Forest Service House

This two-story, wood clapboard and gambrel roofed cottage-style house was constructed during the summer of 1916 by the United States Department of Commerce, Coast and Geodetic Survey. Before the United States purchased Alaska from the Russian Empire in 1867, the hill on which it stands was the site of a public garden known as the Russian Tea Garden. The house was built to provide office and living quarters for the staff of the first permanent geomagnetic observatory. The Sitka Magnetic Observatory, at latitude 61°, was, when established in 1901, the nearest of the then existing permanent magnetic observatories to the magnetic north pole. In 1922, cables connected the house and the Magnetic Observatory, allowing the Geodetic Observatory staff to monitor the observatory's magnetometer from the house. The Sitka Magnetic Observatory's measurements of changes in the intensity of the earth's magnetic field gave the Coast and Geodetic Survey the information needed to notify navigators and surveyors of variations from true north they could expect in their compass needle readings. After a single component Wood-Anderson seismometer was installed in the basement's northwest corner in 1929, the structure served as both the seismological and the geomagnetic observatory for the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. Readings from the seismometer, taken between 1929 and 1940, located and measured the extent of movement of the earth in the North Pacific area and were especially important in determining earthquake epicenters. In 1940, the house was placed in the custody of the United States Department of the Army for use by the Alaska Communications System, Army Signal Corps. In 1961, title to the house was transferred to the U.S. Department of Agriculture to provide office and living quarters for Tongass National Forest personnel. From that time, the structure has been known as Forest Service House, and on November 25, 1966, it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Sitka, Alaska · United States