Sitka Totem Trail Virtual Tour

Carving of Mother Earth and salmon on Wooch Jin Dul Shat Kooteeya, the Holding Hands Centennial Totem Pole, designed by Tlingit carver Tommy Joseph.

NPS / HDP / Jeremy Mauro and Mark Schara

Sitka is located in southeastern Alaska. Beginning in 1903, Alaska district governor John Brady, based in the territorial capital of Sitka, assembled a remarkable collection of totem poles. The poles were brought to Sitka from various locations along the southeast Alaska coast, gifts from native Tlingit and Haida chiefs. In 1904 the poles were shipped to St. Louis, for display outside the Alaska pavilion at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. The poles were then displayed at the 1905 Louis and Clark Exposition in Portland, Oregon, before finally returning to Sitka, where they were installed along a trail through the federal park which had been created in 1890 to commemorate the 1804 battle between the Tlingit and the Russians.

Jurisdiction for the totem poles passed to the National Park Service in 1916, with the establishment of Sitka National Historical Park. Over the years, as the poles deteriorated, they were repaired, or even completely recarved, with a major effort undertaken by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s. In 1969 the park established the Southeast Alaska Indian Cultural Center, which has overseen the repair and recarving of the existing poles, as well as the carving of several new poles.

Project Information

Heritage Documentation Programs (HDP) undertook Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS) documentation of the nineteen standing totem poles and house posts along the Totem Trail in 2013. The project was carried out jointly with the Harpers Ferry Center and Sitka National Historical Park (SNHP), and served to enhance the park's interpretive efforts. HDP architects Jeremy T. Mauro and Mark Schara scanned each of the poles with a Leica Scanstation C10 laser scanner and took HDR panoramic photos. The virtual tour was developed by Jeremy T. Mauro, with interpretive text by Ryan Carpenter, Sitka National Historical Park Ranger, and Benjamin Clark, a teacher at Sitka High School who served as a seasonal Park Ranger through SNHP’s Teacher-Ranger-Teacher program.

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  Virtual Tour

  Panoramic tour of Sitka Totem Trail

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  Animation

  Animated video of 3D point cloud data

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  Point Cloud

  3d render of Frog Totem point cloud data

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  Point Cloud

  3d render of Trader Legend totem pole point cloud data

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  Coloring Page

  Color in the Frog/Raven Pole for yourself

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  HALS Documentation

  Archival documentation at the Library of Congress