Our town’s two most interesting places are in a swamp and a burnt-out building foundation. Credit the Alaska Arts Confluence and the Chilkoot Indian Association for vision, the kind we need desperately at city hall.
The CIA, a Haines-based tribe, is now completing a mile-long extension to its Sawmill Creek wetlands interpretive trail.
The tribe has built the best trails in Haines, highlighting a wetland that is a nursery to much of our spectacular wildlife, starting with salmon. Tribal members are descendants of the Natives who 140 years ago turned over all the land in Portage Cove south of Main Street to the Presbyterian Church so a Native school and mission could be built here.
Because of their generosity, a town grew up and, in a bitter irony, Chilkoot Natives were unable to claim an ancestral village and omitted from the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, leaving them virtually landless. Private owners and the U.S. military slowly took over the land grant property, and the school and mission for Natives closed.
About 30 years ago, the national Presbyterian Church agreed to return to Chilkoot Natives a smidgen of that original land grant, much of it swamp across the street from the Haines School.
The tribe could have waged a legal battle for half of downtown. Instead, it turned lemons into lemonade, building attractive, affordable housing in the dry portions of its property and a public trail through wetlands. The trail and boardwalk are more than a nature hike; they comprise a transportation link from tribal housing to downtown Haines.
The trails represent what Haines residents have talked about for years but never accomplished – a workable set of connected, maintained trails to make the town core friendly to pedestrians and bicyclists. Trails and bike routes are 21st century transportation: They keep people healthy while creating livable, urban space.
The Haines Borough, meanwhile, has devoted its construction money to turning a priceless, majestic waterfront into giant parking lots for seasonal users. Mayor Don Otis was the last town official to concern himself with keeping our existing sidewalks clear of snow. He put a plow on a four-wheeler and drove it down sidewalks himself.
If you like to walk around here in winter, you get to play chicken with motorists on the edge of roadways. Be sure to wear a day-glow vest.
Meanwhile, the Fort Seward Sculpture Garden just booked its first wedding. From literally a pile of rusty pipes and other junk, the arts confluence has created a fascinating and whimsical space for art, set apart from its surroundings by the basement walls of the Fort Seward barracks building that burned down 40 years ago. Talk about value added.
The garden boasts traditional and mind-bending art of all kinds. There is nothing else quite like it in Southeast Alaska. A fund-raising auction for the sculpture garden two weeks ago raised $6,000, including a $500 bid on Ray Menaker’s spinning wheel. The event was billed as “trash to treasure” and featured many used, re-purposed and recycled items.
Way ahead of his time, Menaker was a big recycler. He printed the town’s newspaper on used equipment. For typing paper, his reporters used the blank side of stale press releases. Among myriad other projects and causes, Menaker took in foster children. He found value where others missed it.
Appropriately, the folks who bought Menaker’s spinning wheel had never heard of Ray. Like Ray, they were newcomers here, looking to do something good for the place.
In Haines, some folks are turning trash into treasure while others are turning treasure into trash.