![]() "It's the largest collection of Alaska native artifacts in the state -1,700 pieces," Daniels said. It's easy to walk around town, and I toured the Sheldon Jackson Museum and Cultural Center, opened in 1895, the oldest continuously operated museum in the state. It also has a fascinating World War II history: Few Americans realize that during the war it was a strategic location, with more than 20,000 military personnel assigned here to build the Naval Air Station and coastal fortifications, the only military base on the North Pacific ready to defend this coast. It boasts eight National Historic Landmarks and has a state-run boarding high school for students living in remote areas and a University of Alaska Southeast campus. The National Trust for Historic Preservation recently named Sitka as one of the nation's "Dozen Distinctive Destinations" for 2010, the first Alaskan city to be selected and the only community so designated on the West Coast. During its heyday it was the most profitable fur trading company in the world and today has a large sport and commercial fishing industry. Sitka - a contraction of "Shee-Atika" - means "People on the Side of Shee," an expression used by the original Tlingits to describe themselves and their location. Their half-hour performance at Harrigan Centennial Hall includes about six dances with cultural commentary and costs only $10. Started in 1969, the group has performed Russian folkloric dances in several other countries, including Russia and Japan. Comprised of a group of 30 local women who are neither Russian nor professional dancers, they are volunteers who make their own costumes. Today visitors can step back in history to observe the typical Russian mid-19th century lifestyle, economics and politics of czarist Russia in Alaska.įor a sampling of Russian culture, I attended a dance performance of the New Archangels. After major renovation, it was obtained by the U.S. It provided living quarters, a chapel and office for the bishops until 1969, when it closed. One of a few surviving examples of Russian Colonial architecture in North America, it was the center of the Russian Orthodox Church authority in a diocese that ranged from California to Siberian Kamchatka. as part of an agreement with Czar Alexander I granting a monopoly on American trade. Today, besides touring the cathedral, visitors can also see the Russian Bishop's House, built in 1842 by the Russian American Co. ![]() "This quirky little town in southeast Alaska! The Russians called Sitka 'New Archangel' (Novo Arkhangelsk) and were aristocrats here they were here to make money, and when that ended they left after the territory was transferred to the United States." "Sitka was the capital of all Russian America," Daniels said. Typical of Russian churches, there are no pews or benches during services the men stand on the right, the women and children on the left. Thanks to their efforts, today the rebuilt cathedral -consecrated in 1976 - houses the largest collection of Russian religious items outside Russia, according to Bobbi Daniels of Sitka Tours. In what many term a miracle, the townsfolk formed a human chain to save 90 percent of the priceless artifacts, some dating from the late 1500s. Michael's, the first Russian Orthodox Cathedral in America, was built in 1848, then destroyed within 30 minutes by a fire in 1966. But many Russian influences remain today. ![]() Years later, when that dried up, Russia sold the territory to the United States in 1867 for $7.2 million, or about 2 cents an acre - packed up and headed home. The Russians forced their way upon Sitka in 1804 - radically changing the Tlingits' lifestyle - to make money in the sea otter industry. Today a quarter of the population is Tlingit. An island once the trading capital of the northwest coast and dubbed "Paris of the Pacific," it has been inhabited by the Tlingits for centuries. But I was in the United States on a Royal Caribbean shore excursion in tiny Sitka, population 9,000.
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