Alaskan Firsts

Most trends, fads and new developments seem to come to Alaska a year or so after starting someplace else, but it wasn't always so. Sitka's shipyard industry, which produced 25 vessels up to 1860, built the first steam powered ship to be constructed in the Pacific Aleut craftsman there cast steam engine parts and also church bells, some of which were exported to California.

A magnetic observatory to record variations in the earth's magnetic field, probably the first on the west coast of the Americas, was established in 1842. The Sitka magnetic observatory remains as one of the world's key stations. In 1861, Sitka had the only pipe organ in Northwest America. It had two scientific institutes. One was for zoological research; the other, for the study of terrestrial magnetic phenomena, was supported by both the British and Russian governments.