Old Uyak, Kodiak Island

By: Wallace Fields

(Note: This article is reprinted from the Kodiak Maritime Museum's Spring 2013 newsletter.)

When Alaska was purchased by the United States in 1867, the salmon canning industry was just beginning. Salmon canneries were operating on the Sacramento and Columbia Rivers, and it wasn't long before canneries were being built further north in Puget Sound, Canada, and along the coast of Alaska. Kodiak Island's first cannery was built in 1882 on the Karluk Spit. By the end of the 1880's four more canneries had been built along the gravel spit and bank where the Karluk River empties into the Shelikof Straits, and new canneries were operating in other areas of Kodiak and Afognak Islands. By the end of the 1890's the Alaska Packers Association (APA) had consolidated operations of many of the canneries on Kodiak and controlled or owned all remaining facilities at Karluk, Alitak, Afognak, Uganik and Larsen Bay. Only two companies were operating independent of APA on Kodiak at the turn of the century. Both of these companies were located at Uyak Anchorage, the nearest anchorage to Karluk from the severe westerly winds that regularly blow across Shelikof Straits.

Both the Pacific Steam Whaling Company and the Hume Bro's and Hume Company built canneries during 1897 at this anchorage and shared water from a small lake and stream that flowed between them. They struggled to compete with APA's large conglomeration, and over the next decade consolidated into a new company, Northwestern Fisheries Company (NWFC). In June of 1905, a fire burned most of the Pacific Steam Whaling Company's plant leaving only the Hume Bro's and Hume plant further to the north, which continued to operate until its closure in 1931.

The NWFC warehouses and other buildings stood until the 1950's when they were torn down and used for structures in the nearby village of Larsen Bay. Today, there are only two buildings still standing from the original cannery in addition to some of the pilings that are left where the dock once stood. Old canning retorts, engine blocks, winches for boat ways, and a variety of other machinery and infrastructure from the once vibrant canning facility litter the beach and landscape of what is now called Old Uyak.

Old Uyak in 1915 (above) and 1956 (below). Image courtesy
Tim Smith at Tanignak.com.

For the past thirty years Old Uyak has been my home during the summer months where our family gillnets for salmon. I have spent many quiet mornings looking out over the old dock and collapsed smokestack where the boiler once stood imagining the daily activity that would have been part of the Northwest Fisheries Company.

From my window I can picture the old sailing ships, like the AJ Fuller and Harvester, swinging anchor in front of the dock, or the mail boat Dora casting off from this dock the morning of the Katmai eruption in June 1912, and watching the sky grown dark a few hours later as they sailed for Kodiak, or the Bertha with a load of lime that ignited in front of the cannery in July 1915 and burned to the waterline (the boiler and ribs from the ship are still visible on the beach).

I think of the loads of salmon brought here from the Karluk beach seines and from fish traps around the island, and the Chinese laborers, the Scandinavian and Native fishermen, the plant managers and skilled craftsmen, and can hear the sounds and smell the smells that are so familiar to me from the cannery in Larsen Bay, only six miles away, which has operated from 1911 to this day.

Uyak Anchorage is still a busy place throughout the year, with the commercial fishing fleets coming and going to delver fish to tenders or to anchor for shelter or rest. Many of these folks may only see some old pilings and setnet cabins now when they gaze on the site of the Northwest Fisheries Company canneries, but others may see what I so, an important connection to our past and a standing record of the salmon industry which has been such an important component of Kodiak's maritime history.

Common Waters

By: Ross Coen

When it came to Alaska fisheries, Anthony Dimond and W. C. Arnold didn’t see eye-to-eye very often. As the territory’s congressional delegate from 1933 to 1945, Dimond advocated local fisheries management, a hiring preference for Alaska residents, and the abolition of fish traps. As lawyer and lobbyist for the Seattle-based packing industry, Arnold opposed all of those things.

On at least one point, however, the two men were in full agreement.

In July 1937 at least ten and possibly as many as thirty Japanese fishing vessels entered Bristol Bay intent on catching salmon. They had neither license nor permission from the U.S. Fisheries Bureau to be there, but the Japanese government insisted the vessels were engaged only in a scientific research program. Alaska fishermen observed and photographed the Japanese crews harvesting large quantities of salmon, however. The outraged Alaskans estimated the catch of one factory trawler alone at 20,000 fish, a number that could only be for commercial, not scientific, purposes.

Both Dimond and Arnold—not to mention every other American with an interest in the Alaska fishing industry—supported political and diplomatic strategies that would exclude the Japanese from domestic fisheries. Dimond proposed extending the boundary of territorial waters as much as four hundred miles, a distance that would enclose all offshore waters over the continental shelf.

The Taiyo Maru, a Japanese factory vessel, and auxiliary
 trawler in Bristol Bay in July 1937

The 1937 controversy, for essentially the first time, aligned the interests of Alaskans and non-resident fish corporations. Just six packing companies accounted for well over half the annual Bristol Bay salmon pack at that time, a degree of corporate monopolization and attendant political power that infuriated Alaskans in normal times. But since the Japanese “invasion” might lead to a fishery collapse that would endanger the livelihoods of all stakeholders equally, common cause was not hard to find.
Arnold concurred with Dimond on the key points regarding the territorial boundary. The canned salmon industry had opposed Dimond for years and contributed heavily each election cycle to the campaigns of his Republican opponents. But now, Arnold wrote a letter to Dimond stating the packers were “deeply appreciative of your efforts.”

Political historians have tended to view Alaska residents and the Outside cannery owners as opponents with little to no common ground—or common waters, I should say. The statehood movement in particular has been characterized in terms of this conflict. Although such a focus is by no means misplaced, the 1937 Japanese fishing crisis shows an overlap in the interests of the two stakeholder groups was at times possible. As Alaska historians bring a renewed focus to the history of canneries, we would do well to consider interpretations that challenge previously accepted orthodoxy.

Filipino Cannery Workers in 1915

By: Anjuli Grantham

Last summer, the Baranov Museum in Kodiak taught a history and film workshop for middle school and high school students. These students created mini-films about topics related to the history of Filipinos in Kodiak. Kodiak has a large Filipino population; Filipinos comprise around 30% of the population of the city. Most of them were born in the Philippines and came to Kodiak through their service with the US Coast Guard or to work at a local cannery.

Yet there are local Filipinos who are second or third generation American citizens. Their relatives came to Alaska in the early 1900s to work in salmon canneries. Some of these early Filipino cannery workers were pensionados, or students from the Philippines who attended university in the US. Others were taking advantage of their new status as American nationals to find work in the US. Recall that after 1898, the Philippines became a US territory at the conclusion of the Spanish-American War. Although Filipinos were not citizens, as US nationals they could immigrate to and work in the US. To discover a bit more about this early history, see this blog post.

During the film intensive, high school senior Olivia Bennett focused on the story of one such national, Denis Rodill. Denis worked at the Alaska Packers Association's Larsen Bay cannery during the 1915 season. His image is captured within the Nichols Family Collection of photographs at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Rasmuson Library. In these photographs, Filipino cannery workers are in the midst of a Fourth of July celebration that included a parade and a pageant. Yet none of the workers are identified in the photographs.  It took Denis's daughter, Diane, to identify her father as one of the merrymakers. The short film highlights a portion of Denis's incredible story, which Diane is in the process of documenting. Although it seems at this point that Denis only spent one summer in an Alaskan cannery, Diane's research has highlighted what Alaskan historians long have attempted to articulate: our ports are international crossroads. By extension, canneries have often served as economic border crossings- the first place through which many new immigrants have passed.

Canning Salmon at Excursion Inlet, Alaska: The First Century

By: Jim Mackovjak, Gustavus, Alaska

The first cannery in what was officially known as the Icy Strait District of Southeast Alaska was not at Excursion Inlet, but at Bartlett Cove, in Glacier Bay. The Bartlett Bay Packing Company operated for only three years, 1889 through 1891, before it was closed because of overcapacity and consolidation in the industry. In 1900, the Western Fisheries Company constructed and operated a cannery at Dundas Bay. The cannery operated almost continuously under various ownerships until it was permanently shuttered in 1931.[i]

The story of today’s cannery at Excursion Inlet began at Haines in February 1906 with the purchase by the Bellingham, Washington-based Pacific American Fisheries Company (PAF) of the Alaska Fisheries Union salmon cannery. A second cannery, that of the Astoria & Puget Sound Canning Company (APSC), was also located at Haines.

PAF’s purchase of the Haines cannery—the company’s first venture into Alaska’s fisheries—seems to have been untimely, because that year there was a great shortage of sockeye salmon in Lynn Canal. Of the five species of Alaska salmon, sockeye were by far the most desired by canners. The Canal’s principal sockeye streams, the Chilkat and Chilkoot rivers, had been, in the words of a federal fisheries official, “fatally overfished.”[1] [ii] To secure sufficient salmon to operate their plants, the operators of the two canneries at Haines brought in trap-caught fish from Icy Strait, nearly a hundred miles away. With Lynn Canal’s salmon runs depleted, there was little incentive to maintain operations at Haines, but very good reason to move closer to their salmon traps. The cost of transporting salmon would be reduced, and, since fish in transport at that time were not iced, spoilage would be reduced as well. PAF acquired a cannery site on the northeast shore of Excursion Inlet, in what the company called the “justly famous Icy Straits fishing district,” in 1907. The following year, it erected a cannery building, and, with the canning equipment from the Haines plant, began canning salmon. PAF was not alone in its new location: APSC, its former neighbor in Haines, also established and operated a cannery at Excursion Inlet in 1908, at a site just south of the PAF cannery. APSC’s “Glacier Cannery,” as it was called on the trade tokens it issued, did not operate in 1909, but resumed regular canning operations the following year.

In about 1910, Hoonah residents Steve Kane and Oliver Hillman constructed a water-powered sawmill on the west shore of the Inlet, in what became known as Sawmill Bay. Most of the material cut was used to build and repair salmon traps.[iii] The sawmill operated until 1928, and was then dismantled and moved to Hoonah.[iv]

Both of Excursion Inlet’s canneries, it seems, depended almost completely on traps for their supply of salmon. The traps, PAF wrote, allowed a canner to “maintain absolute control of the size of his catch at all times.”[v] Government officials looked favorably on fish traps, mostly because they were stationary and easy to monitor, as opposed to vessels that could enter the mouth of a stream and leave with a load of fish with no one the wiser.[vi] Fishermen resented the traps, which they felt caught too many fish and deprived them of a market for their catch. Robbing them, often with the complicity of paid-off watchmen, was considered good sport and an honorable occupation. Icy Strait was considered a fertile ground for “fish pirates.”[vii]

There were few restrictions on salmon fishing before the passage of the White Act in 1924,[2] but PAF, nevertheless, managed to run afoul of federal fisheries regulators: Out of a total of 53 indictments of fish trap owners for violations in Southeast Alaska in 1908, PAF accounted for 23. (APSC had 1.) [viii] Over the following decade, the PAF cannery annually operated 16 to 19 traps.[ix] In 1914 there were about 180 salmon traps in all of Southeast Alaska. Of these, fully 20 were between Excursion Inlet and Point Couverden.[x] PAF’s most productive trap, however, was at George Island, in Cross Sound.[xi] The company also operated a pile trap at Pt. Gustavus, at the entrance to Glacier Bay. For a number of years, the trap was operated under a permit from the National Park Service.

A by-products plant was erected at the PAF cannery in 1916 to reduce fish waste into fertilizer and fish oil. The following year, the APSC cannery burned, but was rebuilt in time to operate the following season. In 1918, the PAF cannery had six can lines that could be operated simultaneously. Four were 1-pound tall lines, one was a 1-pound flat line, and the last was a ½-pound flat line.[xii]

The PAF and APSC canneries both canned salmon each year through 1931. The PAF cannery did not operate for the 1932 or 1933 seasons, but resumed canning for the 1934 season.[xiii] The pack at the APSC cannery in 1932 was 80,500 cases.[3] In 1935, PAF closed its cannery and with APSC began joint operations as Consolidated Fisheries.[xiv] Though its cannery would never operate again, PAF still owned 8 salmon traps in the area.[xv] In 1937 and 1938, Consolidated Fisheries was listed as operating 10 floating traps and 3 pile traps, and almost certainly purchased some fish from seine boats.[xvi] In 1939, only the APSC cannery was listed as operating, but it may have also canned PAF fish under contract.[xvii] In 1941, the APSC cannery’s pack was nearly 160,000 cases.[xviii]

World War II brought big changes to Excursion Inlet. In August 1942, construction began on an army shipping base just south of the APSC cannery. To produce an adequate supply of canned salmon with a minimum utilization of critical materials, manpower and, shipping facilities, a 1943 government directive ordered canneries to consolidate operations. As had been the case during previous years, the APSC cannery canned fish for PAF, an arrangement that seems to have continued after the war was over.[xix] The salmon pack at the APSC Excursion Inlet cannery for the years 1945-1947 averaged about 44,500 cases annually.[xx]

In the spring of 1948, the venerable APSC cannery at Excursion Inlet was destroyed by a fire that was said to have started from an oil stove in the watchman’s quarters. Also burned were three warehouses, the oil dock, and a shed that contained 150,000 feet of steel cable that was essential to trap operations.[xxi] This fire ended APSC’s canning history at Excursion Inlet.

Salmon were not canned again at the Inlet until 1951. In January of that year, PAF purchased a 180-foot by 400-foot former Army warehouse building at the Inlet, and not long thereafter entered into a joint venture with the Columbia River Packers Association (later Bumble Bee Seafoods) to form Excursion Inlet Packing Company (XIP). The new enterprise quickly began moving canning machinery into the warehouse building. Though XIP managed to can a few fish that season in the cannery, its pack was mostly made aboard the floating cannery, Neva.[xxii] Full canning operations began with the 1952 season and continue to this day in a building that has proved admirably suited to the purpose.

XIP began operations with one pile trap (Point Gustavus) and five floaters (two at Dundas Bay, one at the southwest end Pleasant Island, one just west of Pt. Adolphus, and one at what is locally-known as Trap Point, on Chichagof Island just east of Port Fredrick).[xxiii] Stan Tarrant, president of PAF, wrote in 1951 of the need to build up a seine fleet of local fishermen, but little seems to have been done.[xxiv]

Ole Syre was the XIP cannery’s first superintendent. Syre had first come to Excursion Inlet in the early 1920s to be superintendent of the APSC cannery, a position in which he remained for about 25 years. In 1957, his son, Bob became superintendent of the XIP cannery. Bob had first come to Excursion Inlet in 1927, when he was nine months old. From that year through 1946, he spent every summer at the Inlet. The young hero of the book Pirates of Icy Strait, a tale of the thwarting of fishermen who were robbing the cannery’s fish traps, seems to have been based on his experiences as a boy.

The canned salmon industry in Alaska had changed little between the time Syre was first brought to Excursion Inlet and when he was made superintendent. It faced a major upheaval, however, with the advent of Alaska’s statehood: fish traps were outlawed in State waters. If the cannery was to continue operating, it would have to secure a reliable supply of fish from independent fishermen. In 1959, the year of Alaska’s statehood, XIP had only five seiners that regularly supplied fish, and none were particularly productive. Fortunately, XIP was able to “buy” a seine fleet from the Pelican Packing Company. A poor salmon run prediction may have precipitated the sale.

The 1960 canning season was a good one at Pelican, and the one-line cannery managed to put up 120,000 cases. The prediction for the following year’s salmon run in northern Southeast Alaska, however, was dismal. Faced with the possibility of operating at marginal capacity, Pelican Packing chose to contract XIP to custom can its fish. Unlike most canneries, Pelican Packing owned no traps, and had based its operation on seine-caught fish from Cross Sound and Icy Strait.

The fish were of excellent quality—they were fresh from the open ocean, still feeding, and showed few signs of the deterioration in appearance and flesh quality that occurs as salmon approach their natal streams. The Cross Sound/Icy Strait fishery had one major drawback: It was an “intercept” fishery. The fish being caught were bound for streams throughout the northern half of Southeast Alaska, and Alaska Department of Fish & Game (ADF&G) managers could not determine which stocks were being caught. This uncertainty did not mesh with the Department’s efforts to ensure sufficient spawning populations in each of the region’s principal salmon streams.

Many of the seiners who fished for Pelican Packing were Hoonah Natives. The men were legendary in their ability to fish the fast-flowing, often turbulent waters of the Inian Islands area. And they caught a lot of fish. The principal reason they fished for Pelican Packing was because they had no good alternative; Pelican Packing owned the mortgages on their boats.

In 1961, XIP bought out Pelican Packing Company, including the mortgages on the Hoonah seine fleet. A.W. Brindle, of Ketchikan-based Wards Cove Packing Company, financed the purchase and became one-third owner of XIP. The Pelican cannery’s equipment was moved to Excursion Inlet.

Bob Syre saw the need to upgrade the Hoonah seine fleet and soon contracted for the construction in a Seattle shipyard of three new seiners, the Gypsy Queen, Ocean Queen, and Vagabond Queen.[xxv] Under Syre, the company also established a freezing operation and began buying halibut and troll-caught salmon. It also began processing salmon eggs into caviar for the Japanese market.

In 1965, PAF was liquidated and its share in XIP purchased by the two remaining partners. In 1974, the salmon seine fishery in Cross Sound and Icy Strait was terminated by the Alaska Department of Fish & Game. Up to 400 vessels had annually fished the area. For the cannery at Excursion Inlet, a substantial portion of the fish lost by the closure was made up by fisheries at the Hidden Falls and Douglas Island salmon hatcheries, which came on line during the late1970s. Bumble Bee Seafoods pulled out of the XIP partnership in 1983, and Wards Cove Packing became the sole owner of the Excursion Inlet cannery.

Bob Syre remained superintendent of the cannery until 1991. In 2003, the Excursion Inlet Packing Company was sold to its current owner, Seattle-based Ocean Beauty Seafoods (formerly Washington Fish & Oyster).

Of the seven canneries established over the years in the Icy Strait district, only one, Excursion Inlet, remains.[4] It has persisted for a century, through two world wars, the Depression, through good salmon runs and poor ones, through the elimination of salmon traps and other huge changes in the structure of Alaska’s salmon fishing industry. It is among Alaska’s most successful fish processing operations.

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[1] The runs later recovered under more restrictive management.

[2] The legislation gave the Secretary of Commerce broad powers with respect to control of the time, place, and method of commercial fishing. 

[3] A case equals 48 1-pound tall cans.

[4] Bartlett Cove, Dundas Bay, Hoonah, Port Althorp, Pelican, and Excursion Inlet

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[i] John N. Cobb, Pacific Salmon Fisheries, Bureau of Fisheries Doc. No. 1092, Fourth Edition (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1930), 445; “Chronological History of Salmon Canneries in Southeastern Alaska,” in 1949 Annual Report, Alaska Fisheries Board and Alaska Department of Fisheries, Report No.1, pg. 31.

[ii] Howard M. Kutchin, Report on the Salmon Fisheries of Alaska in 1906, Bureau of Fisheries (Washington: GPO, 1907), 27.

[iii] “Saw Mill Notice,” Daily Alaska Dispatch (Juneau), March 13, 1911.

[iv] Frank T. Been, “Inspection of Glacier Bay National Monument, Alaska, August 1 to August 27, 1939,” 32. Report on file at Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, Gustavus, Alaska.

[v] The Shield, May 1957.  Note: The Shield is the “official publication of the employees of Pacific American Fisheries and Allied Companies.”

[vi] Barton Warren Evermann, Alaska Fisheries and Fur Industries in 1913, Bureau of Fisheries Document No. 797 (Washington: GPO, 1914), 46.

[vii] Ward T. Bower and Henry D. Aller, Alaska Fishery and Fur-Sea  Industries in 1920, Bureau of Fisheries Document No. 909 (Washington: GPO, 1921), 29.

[viii] Fisheries of Alaska in 1908, Bureau of Fisheries Doc. No. 645 (Washington: GPO, 1908), 33; Act of June 6, 1924.

[ix] “Hoonah Packing Company,” The Shield, Vol. 1, No. 8 (December 1918): 58. Note: The Shield is the “official publication of the employees of Pacific American Fisheries and Allied Companies.”

[x] E. Lester Jones, Report of Alaska Investigations in 1914, Department of Commerce, Bureau of Fisheries (Washington: GPO, 1915), 6, 14.

[xi] Bob Syre, personal communication with author.

[xii] “Hoonah Packing Company,” The Shield, Vol. 1, No. 8 (December 1918): 58. Note: The Shield is the “official publication of the employees of Pacific American Fisheries and Allied Companies.”

[xiii] Ward T. Bower, Alaska Fishery and Fur-Seal Industries in 1934, (Washington: GPO, 1935): 30.

[xiv] Robert Syre to Steve Langdon, April 4 and July 18, 1997.

[xv] Ward T. Bower, Alaska Fishery and Fur-Seal Industries in 1934, (Washington: GPO, 1935): 33.

[xvi] Ward T. Bower, Alaska Fishery and Fur-Seal Industries in 1938, Appendix II to Report of Commissioner of Fisheries for the Fiscal Year 1939 (Washington: GPO, 1940), 125; A. Morris Rafn (Bureau of Fisheries), Juneau District Annual Report, 1937, pg. 19.

[xvii] Ward T. Bower, Alaska Fishery and Fur-Seal Industries in 1939, Appendix II to Report of Commissioner of Fisheries for the Fiscal Year 1939, (Washington: GPO, 1941), 135.

[xviii] “Excursion Inlet Cannery Destroyed by Fire,” Pacific Fisherman (May 1948): 71.

[xix] “Concentration Program Announced for Alaska Canned Salmon Industry,” Pacific Fisherman (April 1943): 11-14; “Excursion Inlet Cannery Destroyed by Fire,” Pacific Fisherman (May 1948): 71.

[xx] “Excursion Inlet Cannery Destroyed by Fire,” Pacific Fisherman (May 1948): 71.

[xxi] “Excursion Inlet Cannery Destroyed by Fire,” Pacific Fisherman (May 1948): 71.

[xxii] Stan Tarrant, Pacific American Fisheries, operating recommendations for 1951 salmon season, February 26, 1951; “Excursion Inlet—Back on It Feet Again,” Pacific Fisherman (September 1952): 19; Seton H. Thompson, Alaska Fishery and Fur-Seal Industries: 1951, Statistical Digest No. 31 (Washington: GPO, 1954), 35.

[xxiii] Seton H. Thompson, Alaska Fishery and Fur-Seal Industries: 1952, Statistical Digest No. 33 (Washington: GPO, 1954), 33.

[xxiv] Stan Tarrant, Pacific American Fisheries, operating recommendations for 1951 salmon season, February 26, 1951.

[xxv] Robert Syre to Steve Langdon, April 4 and July 18, 1997.

Serendipity in Historical Research

By: J. Pennelope Goforth

Every now and then a serendipitous event occurs that defies the laws of rationality. I think it’s the magnetic law of attraction. That is, the attraction of old Alaskan historical stuff. Maybe you’ll agree after you read this.

I wrote a book some years ago, Sailing the Mail in Alaska, about early Alaska photographer and mail clerk aboard the DORA, John E. Thwaites. I’m now working on a book about the famous little steamer DORA. Last year, Anjuli Graham, Katie Ringsmuth, Pat Roppel, and Toby Sullivan and I decided to work on a historical project documenting Alaska’s canneries. During the Christmas season I took a fun seasonal job at the Alaska Mill & Feed store, and met Pam who worked there. She had a sister, Judy,  in California. Judy has all the family letters and photos. About a week ago, Judy and I sat down in Pam’s home with some of the family’s memorabilia.

Edwin Culbertson, 1^st row 2^nd from left in ships’ uniform and hat;
Harold Painter, 1^st row, 5^th from the left wearing fedora.
Photo by John E. Thwaites and courtesy
Miriam Culbertson Painter Collection, Judy Thompson.



Of course, the photos were taken by John E. Thwaites.

Of course, her grandfather and great-uncle worked on the DORA.

Of course, she had a great photograph of the Shakan Cannery.

Her grandfather, Harold Painter, was the radio operator and Edwin Culbertson was the purser aboard the DORA in 1913. Later, Painter also worked as purser and became the mayor of Seward. He was active in ‘territorial affairs’. He ran for the house as a Democrat. Ed Culbertson went on to Anchorage where he purchased lots on the sale day in 1915. Harold later married Ed’s sister, Miriam.

One of the several exciting moments for me was when Judy pointed out both men in one of Thwaites’ iconic photos, captioned “On the cruiser DORA”. For years I had tried to find out who were these men grouped on the DORA’s deck. Another moment was reading an actual note penned by Thwaites to his friend Harold in which he says he is bringing up his wife Isabelle on the SS ALASKA. But high tide definitely arrived when Judy presented me with a copy of Harold’s daily diary from 1915, when he served as the DORA’s purser! Nearly a hundred years ago, he noted on February 5: “Arrived Scotch Cap, Sarichef, Akutan & Unalaska. Snowing Bad & wind blowing. Feel good.”

Shakan Salmon Company cannery as it was in 1916.
Photo by unknown and courtesy
Miriam Culbertson Painter Collection, Judy Thompson.

The slightly overexposed print of Shakan Cannery isn’t signed, but it is quite possibly another undiscovered Thwaites photograph. A little more research may identify it as a John Cobb photo who also took a lot of photographs of canneries and salteries that proliferated along the lush Southeast Alaska coasts. This cannery was owned by the Shakan Salmon Company. On April 3, 1916 Harold wrote to Miriam: “This is the Shakan Cannery where we unloaded 132,000 ft. of lumber. Stayed here 18 hours. Juneau is our next stop and also get rid of our dynamite. Stop at Nanaimo going south.”

Another documented brick in our wall of canneries! Thank you, Pam and Judy!

I never believed totally in rationality anyway. Serendipity, now, that’s another story altogether!

 

J Pennelope Goforth

Anchorage, Alaska

February 5, 2013.

Larsen Bay, July 2012

By: Anjuli Grantham

This summer, I travelled to Uyak Bay on the west side of Kodiak Island to visit some friends at their fish camp. This afforded me my first trip to the village of Larsen Bay, which is home to what is one of the oldest standing canneries on Kodiak Island. Currently owned by Icicle Seafoods, the Larsen Bay cannery was built by the Alaska Packers Association after the company moved all its packing activities from the Karluk Spit, in 1911. To me, a historian who has spent much time reading and writing about the history of the fisheries, this cannery is a beauty.  In a later post, I'll provide more information about the incredible history of the place. But first, I'm hoping to wow you with some photos.

 

Salting Salmon in Taku Inlet

By: Pat Roppel, copyright held by author

Salmon salteries were usually an establishment of small capital. A cooper, with a handful of tools could go into the woods, fall a few trees, and make barrels. Hoops to hold the barrels together, salt and fishing gear were shipped North. Fishermen, sometimes Natives, harvested sockeye salmon by seines from skiffs in or at the mouth of a fish stream or river. Wooden vats, usually in a rough wooden building, held the fish in salt until they were processed sufficiently to be packed into barrels.

The Taku River that flows into the inlet of the same name sustains a run of salmon. Charles Brown came there in 1882 to salt fish, financed by his partner Peter Eussard, the discoverer of the Treadwell Paris mine. We learn from Brown’s 1884 mortgage that the saltery consisted of houses, sheds, fish tanks and fishing boats. When Brown died in 1889, his estate included the Taku Fisheries, with cabin, smokehouse and shed and three old boats, two fishing nets and some barrels of salmon backs and heads. This is the last mention of Taku Fisheries.

Perhaps Gilbert, Stephens, and Murray used the site in 1891 when the Juneau paper reported they were ready to ship several tons of dry and salted salmon from the inlet. The next men, Billy Layton and A. Hipe, salted only 15 barrels of salmon bellies in 1894. The following year, J. P. Whitney, the resident manager of Polar Fish and Trading Company, a New York concern, started a saltery, but no more was found about it.

As we can see these were short-lived. Marketing may have been a problem, and shipping expensive.

The next operation lasted longer undoubtedly because it was financed by a company with established markets and access to more fishing gear, Quadra Packing Company with Peter Buschman operated a cannery at Boca de Quadra. It chose Brown’s site at Taku Point near the head of the inlet to establish its saltery in 1898. By 1900 it had a large force of men with gear from Petersburg where another cannery had just been constructed. Only red king salmon were salted, and if the kings were white only the bellies were used. A New York City Jewish market had developed. The salt was soaked from the fish, it was smoked, then made into lox.   With two canneries to manage, Buschmann ceased salting at the end of 1901. This was the last operation that solely salted salmon from the Taku River. For a number of years the Taku Harbor cannery salted and mild cured the Inlet’s fish at that facility.

Ron and Nan Schonenbach asked me about Taku Point that they currently own. Bob DeArmond told Ron that J. L. Carlson acquired the site from Buschmann and had the site surveyed in 1902 but did not have it patented. This survey shows the salt house location. The Schoenenbachs located rusting pipes coming from the water source. Carlson had a cannery at Sunny Bay in Taku Inlet and sold it to Pacific Packing and Navigation Company in 1901. After a bankruptcy, Northwestern Fisheries obtained much of the company’s assets including Carlson’s Taku Packing cannery.

The Taku Point site is not listed among these assets. Northwestern Fisheries needed legal title if it wanted to use the Taku Point site.  Part of an 1898 federal law allowed the acquisition of title thought soldiers’ additional homestead rights. This script was used for the most part by the cannery people, who failed or were hampered under the act of 1891 to obtain title to Alaskan land upon which the cannery or saltery was built.

I suspect that Northwestern Fisheries management had James Sackett or his estate apply for the site as a solders’ additional homestead. Ron tells me the federal patent was issued on January 13, 1908 with Northwestern Fisheries Company as the assignee of Sackett’s minor orphan children. 

How long did the company use this site for temporary fishing crews’ quarters, storage of boats and gear? It is on my list of things to research!