Alaskans celebrate the Fourth of July in a myriad of ways, whether it’s log-rolling competitions, launching cars off of cliffs, or jumping high in the air in the blanket toss.
In Juneau, we have our fireworks on the third, an old tradition that let miners sleep off their hangovers. But KTOO listener Mary McEwen wrote in to ask about a different July 4 tradition — one her father told stories about.
“It’s kind of been a piece of family lore that, you know, ‘Oh you know I once won a race down Gold Creek on a piece of Styrofoam,’” she said.
It’s true. Some brave Juneauites used to celebrate Independence Day by racing down Gold Creek on improvised rafts — something akin to the Red Green Regatta, on speed.
For this Curious Juneau, we talked to some of the people who did it — like Jim Williams.
“There were probably 15 or 20 idiots that attempted it,” he said.
Williams said that when he did the race in the 1960s, dozens of people came to watch the racers from the banks of the creek in downtown Juneau.
Gold Creek runs in a paved channel, and the water flows fast over the concrete. The race started in Cope Park and wound through downtown, so the racers sped past the Federal Building and Foodland before getting dumped into Gastineau Channel.
People went down the creek one at a time, riding everything from proper inflatable rafts to wooden doors. Williams rode an air mattress.
It didn’t go well.
“I just remember going over something and immediately popped my raft, so I was dead last in the race,” he said. “I had to walk all the way down Gold Creek because the only way to get out of there was to get down by Foodland.”
Williams competed with his friend Gary Rosenberger, a high school sophomore at the time. Rosenberger said he laid on his air mattress like a surfboard and paddled with his arms.
“I had to hold on to it going over the falls, and then it was smooth sailing from then,” he said.
Old newspaper stories said the fastest time in 1967 was nearly two-and-a-half minutes. The next year, the currents must have been stronger — the winner came in at a minute and a half.
Gary Rosenberger said he may have won the race once if he hadn’t gotten out of the water too soon.
“But I didn’t know there was an end — where the end was,” he said. “So everybody was yelling at me, but I didn’t know what they were yelling because it had to be six or seven people all yelling the same thing.”
And Mary McEwen’s dad? Duane McEwen said he won the race on a raft built from Styrofoam with a wooden frame.
“I think I made a paddle out of a broom handle and a piece of wood — it was strictly homemade,” he said.
But then he left his raft outside all year, and the foam was heavy and waterlogged by the next July.
“The second year I came in last place,” McEwen said. “I dragged bottom all the way down there.”
It’s not clear just how enduring this tradition was — the race did not get a lot of news coverage. Williams said it seems like it only happened once or twice more.
“I think they decided there was some liability there. Which, I don’t know why they would have ever thought that,” he said.
But another listener wrote to say he remembered the race continuing well into the 1980s. And a 1967 story in the Alaska Daily Empire calls that year’s running the “75th annual sluice race down Gold Creek” — though Curious Juneau could not find anything to back that up.
Rosenberger said it would be more dangerous now. Since the 1960s, some large rocks have been placed at the end of the creek.
“You wouldn’t — I don’t think — drown or anything,” he said. “But you’d probably be embarrassed if everybody was watching you.”
Correction: This story has been edited to include new information about what years the race took place.
Curious Juneau
Are you curious about Juneau, its history, places and people? Or if you just like to ask questions, then ask away!
