The City and Borough of Juneau is a unified municipality  located on the Gastineau Channel in the panhandle of the U.S. state of Alaska. It has been the capital of Alaska since 1906, when the government of the then-Alaska Territory was moved from Sitka. The municipality unified in 1970 when the City of Juneau merged with the City of Douglas and the surrounding borough to form the current home rule municipality.

The area of Juneau is larger than that of Rhode Island and Delaware individually and almost as large as the two states combined. Downtown Juneau is nestled at the base of Mount Juneau and across the channel from Douglas Island. As of the 2000 census, the City and Borough had a population of 30,711. The U.S. Census Bureau’s 2008 population estimate for the City and Borough was 30,988.[1]

Juneau was named after gold prospector Joe Juneau, though the place was for a time called Rockwell and then Harrisburg (after Juneau’s co-prospector, Richard Harris — several books credit the Tlingit Chief Kowee with showing these prospectors where the gold was). The Tlingit name of the town is Dzántik’i Héeni “river where the flounders gather”, and Auke Bay just north of Juneau proper is called Aak’w “little lake” in Tlingit. The Taku River, just south of Juneau, was named after the cold t’aakh wind, which occasionally blows down from the mountains.

Downtown Juneau sits at sea level, with tides averaging 16 feet (4.9 m), below steep mountains about 3,500 to 4,000 feet (1,200 m) high. Atop these mountains is the Juneau Icefield, a large ice mass from which about 30 glaciers flow; two of these, the Mendenhall Glacier and the Lemon Creek Glacier, are visible from the local road system; the Mendenhall glacier has been generally retreating; its front face is declining both in width and height.

The current Alaska State Capitol is an office building in downtown Juneau, originally built as the Federal and Territorial Building in 1931. Originally housing federal government offices, the federal courthouse, and a post office, it became the home of the Alaska Legislature and the offices for the governor of Alaska and lieutenant governor of Alaska. Through the years, there has been discussion on relocating the seat of state government and building a new capitol, without significant development.

• A mature bull moose can weigh up to 1,500 pounds.
  You’ll never guess how tall they get
• Which of America’s national parks covers nearly 6 million acres of unspoiled ground?
  That’s over 9,000 miles
• Why does this moose spend so much time with a flying squirrel?
  The squirrel helps him fight aliens, for one
• This big guy lives in a UNESCO International Biosphere Reserve.
  Where is he?

The moose (North America) or common elk (Europe), Alces alces, is the largest extant species in the deer  family. Moose are distinguished by the palmate antlers  of the males; other members of the family have antlers with a “twig-like” configuration. Moose typically inhabit boreal and mixed deciduous forests  of the Northern Hemisphere in temperate to subarctic climates.

Naming and etymology

The animal bearing the name Alces alces is known in Europe as the elk and in North America and New Zealand as the moose. The name elk is connected with several earlier European variants—Latin: alces, Old Norse: elgr, Scandinavian: elg, älg or similar, and German: Elch—all of which refer to this animal.

Confusingly, the word elk in North America refers to the second largest deer species, Cervus canadensis, also known as the wapiti. Early European explorers in North America, who were familiar with the closely related but smaller red deer of Central and Western Europe, believed that the much larger North American animal looked more like the European elk (i.e. moose), so they named it elk.

The word moose is derived from the Algonquian Eastern Abnaki name moz, loosely translated as twig eater.

Moose is both singular and plural, unlike goose, which in the plural is geese.

In North America, the moose range includes almost all of Canada, most of central and western Alaska, much of New England and upstate New York, the upper Rocky Mountains, Northeastern Minnesota, and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Isle Royale in Lake Superior. Isolated moose populations have been verified as far south as the mountains of Utah and Colorado. In 1978 a few breeding pairs were introduced in western Colorado, and the state’s moose population is now more than 1,000.

In Europe, moose are found in large numbers throughout Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Baltic States. They are also widespread through Russia. Small populations remain in Poland (Biebrza Nat. Park), Belarus and the Czech Republic.

Moose were successfully introduced on Newfoundland in 1904 where they are now the dominant ungulate, and somewhat less successfully on Anticosti Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Ten moose were also introduced in Fiordland, New Zealand in 1910, but they were thought to have died off. Nevertheless, there have been reported sightings that were thought to be false until moose hair samples were found by a New Zealand scientist in 2002. In 2008 moose (or elk) were reintroduced in to the Scottish Highlands

Polychrome Pass overlooking the Alaska Range, Denali National Park, Alaska — Alaska Stock/age fotostock

• Park rangers use dogsleds to patrol this vast wilderness during the winter months.
  Meet a world champion dogsledder
• Minerals stain the mountains with rainbow hues here in the Polychrome Pass.
  See more multi-colored mountains
• At just over 2 million acres, this wilderness area is larger than the state of Massachusetts.
  Much of it is inaccessible by road
• This national park is home to the highest mountain on the North American continent.
  Where is it?