorage Site U.S.S. Jamestown

Moorage Site U.S.S. Jamestown. . , One of a number of early naval vessels that saw distinguished service in Alaska's waters, the sloop-of-war U.S.S. Jamestown on June 14, 1879 arrived off shore here in relief of the U.S.S. Alaska. She had been ordered to sail from San Francisco to avert threatened Native uprisings; and to protect frontier citizens and their property. Thereafter from the decks of the Jamestown, moored in this channel off the old native village, from 1879 to 1881, under Commanders L. A. Beardslee, Henry Glass and (very briefly) E. P. Lull, this was actually the "official" seat of government for the Alaska District. Commanders, as well as officers and men of the Jamestown were instrumental in re-establishing one of the first schools in American-Alaska; collecting ethnographic and natural history specimens for the developing Smithsonian Institution; freeing native prisoners-of-war and their children (yet held as the result of earlier intertribal warfare); abolishing the final remnants of Indian slavery; opening the centuries-old Chilkoot Trail for general travel into the great Interior; policing illicit sale and manufacture of alcoholic beverages; conducting the second U.S. census; and generally attempting to maintain law and order in the vast colonial District of Alaska. In August, 1881, the U.S.S. Jamestown was relieved by the steam warship U.S.S. Wachusett, one of a series stationed in Alaska until a civil government was finally established by the Organic Act of 1884.