AHS Blog

Storage Wars, Everett, WA: What was a 1949 Non-Resident Alaska Fishing License?

By: Bob King, Juneau

Inside an abandoned storage unit auctioned off in Everett, WA, last year, the successful bidder found, among other things, a folder that included some high school football programs dating back to the early 1950s and a small, 6 by 4 inch, yellow metal plate: a 1949 Alaska non-resident fisherman’s license. Not recognizing the item, he reached out to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. They didn’t recognize it either and turned to members of the Alaska Historic Canneries Initiative. Just what is this old fishing license plate all about anyway?

1949 Alaska Non-Resident License

A quick historical review turned up nothing in the federal Fish & Wildlife or Halibut Commission regulations that explain the plates. But a deeper look into the territorial records suggest a story that begins with the formation of the Alaska Department of Fisheries, the growing Alaska statehood movement, passage of new fish tax legislation, and ends up in the U.S. Supreme Court.

First to back up a bit, the years after World War II saw rapid growth of the Alaska statehood movement. The Territorial Legislature took a number of steps to organize and fight for Alaska interests. Among these, in 1949, was creation of the Alaska Department of Fisheries. The first Fish Board was appointed and Clarence L. “Andy” Anderson was named its first director. The Territorial Legislature appropriated $250,000 for the new department.

But how could Alaska pay for it? The territory already taxed fish catches. Back then, salmon played the role that oil later played. Fish taxes provided 80% of the revenues for the territorial government and the services it provided. Salmon canneries generated most of that: 4 percent of the value of raw fish. Fish traps were also heavily taxed: $1,200 per trap permit, plus 5 to 25 cents per fish on top of that, depending on volume, and even more. This was partly punitive. Alaskans hated fish traps and taxing them heavily was a profitable way to discourage traps.

1951 Resident License

Complicating matters, salmon runs – and raw fish tax revenues – declined sharply after the war. The Legislature formed the new Department of Fisheries to reverse that decline and encourage more local participation in the fisheries. On the same day the Territorial Legislature created the Department of Fisheries, March 21, 1949, they also approved a new tax on commercial fishermen: $5 for resident fishermen and $50 for non-resident fishermen.

It was a huge success. In its first full year of implementation, 1950, the tax on fishermen raised $290,000, enough to pay for the new department and more, and 86 percent was paid by non-residents. However, the wide disparity in the tax rate for resident and non-resident fishermen immediately raised legal red flags. Preferences like this and other popular “local hire” laws quickly run afoul with the U.S. Constitution’s protection for interstate commerce.

The Seattle-based Alaska Fishermen’s Union immediately sued the territory in what became known as Mullaney v. Anderson, the latter being Andy Anderson, the new director of fisheries. The Territorial District Court initially upheld the tax. Alaskans generally thought non-residents who made their livelihoods in fishing, mining, and other extractive industries, should pay more. But on appeal, the 9^th Circuit Court soon reversed that decision. And with incredible speed, the case went before the U.S. Supreme Court in the spring of 1952.

The territory raised a variety of legal arguments in support of the tax differential, including that Alaska was a territory, not a state. But Chief Justice Felix Frankfurter rejected them all. He agreed with the 9^th Circuit that the same constitutional provisions for interstate commerce also applied to territories, and ruled the different tax rates for resident and non-resident fishermen violated the Privileges and Immunities Clause of Article IV, 2 of the U.S. Constitution. After losing its case, the territory continued to levy the tax but dropped the rate to $5 for all fishermen. Non-resident fishermen later received refunds for the years they were overcharged.

I’m convinced the storage unit plate is connected to the 1949 tax. The plates showed fishermen paid their taxes, much like similar plates and stickers we use today to show fishermen have registered their boats, paid harbor fees, and whatever. Nothing in the 1949 law mentions license plates, but nothing else in the territorial, federal, or halibut commission regulations for that year explain them either.

If so, it begs the nagging question, why then are these plates so rare? I have lived and worked in Alaska fishing communities for 38 years had never seen one of these before. I’ve seen old triangle plates, APA asset tags, and more attached to old fishing boats but never one of these. A friend later showed a picture of a 1951 resident plate, but up to 14,000 fishermen fished annually in Alaska waters during these years. If each needed one of these plates, there should be scads of them around.

Obviously they didn’t. For the Territory, it would seem to have been easier and more efficient to administer this tax on paper. The canneries keep records of their fishermen and could deduct the tax from their pay as they did other expenses. So who still needed a license plate? Perhaps they were used more selectively, such as for trap watchmen who are mentioned in the law. Or maybe others?

Know anything about these plates? Have a better theory about who might have been required to have one? If you have any information about these plates, the Mullaney case, or just an opinion, please let us know. History grows when it is discussed and debated. More background about the Mullaney v. Anderson decision can be found at http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/342/415.html.

Mullaney wasn’t the end of this story. Decades later, a similar case was filed when the state charged non-resident fishermen three times more than residents for commercial fishing licenses and permits. Known as Carlson v. State of Alaska, the courts eventually also found for non-resident fishermen for similar reasons as in the 1952 decision. They ordered refunds that totaled over $30 million in principle and interest. Unlike the speed of Mullaney, this case dragged out for decades. Carlson was filed in 1984 and after five remands wasn’t finally settled until 2012.

Special thanks to Jim Mackovjak of Gustavus who shared his Sitka friend’s photo of the 1951 resident license plate, and provided the critical link to Mullaney v. Anderson.

Crumbling Cannery

Rick Metzger shared this poem, which he found in the Pacific American Fisheries archive in Bellingham. There is no author attribution.

(Note: In an email received on May 22, 2022 from Robert Magnus Thorstenson Jr. of Juneau, Alaska, he wrote that his father had a copy of this poem in his archives and had the author identified on it as the late Dennis Sperl from Petersburg.)

Crumbling Cannery

An old weathered cannery lay silent in death,

No signs of man’s shadow, no human breath.

Piling stubs poking out of the sand,

Caved in old retorts not looking so grand.

Jagged timbers are scattered to and fro,

As docks have collapsed over rocks below.

Where over the water bulwarks had been,

Steamships will never take cargo again.

Planks of a building that once housed a store,

Rotted and splintered lay next to the shore.

The dining hall and cook shack can’t be found,

Yet, bottles and debris litter the ground.

Tanks in the brush filled with algae and slime,

Once contained diesel and oil in their time.

Up from the beach where young evergreens grow,

Bunkhouses rest with roofs sagging low.

Through ghostly windows poke alder and pine,

Where Chinese cabins once formed a neat line.

Tarred pipe tubes lay haphazardly up the hills

Once flowing with power to run pelton wheels.

Warehouse remains are piles of bleached wood,

Next door to where the boiler room once stood.

Pipes, like stray noodles, strewn everywhere,

Rusting tin roofing, a tangled nightmare.

Time is past from the cannery’s story.

No one to witness its days of glory.

History is lost amid ruins of the scene,

As nature returns quiet and serene.

Once a harvester of all in the seas,

Now all that remains are old memories.

Scratching the Surface: One Can, from Cordova to North Carolina

Cannery work is often monotonous. Standing in one place for hours, repeating the same hand motions over and over, attempting to keep alert as the predictable hums and clangs lull the worker towards dozing. However, Alice Ryser enjoyed her time at the New England Fishing Company’s Orca plant outside of Cordova. Remembering mug-up and her fellow NEFCO cannery workers brings a smile to her face, fifty years after she left the cannery.

But one incident in particular sticks out in Alice’s memory. One day, she was transferred from the reformer (which made the flattened cans into cylinders) to the seamer (which secures the lid on the cans), a yawn-inducing process. She had to do something to pass the time, so she took a pin from her hair and wrote, “Write me,” with her name and address on the lids of several cans. And don’t you know it, she got a response from a man in North Carolina. Here is Alice’s story, available within the Alaska Fisheries Report.

Cannery Pioneer Eigil Buschmann

The following article comes from Pacific Fisherman (January 1955), page 44. Thanks to Jim Mackovjak  for contributing this.

Sixty Years of Salmon Canning Ready E. Buschmann for Next Move

With 60 years of personal and continuous activity in the salmon fishing and canning business behind him, Eigil Buschmann retired this winter as general superintendent of Nakat Packing Corporation, a position he has held for 32 years, since the company was formed in 1922.

This doesn’t mean that the man who first fished a power purse seiner in Alaskan waters is going to be idle—not E. Buschmann. He never has been, and doesn’t know how.

Established in a private office at 1014 AmericanBuilding, Seattle (Phone Main 7340), he plans his next move. Will it be in the fish business? Not saying. When will it come? Not certain.

Eigil Buschmann went to Alaska first in 1894, with his father, Peter, and his brother, August. They were running their cannery at the Boca de Quadra that season, and he worked in and for the family properties for years.

In 1907 he took the purse seiner Ruth to Alaska—the first powered purse seiner in the Territory—fishing her for the cannery at HunterBay.

Then in 1911, with Craig Miller and F. C. Johnstone, he built the first cannery at Waterfall, where later he was to make headquarters. He disposed of his interest in 1913 and joined Northwestern Fisheries Co. as superintendent of its Quadra cannery, remaining with this company through 1917.

In 1917 he became superintendent of the Wiese Packing Co. under Einar Beyer, and also handled the Alaska Pacific Herring Co. plant at Port Walter for Mr. Beyer and his Norwegian associates.

In the fall of 1921 he secured an option on the cannery at Hidden Inlet, and the following year the plant was acquired by the Nakat Packing Corporation as a subsidiary of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. entered the canned salmon business (sic). Mr. Buschmann was appointed general superintendent and continued in that position for 32 years until his retirement late last fall.

Captain Matthew Turner: Salt Cod Pioneer

Captain Matthew Turner is best known as the most prolific shipbuilder on the western coast with some 240 vessels to his name from racing yachts to merchant cargo vessels. In addition to introducing Pacific cod to San Francisco, Turner also pioneered the south seas fruit trade and supplied the J. D. Spreckles sugar company with ships. (Unknown photography studio, San Francisco, CA. ca 1878.)

By: Jim Mackovjak

San Francisco had grown quickly from a sleepy hamlet into a thriving commercial center after the discovery of gold in central California in 1848. Many of those who migrated to California during the famed gold rush were of western European, often Catholic, ancestry. For them, salted codfish was a dietary staple. East Coast merchants early on began supplying California with salted Atlantic codfish shipped via the Isthmus of Panama or Cape Horn. The volume grew to be considerable: A total of about 1,000 tons of salted Atlantic cod were imported into San Francisco during the years 1863 and 1864.^[1] The cod fishery that developed in Alaska began as an effort to tap into the growing California market.

Captain Mathew Turner was a man of diverse talents: shipwright, gold prospector, and businessman. He was also the pioneer of the U.S. Pacific cod industry. It was not as a professional fisherman but as an enterprising merchant that he explored the northern fishing grounds. In 1857, Turner sailed the 120-ton brig TIMANDRA from San Francisco, carrying an assortment of cargo for the Russian port of Nicolaevsk, on the Amur River, which flows into the Okhotsk Sea. It was early in the navigation season, and Turner was detained for three weeks at Castor Bay, waiting for ice to go out of the river. During the wait, the TIMANDRA’s crew, as a pastime, began fishing over the vessel’s rail. They were surprised at the abundance of codfish, which averaged about two feet in length. Captain Turner himself had never previously seen codfish, but he was aware of their market value in San Francisco.^[2]

The brigantine WINDWARD shown in this drawing was very similar to the Turner’s TIMANDRA which he purchased at Newburyport in 1857 and brought round to San Francisco. (Illustrated London News, May 1888.)

In 1859, Captain Turner made another trading voyage to the Amur River, and during the voyage he found cod in great abundance near Sakhalin Island. Having no means to preserve the fish, his crew caught only enough for the ship’s use. However, on a similar trading voyage to the Amur River in 1863, the TIMANDRA carried fishing gear and 25 tons of salt. Captain Turner intended to catch and cure some cod on the return voyage. He found fish initially plentiful in the Strait of Tartary, which connects the Sea of Japan with the Okhotsk Sea, and in a few days the crew caught ten tons, which were salted in kenches (wooden bins). Then the fish suddenly disappeared. Turner found codfish again along the Kamchatka Peninsula coast, but during the second day of fishing managed to lose both of his ship’s anchors, compelling him to abandon the fishing effort and to sail for San Francisco. The TIMANDRA’s 30-ton cargo of salted cod—the first ever cargo of salted cod from the Pacific fishing grounds to be landed on the U.S. West Coast—was dried on Yerba Buena Island, in San Francisco Bay, and sold for 14 cents per pound.

In 1864, Captain Turner once again sailed the TIMANDRA to the northern seas, but this time the vessel carried no trading goods; she was outfitted to catch codfish, which made her the first dedicated fishing vessel from a West Coast port to enter the Pacific codfish industry. The voyage was successful: after fishing the same grounds as were fished the previous year, Turner returned to San Francisco with 100 tons of salted codfish, which he sold at a profit.

The year 1863 or 1864—the reports are unclear—marked the first American effort to catch cod in the Bering Sea. During one of those years, the schooner ALERT, of which, according to John Cobb, little was known, journeyed to Bristol Bay, likely primarily to trade with Natives. During the voyage, however, the ALERT prospected for codfish, returning to San Francisco with nine tons of salted cod.This may have seemed like a modest amount, but it represented a catch of perhaps six thousand individual fish.^[3]

It is likely that by this time Captain Turner’s crew was fishing not from the deck of the TIMANDRA, but from dories such as were used by cod fishermen on the Atlantic Coast. These dories were about 13 feet long on the bottom and 16 feet on top, and designed so they could be carried to the fishing grounds nested on the deck of the larger vessel.

Each dory was manned by a single fisherman, who daily rowed to his chosen location not far from the anchored mother vessel and fished with one or two baited hand lines. At the end of the day or when the dory was filled, the fishermen rowed back to the mother vessel, where the fish were unloaded, dressed, and salted. When fishing at a site showed signs of slowing—which could be weeks—the mother vessel weighed anchor and moved to another, presumably favorable location, where the fishing routine was repeated.^[4]

The Salt Cod Era Begins

Captain Turner’s success inspired others, and in 1865 six fishing vessels sailed from San Francisco to the Okhotsk Sea. An industry had been born. All the vessels were small schooners that had been built in New England for the Atlantic fisheries, but had made the journey around Cape Horn to find employment on the Pacific Coast. The vessels’ names and tonnages were: EQUITY (63 tons), FLYING DART (94 tons), R. L. RUGGLES (75 tons), J. D. SANBORN (71 tons), MARY CLEVELAND (91 tons), and TACCON (20 tons).

Captain Turner himself chose to look for codfish closer to home. In late March 1865, he sailed for Alaska on the 45-ton schooner PORPOISE and arrived at the Shumagin Islands, off the southern shore of the Alaska Peninsula, on May 1. Fishing was good, but, in anticipation of a glutted market when the Okhotsk Sea fleet returned, Turner sailed for San Francisco before filling his vessel to capacity. The PORPOISE arrived in San Francisco on July 7 with 30 tons of salted cod. It was the first cargo of codfish ever delivered from the Shumagin Islands.^[5]

Shore Stations

The abundance of cod in the vicinity of the Shumagin Islands became well known, but Thomas McCollam, of the San Francisco-based Thomas W. McCollam & Company (predecessor to the Union Fish Company), was the first person in the codfish industry to perceive the advantages of establishing a shore-based fishing station in the Shumagins. In 1876, McCollam purchased a hunting camp, complete with several buildings and a wharf, at Pirate Cove, a very pretty and well-sheltered harbor at the north end of Popof Island. He converted the camp into Alaska’s first codfish shore station. Originally manned by a company agent and about eight fishermen, it would gradually become the largest and most important codfish station in Alaska.

Station fishermen furnished their own gear, but McCollam’s company furnished the dories and provided free lodging and meals. All fishing was done during the daylight hours, with fishermen usually rising between 3:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. during the summer season, and between 4:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m. during the winter season. After breakfast, the fishermen rowed to nearby fishing grounds, where they fished for several hours before straggling back to the station with their catches between 9:00 a.m. and noon.

Once alongside the wharf, a fisherman used a pew to transfer his fish from his dory into a long, slatted (for drainage) low-walled wooden platform located about halfway between the low-tide line and the wharf’s deck. The fisherman then pewed his fish from the platform onto the wharf, while the station agent tallied the catch.

Circa 1890, McCollam Fishing & Trading Company station fishermen were paid $27.50 per 1,000 codfish, each of which had to be at least 26 inches long. Codfish from 24 to 26 inches long were counted two for one; all codfish less than 24 inches long were discarded.

Dinner—the main hot meal of the day—was served at noon, after which the fishermen divided themselves into “gangs” and processed the catch in a “dress house” that was built on the wharf. Once dressed, the fish were trundled in wheelbarrows to a generally long, low building known as a “butt house,” where they were “pickled” in brine-filled wooden tanks, each with a capacity of about 3,000 to 4,000 medium-sized fish. The preserved codfish were accumulated until a transporter (schooner) from San Francisco called to take the catch and resupply the station with salt and other necessities.

The codfish caught near Pirate Cove were reported in 1880 to usually have weighed between eight and twelve pounds, with the largest weighing fifty pounds. Codfish were said to have been present on the nearby banks year round, although “school fish” left in August or September and returned in January or February, with the best fishing usually in the latter month.^[6]

Ultimately there were about two dozen shore stations along the southern shore of the Alaska Peninsula. In 1882, the average daily catch for a fisherman in the Shumagin Islands was reported to be about 200 fish, with an exceptional day yielding 500 to 600 fish. During 1880, seven shipments of salted codfish, aggregating 432,000 fish and weighing 1,728,000 pounds, were transported from the Shumagin Islands to San Francisco.^[7]

Due a combination of market conditions and the cost of maintaining them, all of the company-owned shore stations were closed during the late 1910s and early 1920s. The stations that remained were small-scale operations that were owned by independent fishermen, and primarily operated in conjunction with other fisheries, such as salting salmon.

Today, the Trident Seafoods plant at Sand Point, in the Shumagin Islands, is capable of processing up to 600,000 pounds of codfish daily.[8]

Second only to pollock, in terms of volume, Pacific cod is the second highest commercial groundfish catch off Alaska.

~          ~          ~

In celebration of the 152^nd anniversary of the U. S. codfishing industry, this blog piece was cobbled together from segments of Jim Mackovjak’s draft history of the codfish industry in Alaska, which Jim hopes to complete by the end of this year.