Shrine of St. Therese Juneau: the Stone Chapel on the Causeway

In 1925, St. Therese of Lisieux, the French Carmelite nun known as the Little Flower, was named the patroness of Alaska. In the 1930s, Father William LeVasseur, a Jesuit priest, conceived a retreat centre in her name, and Bishop Joseph Raphael John Crimont, Alaska's first bishop, supported the idea and bought the federal land. Thousands of stones, gathered by volunteers, were used to construct the chapel and other structures, and the first Mass was held in 1941.

Bishop Crimont died in 1945 and is buried in the shrine's crypt. The shrine fell into disrepair and stopped holding retreats in the 1960s, was renovated from 1968 to 1969 under Fr. James Manske, closed for financial reasons in 1985 and reopened the following year after 25 locals came together to save it.

On October 1, 2016, Bishop Edward J. Burns announced the shrine's elevation to national shrine status.

• 1925: St. Therese of Lisieux named patroness of Alaska; the shrine's French connection runs through Bishop Crimont, who came from her home region and knew her family
• 1930s: Father LeVasseur's retreat idea, federal land purchased, volunteers gathering the beach stones the walls are built from
• 1941: the first Mass in the stone chapel
• 1985 to 1986: closure and rescue by 25 local people, the reason the shrine exists today
• 2016: raised to a national shrine, the designation its name now carries

What the miracle question actually is

The PAA question about the miracle of St. Therese is about the saint, not the building. St. Therese of Lisieux died in 1897 at 24, and her autobiography, The Story of a Soul, carried her Little Way of small ordinary acts of love. At least four miracles vetted by the Church have been attributed to her intercession, all spontaneous healings after people prayed to her, and those miracles are what carried her canonisation in 1925, the same year she became Alaska's patroness.

The Juneau shrine is her Alaska monument rather than the site of any miracle itself, which is the honest frame for a visit: you are walking a place built in her honour, not a place where the miracles happened.

The site holds a stone chapel, crypt, labyrinth, columbarium, lodge and cabins on its 46 acres, and the DMO's listing adds the setting that photographs never quite carry: the chapel sits on an island connected by a causeway, with the Chilkat Mountains across the Lynn Canal on a clear day. The shrine's own grounds page names the Merciful Love Labyrinth, built with stones from the shrine's beaches as a sacred path for reflection; the Good Shepherd Rosary Trail, wheelchair-accessible, starting at a bronze plaque of Christ; the Stations of the Cross Trail, whose 15 mortar-and-beach-stone structures were built around 1940; the Pieta statue; the Marian and Biblical Gardens, ten major garden areas totalling more than 14,000 square feet, designed and tended by a volunteer over 25 years; and the gift shop in the LeVasseur Cabin, selling Catholic sacramental items relating to St. Therese.

• The Shrine Chapel, open to visitors daily, available for weddings, funerals, retreats and worship
• Merciful Love Labyrinth, 2001, built of shrine beach stones; walk it slowly, it is a meditation and not a shortcut
• Good Shepherd Rosary Trail, wheelchair-accessible, and the Stations of the Cross structures from around 1940
• The columbarium, built 1998 and open to all Christians who want their cremains placed at the shrine
• The tide line around Shrine Island, where the DMO notes anglers fish for kings and silvers and divers look for crabs

Wildlife on the point

The alaskashoreexcursions description of the shrine is honest about what the water delivers: on a clear day, snow-capped mountains, and the possibility of whales, sea lions and bald eagles in the surrounding waters. This is bear country as well, forested Tongass land at the end of the road, and the sensible precautions are the ones the safety and wildlife page sets out for every Juneau trail. Nobody official publishes a wildlife calendar for the point, so the honest promise is eagles nearly always, whales sometimes, and everything else as it comes.

The shrine's own site lists the grounds at 8:00 am to 10:00 pm from May to September and 8:00 am to 8:00 pm from October to April, and states that the Shrine Chapel welcomes visitors daily, offering a serene space to experience God's peace, with no separate hour span printed for the chapel itself. Eucharistic Adoration runs every Friday from 2:00 to 3:00 pm. No admission fee appears anywhere on the site; a donation page exists through an external payment service and no amount is suggested on it.

The retreat facilities, six different buildings reservable for day meetings or overnight stays, are priced through the shrine's booking system rather than as published figures.

The contact details that matter

The shrine's site lists its address as 21425 Glacier Highway, Juneau, Alaska 99801, with the shrine caretaker and executive director reachable at (907) 789-9815 and the office at juneaushrine@live.com. That phone number is the way to settle the two things this page cannot, the current wedding or service schedule that may close the chapel for an afternoon, and the cabin availability if an overnight on the point appeals. Everything else about a visit is walk-in; there is no gate, no ticket and no booking requirement for the grounds themselves.

The shrine sits about 22 miles north of downtown Juneau on Glacier Highway, per the descriptions of the site published by the shrine-focused tourism pages, at the road system's northwestern reach past Auke Bay and the Lena Point area. No Capital Transit route serves it; the network's northern extent, which the getting around page maps, falls well short of mile 22, so the choice is a taxi or rideshare, a rental car, or a booked tour vehicle. The drive takes roughly half an hour each way from the downtown docks, our estimate on the road distance, and it is the same Glacier Highway corridor that carries visitors to Eagle Beach country and the northern trailheads.

Rental cars in Juneau are scarce on summer cruise days, which is the one logistics fact that shapes the plan: book the car before the ship docks, or price the taxi before you commit to the trip.

• Taxi or rideshare from downtown: about 30 minutes each way on the 22-mile run; agree the return or book a round trip, because the shrine is not a place taxis cruise past
• Rental car: the flexible version, and it chains with the glacier, the valley and the northern trails in one day
• No public bus reaches the shrine; do not let a blog tell you otherwise
• Tours: no operator in our set stops here; the closest bookable product is the scenic road trip that runs the same highway

How long to give it

The shrine publishes no visit length and neither does anyone else. Our routing: 45 minutes covers the chapel, the causeway and a first pass at the labyrinth; about two hours adds the full trail circuit, the rosary walk and the sitting on the rocks that is the actual reason to make the drive. Round trip from a cruise port day, count three hours door to door, and the without a tour page explains why the independent version of this trip is exactly the kind of hour a port day can absorb.

Which one we would pick

The full visit, in the morning, before the wedding parties that own summer Saturday afternoons. The shrine rewards stillness over coverage, and the two-hour version is the cheapest half-day of stillness Juneau sells, because entry is free and the drive is the only cost. If the day has a second stop in it, the Mendenhall Valley sits on the route back into town, and the things to do hub ranks the shrine against the excursions on exactly the stillness-versus-spectacle split.

• The chapel's walls are made of stones gathered by volunteers from the shrine's own beaches, thousands of them, which is why the masonry matches the tide line it sits above. (Wikipedia, citing the shrine's history page; the shrine's site repeats the beach-stone construction.)
• Alaska's first bishop, Joseph Raphael John Crimont, came from the same part of France as St. Therese and knew members of her family, which is how the Lisieux connection reached a point of Tongass rainforest. (Wikipedia's shrine history, citing the shrine.)
• Bishop Crimont is buried in the shrine's crypt, and his 1945 death makes the chapel a grave site as well as a church. (Wikipedia, citing the shrine's history page.)
• The shrine was saved in 1986 by 25 local people after a financial closure, which is why it runs today as an independent retreat centre rather than a diocesan facility. (Wikipedia, citing the shrine's history page.)
• The grounds' 10 major garden areas, more than 14,000 square feet of them, were designed and are still tended by a single volunteer of over 25 years, who calls the work a calling and a joy. (shrineofsainttherese.org,.)

On a cruise day the shrine is the anti-excursion: three hours of road, chapel and shoreline that no ship's tour replicates, and the without a tour page frames exactly this kind of independent run. On a longer visit it pairs with the whale boats at Auke Bay on the way out or back, and with the glacier on the return leg through the valley. In September and October the light on the canal is the photographer's version of the visit, and the best time to visit page carries the month-by-month trade.

It is also one of the free things to do in Juneau that genuinely costs nothing but the taxi, and the juneau in 3 days itinerary gives the north road its morning.

• Cruise port day: dock, taxi round trip booked in advance, two hours on the point, back for boarding; the cruise port page has the timing arithmetic.
• Road day: Auke Bay whale cruise in the morning, the shrine in the afternoon, the whale watching page for the boat choice.
• Retreat day or night: a cabin through the shrine's booking system, and the point after the day visitors leave is a different place.
• Rainy day: the chapel holds its mood in rain better than any outdoor sight here; the rain page agrees.