Mendenhall Valley, Juneau Mendenhall Valley, Juneau The Mendenhall Valley (historically Mendenhall, colloquially The Valley) is the drainage area of the Mendenhall River in the U.S. state of Alaska. The valley contains a series of neighborhoods, comprising the largest populated place within the corporate limits of the City and Borough of Juneau, Alaska's capital. The valley was formed by Mendenhall Glacier over the course of roughly three thousand years. It was named for physicist and meteorologist Thomas Corwin Mendenhall. The Mendenhall Valley begins ten miles from the downtown area, at the intersection of Egan Drive and Glacier Highway, and ends ten miles farther west
Juneau, Alaska Harrisburg after prospector Richard Harris. On 14 Dec. 1881, a miners' meeting of 72 persons decided to name the settlement Juneau, after prospector Joe Juneau. Perhaps they changed the name to be more distinctive, as another Harrisburg is the capital of Pennsylvania. Perhaps because of the pressure of this European encroachment, some Tlingit appealed to the Russian Orthodox Church. It had given services in northern Tlingit settlements in local languages since 1800 and 1824. One of its priests had translated scripture and liturgy into the Tlingit language in the 1830s–1840s. The Tlingit arranged for an Orthodox priest to come to