Revisiting the Red Dog Saloon in Juneau

We thought that we would give you a little history and folklore about some of the places we visited. The Red Dog is one of the oldest and longest continually operated saloons in Juneau. In the attached photo you will see the inside of the Red Dog Saloon. Notice the floor is covered with saw dust. That served two purposes according to folklore. The first one is that anything spilled on the floor would be absorbed by the saw dust to keep things neat. Second, the method of payment during the goldrush time was gold dust. So when you got a drink you paid for it with a pinch of gold dust. Well according to legend many of the prospectors would spill the gold dust on the floor after imbibing in a few drinks. The gold would disappear into the saw dust to be lost forever. Oh but it wasn't. Once a week or month the owner of the establishment would sweep up all the saw dust and soak it in a big tub of water. The saw dust would float and all the gold would drop to the bottom of the tub. This way the owner would pick up a few extra bucks from the clumsy drunken prospectors. The only people who got rich from the gold rush were those who were able to take it from the prospectors.