<\/a>A photo from the diocese’s November 1982 “Inside Passage” newsletter shows volunteers installing a replacement cross they carried up the Mount Roberts Trail. Note the size difference between the hand-carried cross and the present-day cross that was likely hoisted by helicopter. (Photo courtesy Archdiocese of Anchorage-Juneau Archives)<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
The 1906 trail was built for recreation and scenic views. It required some rock blasting and plenty of shovel work to create the switchbacks from Sixth Street for what became known as “Father Brown’s Trail.” This name stuck for decades, even into the next century.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
By June of 1921, the Juneau Commercial Association launched a program to rehabilitate the trail, clearing debris and adding “picnic equipment and [construction for] water from a spring” for hikers plus some “guide signs,” according to an article in the Alaska Daily Empire. The group’s advertising committee planned to create a “four-page folder to encourage tourists to hike the trail” and to see other Juneau sites. It would be “distributed on the boats in Wrangell and Ketchikan” so visitors would have the chance “to make their plans before they reach Juneau.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
In a retrospective article on Aug. 3, 1921, 15 years after the trail was started, the Alaska Daily Empire reported Father Brown’s appreciative response that the trail would be rehabilitated. For that article he sent some of his 1906 diary notations to trail enthusiasts relating daily activities from the trail’s origin, naming those who assisted: Elias Ruud, Boyce, Owen Kirk, Gillette, and two McLaughlins who “blasted away the big rock” in the trail.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
One of the key trail starters was newly arrived Thomas Parmela Wickes, who had been instrumental in trail building in the eastern U.S. In contrast to the kindly Father Brown, Wickes had a reputation for scurrilous behavior in New York where he served seven months of a year sentence for attempted blackmail. He was forced to leave the state and head to Alaska, according to a New York Times article published on July 10, 1906, as cited on www.amynowak.com. That was a month before Wickes and Father Brown talked in August of 1906 in Juneau about constructing the trail (see “Pardon for Wickes Exiles Him to Alaska” in the New York Times to learn the full scope of his misdemeanors.) No details have been found to indicate that Wickes’s cloudy past was known in Juneau or, if it was, affected his status here.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
<\/a>A portrait of Father Edward Howard Brown, the Jesuit priest who organized volunteers in 1906 to begin constructing the switchback trail up Mount Roberts. The trail was completed in 1908 and for many years was known as Father Brown’s Trail. (Photo courtesy Archdiocese of Anchorage-Juneau Archives)<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
In 1922 the U.S. Forest Service took over the trail and formally named it the Mount Roberts Trail. The trailhead now (since 2008) begins along Basin Road in Last Chance Basin with a roomy parking area for hikers’ vehicles.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
The exact date the first cross was erected eludes researchers today. Some recent publications say the cross may have been constructed when the trail was built in 1906 although this writer has found no confirmation of it in early news articles. Others suggest the cross was installed — perhaps after Father Brown’s death in 1925 in Spokane, Washington, at age 65 — to honor the Jesuit priest who lived in Juneau from 1904 until 1913. His legacy includes construction of today’s Cathedral of the Nativity on Fifth and Harris Streets, as well as St. Ann’s Hospital and other church-related buildings.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Anecdotal accounts indicate the wooden cross has been replaced several times. One recent first-person recollection tells of the 1982 effort when Father Everett Trebtoske was the local priest. A replacement cross was hand-carried up the trail by several volunteers who took turns spelling each other as they carried two large pieces of the wooden cross. Father Trebtoske led the hike up the Mount Roberts Trail.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
A copy of the church’s November 1982 newsletter includes photos of that volunteer expedition on a sunny day a few months earlier. Noticeable is the size difference between the 1982 cross and the now-collapsed cross which is seen standing in photographer Jeff Gnass’s 2020 image with trail hiker Linda Kruger near the base of the cross for scale. A feature of the 1982 story indicates the date of the cross’s installation was carved into the wood. Perhaps when the pending assessment of the collapsed cross is made this summer observers can examine it for a possible carved installation date.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t