Sitka and the Ancient Art of Hospitality
Visitors have been enjoying Sitka's four seasons for almost 8,000 years.
Sitka is one of the oldest and most culturally significant communities in Alaska. "Sitka" is a contraction of "Shee-Atika" ("People on the side of Shee"), the expression the original Tlingit Indian inhabitants used to describe themselves and their location on the western coast of what is now called Baranof Island. In 1804 the Russian Empire forced its way into Sitka, and occupied the site until the sale of Alaska in 1867.
In the year 1974, a dozen or so of Sitka's finest minds decided that the town stood in need of a history lesson. They planned to reacquaint Sitkans with their past their geologic past, that is. Having waited for years for just the right conditions, the conspirators gathered before dawn on the first clear April 1st in a decade. Somehow they had managed to cajole, bribe, or possibly hijack a helicopter pilot into airlifting a rather ordinary cargo of seventy old tires to a rather extraordinary destination: inside the crater of Mt. Edgecumbe, the huge extinct volcano looming over Sitka Sound. The tires were doused with diesel fuel, and then set ablaze. The ad hoc faculty of Geology 101 headed home for breakfast. While most everyone who lives in Sitka knows the area is rich in history, few realized just how rich it was until they awoke that morning to see thick, black smoke belching from the summit of Mt. Edgecumbe for the first time in 8,000 years or so.
Sitka is old. The history of the United States is but a heartbeat in the history of Sitka. The eruption of Mt. Edgecumbe (the original not the sequel) is our cultural starting block. The blast covered the coastline of Sitka Sound with as much as twenty feet of ash. Anthropologists believe the astounding culture of the Tlingit Indians emerged in the centuries following this natural cataclysm, as the land gradually recovered, and as people moved North in the wake of the retreating Ice Age.
Sitka is highly regarded today for its devotion to its past. For 
sixty-three years Sitka was Russia's major Pacific port, and headquarters of the Russian-American Company, in its heyday the most profitable fur trading company in the world. In 1867 the Russian Empire ceded the Alaska territory to the upstart United States in a small ceremony in downtown Sitka. The seat of territorial government until 1906, Sitka yielded that responsibility to Juneau and its hordes of gold seekers. Sitka might have continued ever after a small fishing village had not World War II pushed it into the nation's defense perimeter. Over 20,000 military personnel moved in to build a Naval Air Station and coastal fortifications, the ruins of which can be found and explored among the inner islands of Sitka Sound.
Although Sitka's population has subsided to around 9,000 (and shows slight, but steady, growth) the town itself has not physically expanded much beyond the confines of the aboriginal settlement. An early Tlingit brought forward in time from 5,000 years ago would see streets and sidewalks where his pathways once lay; he would see the same wild vista of the mountains and ocean; he would see the salmon in the streams, the eagles and sea birds, and the whales and sea lions offshore. He would see his descendants still living here, and he would recognize much in their clan affiliations, culture, and art.
And should this Tlingit, before returning home to his own impressive construction culture, choose to inspect a modern Sitka homesite, he would find the contractor digging down through Sitka's spongy topsoil to the layer of ash. The remains of Mt. Edgecumbe's big blowout is still there, still bearing the weight of eight millennia of civilization.