Seattle, Gateway to Alaska

Sitka, Alaska (Source: Patrick Denker)

The Diocese of Sitka, Anchorage and Alaska rejoiced at the news that the All American Council would gather in Seattle in November 2011. As the gateway to Alaska, Seattle is a familiar port and airport for Alaskans visiting the “lower 48″ as we affectionately call the remainder of the USA mainland. For some Alaskans, the Council may be their first visit “outside,” and we hope, due to it’s status as the “gateway to Alaska” many delegates will become pilgrims, visiting our Inside Passage, coming to Sitka after the All American Council adjourns. We have a chance to meet you, and you have an excellent opportunity to visit us! Sitka is the site of the first Orthodox cathedral and seminary in the New World. Founded as as a trading post by Alexander Baranov in 1802, the settlement was attacked and destroyed at the behest of rival British and American commercial interests (who supplied the guns and powder) by the local Tlingit tribe. Returning in 1804 to reassert the Russian American Company’s control of the fur trade, Baranov commandeered the Russian naval vessel “Neva” and founded the city of New Archangel on the island now named for him.
Visitors will be offered a tour of the battlefield on Saturday afternoon.
That tour will begin, however, at the opposite end of town, on “Castle Hill,” the site of the governor’s mansion Baranov erected there. While the large wooden structure was never a “castle” and no longer exists, the area in front of it has historical significance for all Alaskans, as the place where the ceremony, transferring sovereignty of Alaska from Russian to US rule occured on October 18, 1867.
Continuing down Lincoln Street, we’ll come to St. Michael’s Cathedral, designed and built by St. Innocent Veniaminov in 1844. St. Innocent had been the parish missionary and priest in Sitka before being elected bishop of the new diocese in 1842, upon the death of his wife, Katherine. Returning to Sitka he embarked on several building projects, completing his episcopal residence, the “Russian Bishop’s House,” now restored by the US National Park Service, and designing it to be the “All Colonial School,” where young Alaska Native men and women were trained, not only to serve the church as priests, deacons and choir directors, but the colony as cartographers, accountants, navigators and ship designers, as well as artists and musicians.
Nearby are also the graves of St. Jacob Netsvetov, who died in retirement in Sitka in 1842, and his wife, whose grave he lovingly marked, who died twenty years earlier in Sitka Hospital.
The History of Alaska is all here, on Lincoln Street! So we are delighted to welcome you to Alaska, to walk the streets where our saints have walked, to visit the cathedral where our saints have served, and to experience directly and personally the legacy of holiness that is ours as Orthodox Christians in North America.
Welcome to Seattle! Welcome to the Great Land, Alaska!
—Fr. Michael Oleksa
http://aac16.org/2010/11/seattle-gateway-to-alaska/