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Updated: June 6, 2025
There were three, if not four different buildings which occupied that position. The first to be placed there was built at once upon the founding of the post and is described by Resanof in his letters to the Company as being a very "Unpretentious building, and poorly constructed."
The courtly Chamberlain of the Tsar, Nicholas P. Resanof, son-in-law of Shelikof who was the founder of the first Russian colony in America, came to Sitka in 1805, via Petropavlovsk, Siberia, on the "Nadeshda," one of the first Russian ships to circumnavigate the world, and was a special representative of the Russian American Company, of which organization he was one of the founders.
They entered with a boat and then followed with the ship, which anchored nearly opposite the location of Eureka. They found fifteen feet of water on the bar. From the large number of Indians living on its shores, they called it the Bay of the Indians. The entrance they named Resanof.
The romance of the Russian courtier and the fair Californian furnished to Bret Harte the theme for some of his most beautiful verse. Resanof, hurrying home to Russia to gain the Imperial permission to his marriage, died at Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, and Dona Concepcion waited for years for the coming of her lover, not knowing that he lay dead under the Siberian snows.
On his southward journey Resanof reconnoitred the mouth of the Columbia River, seeking a site for a future settlement. He was unable to enter the river owing to contrary winds; and the condition of his crew, debilitated by lack of proper food and suffering from scurvy, caused him to hasten on. He heard that a party of U. S. soldiers were building a fort there.
The fisheries of Gloucester and Cape Cod fade into insignificance and the famous Newfoundland Banks are but small in comparison. Sitka goes back the farthest in historic memory of any city of the Northwest. When Lewis and Clarke came to the mouth of the Columbia River she was looking out over the Pacific from her stockaded walls and Resanof was sailing to search for locations for new colonies.
On Japonski Island is the U. S. Naval Coaling Station and the U. S. wireless telegraph. The magnetic observatory of the Russians was situated there. The name means Japan Island and is given because Resanof designated it as the place to keep captive Japanese whom he expected to capture through his expedition against the lower Kuril Islands in 1806.
Khlebnikof tells us that it contained more than 1,200 volumes, valued at 7,500 rubles, and they were in the Russian, French, German, English, Latin and other languages. When Mr. Resanof was preparing for his journey he addressed letters to many of the leading men of St. Petersburg, soliciting their contribution of books to promote the beginning of education in the far off possession of the Czar.
While on this visit to San Francisco Resanof met the Spanish beauty, Dona Concepcion de Arguello, of whom one of the visitors said, "She was lively and animated, had sparkling, love-inspiring eyes, beautiful teeth, pleasing and expressive features, a fine form and a thousand other charms," and he lost his heart to her.
In March, Resanof sailed for San Francisco in the "Juno" to purchase breadstuffs and other supplies. He also wished to examine the coast with the view of making other settlements farther south, at Nootka, at the Columbia, or even farther south in California. He secured a cargo of the products of the south and returned to Sitka in June.
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