Juneau was founded as a mining camp in 1880 and named after a gold prospector and the town’s co-founder, Joe Juneau. With a population of only 32,000, the downtown of Alaska’s capital city is very walkable. The brown bear, lizard and eagle with totem-pole style faces . are staring at a male member of the Tlingit clan with a raven on his back. The Tlingits are indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast.