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Katalan's Rock is steep enough to command the town, and ample enough to afford all the space necessary for fortifications and the accommodation of troops and stores. A natural Gibraltar, it was the site of the first settlement, and has ever remained the most conspicuous and distinguished quarter of the colony. The first building erected on this rock was a block-house, which was afterward burned.
Up the main street of the town is another store, where a series of large rooms, crowded with curios bewilders the purchaser of those grotesque wares. At the top of Katalan's rock, on the edge of the sea, stands the Colonial Castle. It is a wooden structure, looking more like a barrack than a castle. At the foot of the rock are the barracks and Custom House.
The fame of the brilliant and beautiful Baroness Wrangell, first chatelaine of the castle, lives after her. She was succeeded by the wife of Governor Kupreanoff, a brave lady, who in 1835 crossed Siberia on horseback to Behring Sea on her way to Sitka. Later the Princess Maksontoff became the social queen, and reigned in the little castle on Katalan's Rock as never queen reigned before.
Then, indeed, old Sitka, which was once called New Archangel, seemed but a relic of the past, whose vague, romantic history will probably never be fully known. Katalan's Rock. Katalan's Rock towers above the sea at the top corner of Sitka.
Passing its barracks at the foot of Katalan's Rock, one sees a handful of marines looking decidedly bored if off duty. The steps that lead up to the steep incline of the rock to the castle terrace are fast falling to decay. Weeds and rank grass trail over them and cover the whole top of the rock. The castle has been dismantled.
When it was finally settled, it was settled so suddenly that the witnesses had to be wakened and called out of their beds. They assembled secretly, in the middle of the night, as if they were conspirators; and before sunrise the whole matter was fixed forever. On the 18th of October, 1867, three United States ships of war anchored off Katalan's Rock.
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