Attractions

Haines is Alaska's center of odd or unusual museums and attractions, each somehow reflecting the character and contributions of local personalities.

You can't miss Fort William H. Seward National Historic Site, the collection of large, white, wood-frame buildings around sloping parade grounds overlooking the magnificent Lynn Canal fjord. (Get the informative "History Walking Tour" brochure of the National Historic Site from the Haines Convention and Visitors Bureau to learn about each building.) The fort led a peaceful life, for a military installation. By the time the U.S. Army built it, in 1904, the Klondike gold rush was over, and there's no evidence it ever deterred any attack on this little peninsula at the north end of the Inside Passage. It was deactivated at the end of World War II, when it was used for training.

In 1947 a group of World War II veterans from the Lower 48 bought the fort as surplus with the notion of forming a planned community. That idea didn't quite work out, but one of the new families from Outside helped spark a Chilkat Tlingit cultural renaissance in the 1950s. The Heinmillers, who still own a majority of the shares in the fort, formed a youth group that evolved into the Chilkat Dancers. A pair of elders led the group in construction of a Tlingit tribal house on the parade grounds. The Alaska Indian Arts Cultural Center (tel. 907/766-2160) grew from the same movement. Lee Heinmiller, a member of the family's second generation, still manages the arts center, where you can see totem carving and silversmithing practiced. It is open from 9am to 5pm Monday through Friday. The center occupies the old fort hospital on the south side of the parade grounds.

In the downtown area, the Sheldon Museum and Cultural Center, 11 Main St. (tel. 907/766-2366; www.sheldonmuseum.org), contains an upstairs gallery of well-presented Tlingit art and cultural artifacts; downstairs is a collection on the pioneer history of the town. There's a uniquely personal feel to the Tlingit objects, some of which are displayed with pictures of the artisans who made them and the history of their relationship with the Sheldons, for whom the museum is named. It's open in summer Monday through Friday 10am to 5pm, Saturday and Sunday 1 to 4pm; in winter, it's open Monday through Friday from 1 to 4pm. Admission is $3 for adults, free for children under 12.

The entirely unique American Bald Eagle Foundation Natural History Museum, at 2nd Avenue and Haines Highway (tel. 907/766-3094; www.baldeagles.org), is essentially a huge, hair-raising diorama of more than 180 eagles and other mounts of Alaska wildlife. Dave Olerud often sits in a wheelchair behind the desk and will talk your ear off about the museum if you want him to -- he worked on it for many years and was paralyzed in a fall during construction. Admission is $5 adults, $2.50 ages 9 to 12, free 8 and under; children need to be with an adult. It's open summer Monday through Friday from 10am to 5pm, Saturday and Sunday from 1 to 4pm; closed during the winter.

You'll recognize the Hammer Museum, at 108 Main St., across from the bank (tel. 907/766-2374; www.hammermuseum.org), by the 19-foot long hammer out front. Longshoreman Dave Pahl created his collection of hammers over a couple of decades of building a homestead and added to it using the Internet. He found the prize of his collection, an 800-year-old Tlingit war hammer, while digging up the foundation of the museum itself. More than 1,800 hammers from all over the world, old and new, exotic and ordinary, fill the four rooms (Pahl has another 4,000 in storage). The fun part is guessing what each is for. The museum gained front-page coverage in the Wall Street Journal in October, 2007, over a trademark dispute with the Hammer Museum at UCLA (an art museum founded by industrialist Armand Hammer). It is open summer Monday through Friday 10am to 5pm, closed off season. Admission is $3 adults, free for children 12 and under.

The Kroschel Films Wildlife and Education Center, at mile 1.8 Mosquito Lake Rd. (tel. 907/767-5464; www.kroschelfilms.com), is a wild animal park containing 16 Alaskan species, including wolverines, lynx, a black bear, wolves, and a snowy owl, in large enclosures good for photography among the mountains half an hour outside Haines. Filmmaker Steve Kroschel and his teenaged son Garrett show the animals off with infectious enthusiasm on a 2-hour tour. It's a funky, unscripted, and very Alaskan experience. Call ahead to set it up; you can't just drop in. If you don't have your own wheels, you may be able to join a cruise ship group for transportation. Otherwise, you'll drive 28 miles out the Haines Highway, then turn right up Mosquito Lake Road. Kroschel charges independent travelers $25 for the tour.