User:Kslaguidao/Douglas Island

History - Douglas Island (1)
Douglas Island was named for John Douglas, Bishop of Salisbury, by Captain George Vancouver. Joseph Whidbey, master of HMS Discovery during Vancouver's expedition, was the first to sight it in 1794. In 1886, people began to travel to Douglas Island to settle near the developing Treadwell gold mine. By 1902, the Douglas Island community had grown to a population of over 2800 residents, as businesses, schools, and homes began to develop alongside the expansion of the nearby gold mine. After the Gastineau Channel flooded the Treadwell mining tunnels in 1917, many residents were forced to move after the town's dramatic economic downturn, causing the Douglas population to decrease steadily until the late 1930's.

During the summer of 1962, the Douglas Indian Village was seized and burned down by Douglas city officials and residents in order to forgo the development of the Douglas Harbor project. The Douglas Harbor project, which was initiated by the Douglas tribe and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, was a plan to construct a harbor on the Douglas Indian Village site with the intention of having the village rebuilt. In order to obtain control of the project, Douglas city officials invoked eminent domain on the village site while tribal members were fishing at their camps along the Taku River. The tribal members were not compensated for the property and belongings that were lost in the burning of their village and were forced to relocate once they returned to the island. The Juneau-Douglas Bridge, which was first built in 1935, connected Douglas Island with West Juneau. In 1970, the communities of Douglas and Juneau joined together to form the City and Borough of Juneau. The Juneau-Douglas Bridge was later rebuilt in 1980 to provide a two lane road to and from the island and to accommodate both vehicular and pedestrian traffic. There have been plans to build a new bridge from North Douglas to the Mendenhall Valley.