The Alaskan Hotel & Bar Turns 113 and Still Runs the Best Room in Town

The Alaskan Hotel opened its doors in 1913, which means the back bar on South Franklin Street has been pouring for the better part of a century longer than the state of Alaska has existed. Most historic bars in cruise ports calcify into museum pieces — velvet ropes, a house band playing "Sweet Home Alabama" for tips. The Alaskan didn't. It's still a working music room, and in a town this size, it's arguably the working music room.

You can measure that a hundred ways, but here's the cleanest: when KTOO's KXLL published its Folk Festival nightlife guide this past April, the Alaskan's slate ran four and five acts deep every single night — Big Sissy, Pedal Boys, Carey Seward & the Sizz, the Boyfriend Girlfriend Bluegrass Band, Todd Grebe & the Cold Country closing out Sunday. That's not a bar that occasionally has music. That's a venue that programs like one, in a Queen Anne building with stained glass and pressed-tin character it never had to fake.

The engine underneath it is the Thursday open-performance night — bring an instrument, an act, or a poem — which functions as the town's audition room, rehearsal space, and social hub in one. Careers that now headline the Crystal or the summer festival circuit got their first real Juneau minutes on the Alaskan's little stage. Cruise season only turns the dial up: the Fourth of July stretch this year ran music across the entire holiday weekend, the kind of sprawl only a room with deep roots can pull off without a nightly headliner.

A note of honesty for the archive: the Alaskan is a historic hotel and bar, and hotel bars live or die on ownership and licensing that outsiders rarely see coming. As of mid-2026 the room is very much open and booking — verified against current listings and this spring's programming — but if you're reading this later, confirm before you plan a night around it.

Why spotlight a bar instead of a marquee show? Because in Juneau the bar is the marquee. There's no 2,000-seat shed on the edge of town, no touring circuit that reliably stops here between Seattle and nowhere. The Alaskan absorbs that gap. It's where the scene keeps its institutional memory, one late Thursday at a time, and where a century of Southeast Alaska's music has agreed to keep happening. Buy the second round. The room has earned it.

Sources: 2026 KXLL Nightlife Guide (KTOO); The Alaskan Hotel & Bar; The Alaskan Bar page