https://media.ktoo.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/20240424-News-Update.mp3 In this newscast: A new campus slated for Juneau will be dedicated to immersing children in Alaska Native culture and languages, An Indigenous-led group, the Herring Protectors, received an unexpected contribution — two parcels of land on an island outside of Sitka, House la…

https://media.ktoo.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/20240423-News-Update.mp3 In this newscast: Alaska’s Division of Forestry released its plan for selling timber in Southeast Alaska for the next five years and an environmental group in the region is frustrated with the public process, A recent paper in Nature attempts to set a new timeframe of when h…

https://media.ktoo.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/20240422NewsUpdate.mp3 In this newscast: The City and Borough of Juneau is creating a task force to tackle if — and how — they should be regulated, Juneau’s emergency warming shelter closed last week and the city doesn’t have a campground for people to move to this year, Tongass Voices: Holly Huber …

https://media.ktoo.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/20240419-News-Update.mp3 In this newscast – The Tongass National Forest has grown, with the addition of 5 acres of important fish and wildlife habitat Earlier this month, the Denver Post reported that Lingit tribal members have been requesting cultural items back from the Denver Art Museum in Colora…

Signs tell Juneau residents where to deposit their recyclables at the city Recycling Center in Lemon Creek. (Photo by Adelyn Baxter/KTOO)https://media.ktoo.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/05CJRecycling.mp3 Editor’s Note: After we finished this story, a power outage forced the city’s recycling center to close for repairs. The city’s public works depa…

https://media.ktoo.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/20240418.mp3 In this newscast: Scientists and Alaska Native leaders released a report this week claiming plastic waste in the Arctic is contaminating essential resources of Indigenous communities Khalil English shares his research on silverweed, a seemingly inconspicuous plant with deep roots in Pac…

https://media.ktoo.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/20230417-News-Update.mp3 In this newscast: Wrangell’s Nolan Center hosted a screening of Blue Ticket on Monday. It’s a film of a play that KTOO documented back in 2019. The play’s author, Maureen Longworth, documented how gay men in Juneau were exiled from the city in the 1960s. The Alaska Native Bi…

https://media.ktoo.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/20240416-NewsUpdate.mp3 In this newscast: The Juneau planning commission agreed to let an outdoor food court expand into the empty lot that once housed the demolished Elks Hall building, The National Native Boarding School Healing Coalition will conduct interviews to document abuse at boarding schoo…

https://media.ktoo.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/20240415-News-Update.mp3 In this newscast: Peter Pan Seafood announced Friday that it was ceasing operations, A partisan brawl is about to erupt in Congress over the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Alaska’s US senators are seemingly split over it, Tongass Voices: Je…

https://media.ktoo.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/20240412-News-Update.mp3 In this newscast: Cancer patients in Juneau who need gynecological surgery no longer have to leave town to get it, The Alaska House of Representatives passed its $6 billion operating budget todayBy KTOO Public Media

https://media.ktoo.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/20240411-News-Update.mp3 In this newscast: City officials in Juneau have proposed a municipal spending plan for next year that slightly raises the property tax rate, Many Alaskans have to travel a long way for certain healthcare treatments, but a bill in the state House aims to close that distance b…

Makenzie O’Halloran makes a sandwich at Subway in the Mendenhall Valley on Tuesday, March 12, 2024. (Clarise Larson/KTOO)https://media.ktoo.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/CJfastcurious3.wav Fast-food restaurants have come and gone from Juneau for decades — but very few stick around for long. Beyond Subway, McDonald’s, Domino’s, Papa John’s and Papa…

The Salvation Army Family Store on a busy Saturday donation day in February 2024 (Photo by Anna Canny/KTOO)https://media.ktoo.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/26cjthrift.wav Dick Wood wrestled white garbage bags and cardboard boxes from the backseat of his beat up red car. There were children’s books, toys and clothes that once belonged to Wood’s son…

Snow dusts trees on a mountain in Juneau on Nov. 30, 2023. (Katie Anastas/KTOO)https://media.ktoo.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/CJnames_lede.mps_.mp3 Anywhere you go in Juneau, there are mountains shooting up…

Alaska’s Capitol has a ground floor and a first floor. It’s relatively uncommon in American buildings. (Katie Anastas/KTOO)https://media.ktoo.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/24capitol.wav When Americans walk into a multi-story building, they’d usually say they’re on the first floor. Not in the lobby of Alaska’s Capitol building. “It has a very Europ…

A jumble of fallen trees at Auke Nu Cove caught the attention of a Curious Juneau listener (Photo by Anna Canny/KTOO) https://media.ktoo.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/26microbursts.wav If you look across Auke Nu Cove from the parking lot at the Juneau ferry terminal, there’s a strange patch of fallen trees — about a dozen — that are splayed out in…

A Coast Guardsmen working on the recovery of the 81-year-old tugboat Tagish, which sank just south of Juneau’s cruise ship docks in December, 2022. (Courtesy of Coast Guard Sector Juneau)https://media.ktoo.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/29CoastGuard_adjusted.mp3 At a Coast Guard change-of-command ceremony on Thursday, about 30 active-duty Coast Gua…

A sign at the airport tells drivers to go no faster than 19 1/2 mph. (Katie Anastas/KTOO)https://media.ktoo.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/05sign.wav On a rainy afternoon at the Airport Dike Trail, Laura Minne is walking her dog, Bodhi. Over on the airport side of the fence, a speed limit sign tells drivers to go no faster than 19 ½ miles per hour.…

Charles McKenry poses in front of the menu at Juneau’s downtown Taco Bell in 1999. (Photo courtesy of Charles McKenry)https://media.ktoo.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/03TacoBell.mp3 In the late ’90s, Juneau had two Taco Bells. But by the early 2000s, they were both gone. Juneau has a history of fast food franchises coming and going, but the disapp…

A street light near the Juneau Public Library glows purple on Sunday, Jan. 23, 2022. (Photo by Bridget Dowd/KTOO)https://media.ktoo.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/24PurpleLights.mp3 On a foggy Sunday night in Juneau, the corner of Ferry Way and Marine Way is made eerie by a violet glow coming from a nearby street light. It’s just one of several lig…

A Maloja Snake or naagáas’ cloud formation over downtown Juneau at dawn on Aug. 26, 2021. (Image captured from SnowCloud Services webcam) In the 2014 film “Clouds of Sils Maria,” the climax of the story features a scene in the Swiss Alps where the two lead actresses, Kristen Stewart and Juliette Binoche, hike up high in the mountains to witness an …

The 1958-1959 girls’ high school rifle club poses for a yearbook photo in the basement of Harborview. (Courtesy of Karleen Grummett) As part of KTOO’s Curious Juneau project, a listener asked: “Was there really a gun range in the basement of Harborview Elementary School?” The short answer is yes. It was there for decades, and there are plenty of pe…

There were two giant hurdles preventing cruise ships from coming back to Alaska in April when they usually start showing up. For one, the Canadian border is still closed. Also, the CDC banned cruises last year. And even though it lifted that ban, it was replaced with a Conditional Sailing Order that came with a long list of hoops that cruise compan…

This summer was slated to be Juneau’s biggest ever for cruise ship visitors. Instead, 1.4 million cruise ship passengers and hundreds of millions of dollars never arrived in port. In May, we couldn’t imagine what an entire year of off-season would be like. It ended up feeling like summer never came. But, how bad was it? Will the industry bounce bac…

Since this spring, we’ve been following along as the biggest cruise season in Juneau’s history got canceled. In August, Juneau did see some cruise visitors after all. But it was a far cry from the 1.4 million visitors we were expecting -- it was 36 to be exact. The first and only cruise ship to sail in Southeast Alaska during the pandemic left June…

For the past several months, it’s been a lot of “will they or won’t they” with regard to the cruise industry coming to Alaska this year. And now that it’s clear that they won’t, cruise towns in southeast Alaska are thinking about next year. The hope is that by the time April rolls around, the pandemic will be on its way out or cruise ship companies…

A lot about Juneau’s future is up in the air still, but one thing is certain now: more than a million cruise ship passengers will not be coming to town this summer. Local businesses are already struggling to get by without tourists. By next year, Juneau could look like a very different place. It all depends on how the industry, and the world, recov…

An Alaska cruise is all about the scenery. And Juneau doesn’t disappoint. There’s a glacier in town and some of the best whale-watching in the world. But, this episode is about how Alaska can make some people squirm. Because climate change is so in-your-face here. And at some point, tourism is just going to be too much, but no one knows when exactl…

Safety at sea is serious business. And as the industry continues its explosive growth in Juneau, safety concerns are at the top of everyone’s list. In this episode, we ask what’s the worst thing that could happen? And we talk to the people who have thought about how to prepare for it.

What we know as Juneau has been the home of the Aak’w Kwaan since time immemorial. Some cruise ship tourists are curious about the people who were here long before Cruise Town and long before Juneau. In this episode, we’ll meet the cultural interpreters with the difficult task of explaining their history, their culture, their art — their existence …

Juneauites are a lot like whales. Some are year-round residents -- enduring or even thriving during the cold and wet off-season. But some migrate in for the summer -- making a splash when they arrive and then leaving again, chasing prey or love or something else equally magnetic. On this episode, we’ll meet some of the year-round and part-time resi…

Juneau has a new park featuring a life-size statue of a humpback whale breaching from a reflecting pool, complete with water works. The statue was privately funded, but the park where it lives was almost entirely paid for by a controversial per-person tax on cruise ship passengers. It was one of the first taxes of its kind and the cruise industry a…

On this episode, we go back -- not to the 1880s when Juneau was founded and steamships started coming north, but to the 1980s when Juneau made a conscious decision to change its destiny. We meet two people who were there when an old mining town sold its history and transformed itself into Cruise Town.…

This year, cruise ship passengers outnumbered local residents in Juneau 35 to 1. That’s why the KTOO news team is making a podcast about how we got here, what it’s like to live here and what the city’s future holds in light of the industry’s explosive growth.

https://media.ktoo.org/2019/05/28GOLDDREDGE-CJ-NPR1.mp3 It’s after work, and the summer sun and the tide are out at John Wright’s go-to fishing spot in Juneau: the wide, sandy beach where Sheep Creek meets Gastineau Channel. “I’ve been fly fishing in Alaska — Juneau specifically — for seven years. I’ve been fly fishing for 20 years. I’m 32, so that…

Even in the middle of the workday on Tuesday, there’s steady traffic at Costco in Juneau. The city assessor’s records put its total square footage at 76,696. (Photo by Jeremy Hsieh/KTOO)https://media.ktoo.org/2019/03/28COSTCO-CJ.mp3 The other day, Phil Fleming was loading up a car in the parking lot of the Costco in Juneau. He said a salty version …

The alder trees — and the peace sign among them — at the end of Commercial Boulevard in Juneau are about 10 years old, pictured here on Jan. 8, 2019. The Juneau Urban Forestry Partnership and local chapter of Veterans for Peace got an OK from a Juneau Assembly committee on Monday to prune the overgrowth and plant spruce seedlings in the peace sign’…

Norah Jones performs on tour in 2010 promoting her album “The Fall.” (Creative Commons photo cropped from original by youngrobv) Juneau mom Mara Jennings said she was over the moon when she found out Norah Jones was playing a concert in Juneau. Over the years, she’s sung the nine-time Grammy Award winner’s songs like lullabies to her kids at night.…

The alder trees — and the peace sign among them — at the end of Commercial Boulevard in Juneau are about 10 years old, pictured here on Jan. 8, 2019. The slope was cut and stabilized as part of the construction of the Home Depot. (Photo by Jeremy Hsieh/KTOO) https://media.ktoo.org/2019/01/11PEACE.mp3 Have your own Curious Juneau question? Submit it…

Have your own Curious Juneau question? Submit it, subscribe to Curious Juneau podcast and catch up on past curiosities on the Curious Juneau page. https://media.ktoo.org/2018/10/30CJBELLS.mp3 As recently as 2009, clock bells marked a specific location in Juneau. That year, former KTOO reporter Casey Kelly began a story like this: “As the clock chim…

The famous gun as seen on Aug. 13, 2018 — more than a century after famous gunslinger Wyatt Earp is reputed to have left it behind on his way to Nome. (Photo by Jacob Resneck/CoastAlaska) Juneau’s Red Dog Saloon claims it has a pistol that belonged to one of history’s most notorious gunslingers. But does the bar’s story check out? Wyatt Earp was am…

“Barefoot Guy” Ezra Strong looks out on Dredge Lake during a hike. (Photo by Adelyn Baxter/KTOO) Xtratufs, Bogs, Muck Boots — comfortable, waterproof footwear is pretty much a necessity here in Juneau. But not for the local some know as “the barefoot guy.” Curious Juneau stars you and your questions. Every episode we help you find an answer. Catch …