The Sheldon Museum is well known to Haines residents for its exhibits, and to visitors for its gift shop. But it is also a research museum, with a mission of filling the holes in our historical understanding. This is the task on which museum director Brandon Wilks has embarked.
Wilks: “We wanted to find a project that we could sink our teeth into, that hadn’t been done, that would produce something original and interesting to read about.”
Wilks and his staff have decided to write a definitive history of Fort Seward, the military base that was built in Haines at the turn of the 20th century. Wilks says the fort played a significant role as a transfer station for soldiers during both world wars. But the fort is particularly relevant to Alaska’s history.
Wilks: “Because for a while there we had a dispute with the Canadians about where Alaska began and Canada ended. And at one point some machine guns were set up on either side, out the Porcupine. So this was an important installation to show that we kind of meant business on where we were drawing the line.”
And of course the fort is prominent in the history of the Chilkat valley.
Wilks:”The troops were stationed there for fifty years, essentially, and they played an important part in the economy, and building up Haines, and everything else around here.”
Wilks says the project is in the very early stages. He wants to get as many staff working on it as possible.
Wilks: “I am a historian, I am a researcher, so I will be working on it whenever I can, Zach James is a fantastic researcher, he’s done some great work here, he’ll obviously be working on it, and we have some staff members, who even though their position isn’t officially dedicated to that kind of thing, they actually have some skill sets that you would be surprised. And if we need to do some contract work and we can afford it through a grant, we’ll bring on whoever else we need to.”
Zachary James has been working for a few years as the museum’s collection manager. He says they’ll start by finding what has already been written, and where the writers got their sources. This will suggest what documents they need to track down. He was told military records might be particularly difficult to find.
James: “Which is funny because at every level of the chain of command, there would be a duplicate set of records. But good luck finding where the surviving set is. It could be at any number of locations at any number of bases and been moved to any number of archives across the United States. And there’s been a couple big fires too over the years. So finding the location of various military records is an undertaking in and of itself.”
Wilks and James give credit to earlier writers such as Norm Smith Sr and Kathleen Menke for doing some work on the subject. But they say they want to go much further than them.
James says he is particularly interested in knowing how and why the fort came to be built.
James: “I’ve heard all kinds of speculation. All manner of rationale for the building Fort Seward. But it would be nice to go through the records and see if we find something definitive.”
As potential reasons, James cites the policing of what was a lawless land filled with gold prospectors. Or the border dispute with Canada. Or the protection of white interests, and to put a check on the power of the Tlingits.
James: “That’s really the question though. Did they really build the fort to control and subjugate native populations or not. And I can’t make a definitive statement on that until we do the research. What was the rationale? What did they speak about behind closed doors when they decided to build the fort? In my mind, I would like to know. I’m sure at this point everything is declassified, the fort is not even in existence.”
Regardless of their intention, Wilks says the military started work on Fort Seward in 1903.
Wilks: “The land was given to the army by the Haines Presbyterian Church. A lot of the labor was native, Tlingit laborers helped build the place up. And they had two infantry companies stationed here for a few years.”
Over time the army drew down the number of troops. Wilks says that in the 30s, only about a hundred men were stationed on site. After the second world war, the army decommissioned the fort and sold it to veterans, whose descendants still inhabit some of the buildings.
Wilks expects that painting a more complete picture of Fort Seward will take years. It will take a lot of staff time, and resources. They are barely getting started.
Wilks: “We still have to look for grants, there might be research trips across the country, to go dig up old military files, it’s on the east coast of course in Washington DC. And again you have to be able to print it and publish it, and everything else. So it takes a lot of time and grants, so that will be a part of it.”
Wilks says he wants to publish the result of their research as a book that will show the value of an active museum, and make the community proud.
