Tenakee Hot Springs

Sadly, you can’t go to Rosie’s In Tenakee Hot Springs - SW of Mile 975 - any longer. After running the cafe almost 50 years, Rosie Floreska moved into Juneau to live with her family, and the community’s classic bar and eatery was demolished.
But, rising from the old timbers was the New Moon Cafe and Laundry plus greenhouse, utilizing the 106˚ geothermal water that warms the communal hot springs just next door!
Before she left, Rosie had plenty of tales to share with visitors about Tenakee’s glory days when loggers, fishermen cannery workers mixed it up. Maybe a little too much: “Why they alla time wanna fight?” said Rosie, remembering too much broken furniture after things got a little out of hand!
Scattered along and behind a long south-facing beach, Tenakee enjoys a much more open feeling than many of Southeast Alaska’s smaller outports, often tucked into a small cove, surrounded by tall trees.
Once nicknamed “Robber’s Roost” (bank robber’s allegedly used to hide out here…) the community coalesced around the store built by Ed Snyder when he rowed out from Juneau with a load of groceries in 1899. (Still the community center and only store, but with different owners.)
When there was logging around the inlet and crab and salmon plants cooking away (1916-1974) Tenakee Springs was a busy place, especially popular because of the communal hot springs, perfect for a good soak after a long day in the woods or at the canning line.
After the last fish plant closed in 1974, Tenakee’s population slowly declined, and the community became more of a seasonal destination for folks in Juneau.
Of course the core of a community is always the school. In Alaska the state is able to provide a teacher when there are at least 10 students. Tenakee’s school struggled for years, trying to recruit families with children, etc. so as to keep their teacher and the school open. By 2015, with the enrollment dropping to 11, things were precarious, and then sadly, the family with the most children moved away, and the school building transitioned from a school with a teacher to the Tenakee Springs Independent Learning Center open three days a week.
Another thing that is critical to Tenakee and other remote island communities is regular service by the Alaska state ferry service. The weekly regular trip allowed the store to resupply at a much lower freight rate than the alternative: freight by floatplane.

Ever since the opening of the Alaska oil pipeline in 1977, the state, with its small population had enough income to provide all sorts of services to isolated communities and give a cash dividend each year (often around 1500$) to each resident. For a family of five, that 7500$ could be a big part of their cash income for the entire year.
That was then. Recent drops in oil prices and Alaska oil production has put the state in a cash flow bind. So when the ferry that serviced Tenakee and other small communities needed an expensive overhaul, the state didn’t have the money so ferry service was suspended with no clear restart date announced.
When I stopped by there in 2015, the big news was that their main air taxi service, Alaska Seaplanes, had just brought out their exciting big new plane, a Cessna 208 Caravan, a big 9 passenger on floats. Almost the whole town was on the dock to greet their new ‘ride,’ and were thrilled when in addition to the freight carried inside the cabin, there were deep roomy compartments in the floats, for even more freight! And what do you suppose came out… just lots and lots of packages with the Amazon logo!