Sitka Bazaar
Our History
The Sitka Bazaar is located in Southeast Alaska on Baranof Island in beautiful and historic Sitka. Sitka abounds in history and culture influenced by the Tlingit Indians, Russians, and Alaska territorial pioneers.
The founder of the Sitka Bazaar was Marie Rigling Peterson. Marie Rigling was born in Alsace-Lorraine just a year after France ceded that area to Germany, circa 1871. She came to the United States with a number of members of her family and arrived in Sitka in 1903 to become nursemaid for Waldo Mills. Two years later in Juneau, Miss Rigling married George H. Peterson who had previously lived in Sitka but was then a millwright at the Eagle River mine north of Juneau.
In 1908 George Peterson joined the U.S. Forest Service and was stationed in Petersburg, Alaska. In 1911, the family, which by then included children Martha, Cecelia, and Charles, relocated to Sitka after George was placed in charge of the Sitka district. Shortly after arriving in Sitka they moved to the upstairs of the Custom House although there was no longer a Customs officer stationed there. Peterson became the custodian of the building which included a Forest Service office, Post Office, and the office and courtroom of the U. S. Commissioner. The Custom House sat on a major Sitka landmark, Castle Hill, also known to the Tlingit as Noow Tlein. Major events at Castle Hill include the transfer ceremony of the territory of Alaska to the United States on October 18, 1867. Lincoln Street borders Castle Hill.
While the Russian American Company monopolized the fur trade in Sitka, it became very competitive after 1867 and at various times during the next six or seven decades, as many as fifteen or twenty firms on Lincoln Street were in the general merchandise business, selling a little of everything and buying furs and Native curios on the side. While at the Custom House, Mrs. Peterson began buying furs for a Portland, Oregon dealer.
In 1919, Mrs. Peterson expanded her fur trading business to include a gift and curio shop, renting a tiny building next door to the Custom House. In 1927, additional government agencies required space in the Custom House. The Peterson family, now with a fourth child Florence, moved to the Tilson Building on Lincoln Street, occupied now by the Log Cabin Cache. Mrs. Peterson had a much larger shop in the storefront of that building. She also became the Sitka agent for the American Railway Express Company, handling parcels and selling money orders.
Mrs. Peterson purchased the property at Lincoln and American St. in June 1928. Buildings on the property included the Baranof Hotel, then vacant, and the Cohen Building. The buildings were razed and construction began in April 1929. Mrs. Peterson's brother-in-law, Charles Schramm, came over from Douglas, Alaska, and with assistance from Marie’s son Charles, mostly known by long-time Sitkans as Chuck, put up the two-story wood frame business building that housed the Bazaar and the family.
On July 29, 1929, the Sitka Bazaar opened its doors on the corner of Lincoln and American Street. The Bazaar has operated ever since at this location through four generations of family ownership.
After the Sitka Bazaar opened, the line of merchandise was considerably expanded. Curios were still a large part of the inventory, but there was also a line of general merchandise; groceries, clothing, and dry goods as well as the Railway Express office and fur business. In addition to buying furs in town, Chuck made fur-buying trips to outlying villages. That branch of the business continued for nearly twenty years.
Through the years, the store Mrs. Peterson started was managed for a time by daughter Martha, and then owned successively by son Charles and his wife, Nan, grandson Charles Trierschield, Sr. and his wife, and presently, by great-grandson Charles Trierschield Jr. and his wife Shannon.
In addition to her business enterprises, which included property ownership and management, Mrs. Peterson served as a member of the Sitka School Board and for many years she was the City Treasurer and Tax Collector. In the 1940s she moved from Sitka to Marysville, Washington, to live with her daughter, Florence. She died there on December 8, 1945, at the age of 73. She is remembered by those who knew her as outspoken, generous and given to occasional outbursts of temper.
The Bazaar was one of several structures that went up in smoke in the disastrous downtown fire of January 2, 1966. Marie’s son Chuck Peterson, who was involved in the buildings original 1929 construction, supervised the reconstruction and the Bazaar reopened May 17, 1967. Chuck lived a major part of his 84 years in the two buildings and virtually all of his life, except when he was aboard a boat, on Lincoln Street. Having risen from the ashes, the Sitka Bazaar is one of the oldest mercantile firms on Lincoln Street.
Sources:
1)
Robert N. DeArmond, Annals of Lincoln Street, Around and About Alaska
2) Peterson and Trierschield Families