Fri, November 06, 2015
by Richard Ravalli, William Jessup University The recent monograph by historian Ryan Jones entitled Empire of Extinction: Russians and the North Pacific’s Strange Beasts of the Sea, 1741-1867 is a valuable study of the Russian sea otter trade of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.[1] Not the least of the book’s contributions to fur trade scholarship is its appendix. Jones provides a list of hunting expeditions in the North Pacific, from Vitus Bering’s fateful mission in 1741 to 1800. As...
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Mon, November 02, 2015
by Ross Coen In the summer of 1919, Doctor C. L. Alsberg visited salmon canneries throughout Southeast Alaska. The chief of the U.S. Bureau of Chemistry, in order to verify compliance with federal pure food laws, inspected each facility and its products. While standing on the docks of canneries throughout the territory, Alsberg watched the fishermen and cannery hands move salmon from the boats to the landings and then up to the cannery floor. Each man held a long-handled, single-tined...
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Mon, November 02, 2015
by Ross Coen Among the countless conservation measures that have been applied to Alaska’s salmon fisheries throughout history, one of the least effective—but at the same time most interesting—is predator control. Few sights got a canneryman’s blood boiling quite like eagles, gulls, sea lions, trout, and all the rest snatching up mature or juvenile salmon from a spawning stream. The heyday of predator control in western Alaska occurred in the 1920s and 1930s when the federal and territorial governments collaborated...
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Mon, October 19, 2015
by Anjuli Grantham October is Filipino American History Month and serves as a yearly opportunity for Alaskans to consider the important role that those of Filipino descent play both now and in the history of the state. From Manila men who sailed aboard 18th and 19th century voyages of exploration within Alaska’s waters, to those that laid cable aboard the Burnside and served in the US Navy and US Coast Guard, the history of Filipinos in Alaska is decidedly...
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Fri, September 18, 2015
Compiled by Karen Hofstad Petersburg was named after Peter Buschmann, a Norwegian immigrant who arrived in the late 1890s and homesteaded on the north end of Mitkof Island. He built a cannery, a sawmill, and a dock between 1890 and 1900. His family's homesteads grew into Petersburg, which was populated largely by people of Scandinavian origin. The cannery has operated continuously since its completion. Petersburg is now one of Alaska's major fishing communities. ─City of Petersburg, Alaska Start of...
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