Southeast Alaska: Community Links

The University of Alaska Southeast is nestled between Alaska’s Inside Passage and the Mendenhall Glacier. It is surrounded by glacier-fed lakes and streams, which fill with wild salmon in the summer and early fall. The campus is located along the shores of Auke Lake, on the ancestral lands of the Auke people. The thread of Alaska Native culture runs through contemporary life in Southeast; Native owned and run corporations are a driving force in the regional economy.

Juneau’s 32,000 people makes it the largest city in the region and the third largest in the State, behind Anchorage and Fairbanks. The Tongass National Forest occupies 77 percent of the land in Southeast. At 16.8 million acres the Tongass is the largest national forest in the country and the world's largest temperate rainforest. The forest contains the largest tracts of virgin old-growth trees left in America.

As a temperate rainforest, Southeast doesn’t experience the extremes in temperature that people associate with The Last Frontier. Our average winter temperature is in the 30s with stretches of colder weather, but rarely does it drop below zero. We also don’t experience the extremes in daylight and darkness that are associated with the state. Juneau’s longest day of the year has18 hr. and 18 min. of daylight and the shortest has 6 hr. and 22 minutes with the sun setting at about 3:30 p.m.

For a small town, by lower-48 standards, Juneau offers a lot of the perks of larger cities, such as a professional theater company and symphony, music festivals, a ski mountain, mainstream and alternative movie houses, great restaurants, a short-film festival, shopping, a comedy-improv troupe, hotels and coffee shops. Juneauites love the outdoors, but are also a creative, socially active group of people – it’s a great community!