United States
Endicott Arm
Endicott Arm: A Fjord That Ends at Dawes Glacier
Endicott Arm and its twin, Tracy Arm, are the two fjords of a federal wilderness south of Juneau, and about a fifth of their area is covered by ice. Dawes Glacier, at the head of Endicott Arm, is a tidewater glacier: it ends in the sea, and ice breaks from its face straight into the water. Bring binoculars and warm layers up on deck for the approach to the glacier.
Good to know
Scenic Cruising in Endicott Arm
Ships sail up Endicott Arm toward Dawes Glacier and back out again: it is a scenic-cruising stop, and everything is seen from the decks. On many itineraries this takes a few hours of an early morning, and the ship reaches Juneau the same afternoon.
- The fjord runs southeast from Holkham Bay, off Stephens Passage, to the face of Dawes Glacier.
- In summer the water can carry a lot of floating ice, in pieces from the size of a hand to blocks as tall as a three-story building.
- Dawes is a compound glacier, about a mile across and roughly 20 stories high.
- Fords Terror, a long, narrow side inlet, opens off the fjord's north shore.
Tlingit Country
The shores of Holkham Bay, at the mouth of Endicott Arm, are Tlingit land, like much of Southeast Alaska. The Tlingit name for the bay, the mountain and the glacier above it is Sʼawdáan.
- Two meanings have been suggested for Sʼawdáan: people of the "Greenstone Area" or people of the "Dungeness Crab Area".
- The English name Sumdum goes back to "Soundon", a name U.S. surveyors recorded in the 1890s and reported as describing the boom of ice falling from the glaciers.
- In a case settled in 1968, a federal court found that the Tlingit and Haida held aboriginal title to their land and that creating the Tongass National Forest had taken land from them.
A Brief History
Glaciers once filled Endicott Arm from end to end. Europeans charted the bay at its mouth in the 1790s, and a gold find in 1869 brought the first mining to its shores.
- The last ice age: Active glaciers filled both Endicott Arm and Tracy Arm along their whole length.
- 1794: Joseph Whidbey, exploring for George Vancouver's expedition, reported the bay, and Vancouver named it Holkham Bay after a village in Norfolk, England. Whidbey recorded several hostile encounters with the Tlingit on the way.
- 1869 to 1871: A gold discovery in 1869 led to the earliest gold production in Alaska, at Windham Bay and Sumdum Bay, as Holkham Bay is also known, in 1870 and 1871.
- 1880: The naturalist John Muir explored "Sum Dum Bay" and gave it a chapter in Travels in Alaska, his last book, which was published after his death, in 1915.
- 1889: The fjord was named after William Crowninshield Endicott, Secretary of War in President Grover Cleveland's first administration.
- The glacier's name: Dawes Glacier is named after Henry L. Dawes, a U.S. senator from Massachusetts.
- Late 19th century: Holkham Bay was one of the bases for Canadians working on the survey of the disputed Alaska boundary.
- The wilderness: Congress protected both fjords and the land around them as the Tracy Arm–Fords Terror Wilderness, which covers 653,179 acres.
- Today: Dawes Glacier, like other glaciers in the region, is retreating.
- To learn more ashore: The Alaska State Museum, at 395 Whittier Street in Juneau, covers the state's history, Native cultures and wildlife.
Endicott Arm with Children
A fjord morning happens on deck, so the plan is to be up, dressed and outside as the ship nears the glacier. The ice gives younger children something to watch, and the scale of the place gives older ones something to work out.
- Younger children: Listen for the boom of ice breaking off the glacier. The old survey name Sumdum is said to describe exactly that sound.
- School age: Look at a map before the morning. The two fjords branch from the same bay, and the glacier's ice starts in Canada before it crosses into Alaska.
- Teenagers: Mount Sumdum, whose runoff drains into both fjords, rises 6,666 feet above the water of each within 4.5 miles. That one number explains how steep the fjord walls are.
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