Port Alexander, Alaska

Port Alexander is a city and harbor at the southeastern corner of Baranof Island, Alaska. As of the 2020 census the population was 78, up from 52 in 2010. In the early part of the twentieth century it was one of the most important fishing ports in Alaska, supporting hundreds of small trolling boats. By one estimate, these boats caught in excess of 5 million pounds of salmon per year in the 1920s.

History

Before the fishing boom (Pre-1913)

There is no written record of a permanent Tlingit settlement at Port Alexander. One translation of its Tlingit name, Haa Léelk'w Hás Aaní Saax'ú, is "Village beside Shee " which hints that it was some sort of dwelling place. The fact that there were native structures there in 1794 suggests that the Tlingit used the area in the pre-contact era in some capacity, perhaps as a summer fish camp.
George Vancouver anchored HMS Discovery and HMS Chatham in or near Ship Cove, a small bay on the southeast shore of Port Conclusion, on August 1, 1794. He sent two survey parties to explore northward in open boats while repairs were made on his ships. Ship Cove is only 1/4 mile from the inner harbor, also known as the back lagoon, of Port Alexander across a narrow neck of land. He wrote that "some of our gentlemen, who had made some excursions about the neighborhood" described reaching the site of Port Alexander. Vancouver made it clear that he did not see the site himself. He wrote:

The head of this cove approaches within the fourth of a mile of the head of another cove , whose entrance on the outside is about 2 miles to the south of the south point of this harbor . In the entrance of that cove the depth is 7 fathoms, weeds were seen growing across it, and to the north of it is a small inlet with some rocks. The surrounding shores are generally steep and rocky, and were covered with wood nearly to the water's edge, but on the sides of the adjacent hills were some spots clear of trees, and chiefly occupied by a damp moist moorish soil, in which were several pools of water. The surface produced some berry bushes, but the fruit at this season of the year was not ripe....In the above cove on the west side were found a few deserted Indian habitations, which were the only ones that had been met with."

Vancouver's 1798 chart of southern Baranof Island shows the outline of Port Alexander.
Mikhail Dmitriyevich Tebenkov was the director of the Russian-American Company and governor of Russian America from 1845 to 1850. He was an officer in the Imperial Russian Navy and an expert surveyor and hydrographer. He produced one of the first detailed charts of Baranof Island. He is credited by one source with naming Port Alexander, speculating that he commemorated Alexander Baranof, the first governor of Russian Alaska. Tebenkov's 1849 map shows the outline of Port Alexander, but does not label it as such.
Port Alexander was visited occasionally by yachts, commercial vessels, and fishing boats in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1895 the 240-foot yacht Eleanor, owned by William A. Slater, stopped during an Alaskan cruise. In June 1898 Moran Brothers assembled a fleet of twelve paddlewheel steamers in Puget Sound. They sailed for St. Michael Alaska, to serve the Klondike gold rush trade on the Yukon River. The ships encountered a storm in which nine ships were reported damaged. The fleet put in to Port Alexander to make repairs on June 7 and sailed out on June 9, 1898. In January 1902 the tug Pilot and her tow anchored at Port Alexander to wait out a storm. During another storm in October 1905, the 223-foot steamship Santa Clara also used Port Alexander for refuge. Notwithstanding this history, the 1901 U.S. Coast Pilot reported that Port Alexander could "only be used by very small vessels and has an uninviting appearance."

Fishing boom (1913-1941)

Fishermen found Port Alexander advantageous. Salmon schooled in the ocean waters near Cape Ommaney prior to returning to their natal streams to spawn. At some times, this allowed for better fishing than in inside waters. The Bureau of Fisheries reported that 1913 was the first year of large scale fishing at Port Alexander. One estimate of the fishing fleet that year was 300 power boats, and 400 hand-trolling boats. In 1924, one official estimated that fishermen at Port Alexander would receive about $400,000 for their catch that summer. By 1925 the fleet was between 500 and 600 gas-powered boats.
The hundreds of boats brought more hundreds of fisherman to Port Alexander. The U.S. Forest Service estimated that the summer population was between 1,000 and 1,200. The fishermen needed food, fuel, and supplies whenever they were in town. When the fishing was good, they had money in their pockets to spend in bars, pool halls, and brothels. During Prohibition there were illegal stills in the back lagoon, and alcohol was smuggled in from Prince Rupert, British Columbia. In July 1923, four men were arrested for violations of the Alaskan Bone Dry Law, and 1,500 bottles of beer were seized at Port Alexander. A 1929 raid by Federal officers arrested seven men for prohibition violations. With the end of prohibition, legal bars opened in town. A dance hall and "beer parlor" was built in 1935.
While much of the activity at Port Alexander was seasonal, a permanent community grew up around the needs of the fishing fleet. There were several bakeries, one as early as 1916. A U. S. post office was opened in 1926. In 1928, the town included a church, six general stores, six restaurants, three bakeries, a butcher shop, two barber shops, and three pool rooms. A Petersburg dairy shipped 90 gallons of milk to Port Alexander on every mail boat. Both Standard Oil and Union Oil ran fuel depots. Elections were held. Dances were organized and movies were shown. The Harborview Hotel welcomed visitors. In May 1928, the Commerce Department granted Karl Hansen a license for a wireless telegraphy station, which connected Port Alexander to the outside for the first time.
Many of the fishermen in Port Alexander, such as Karl Hansen, were immigrants from Norway. In 1927 the Norwegian Federation of Young People's Societies received a special use permit to build a seaman's home for fishermen in need. In June 1927, two Lutheran priests were dispatched from Minnesota to oversee the construction of the building. The mission in Port Alexander, operated under the name "Fredheim" was still being supported by the organization in 1955.
A foot trail between the back lagoon and Ship Cove was built by the U.S. Forest Service in 1925 and improved by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1938. While Vancouver's report makes no mention of how his "gentlemen" came to know that Ship Cove was a quarter-mile from the Back Lagoon, the fact that they did know this distance suggests that they may have traversed a similar path. This trail benefited from significant maintenance in 1949 and periodically through the decades. It is still in use today.
In response to the large fishing fleet, the U.S. Lighthouse Service erected a fixed white light on a post at the southern entrance to Port Alexander on May 31, 1920. This was upgraded to a flashing light in 1922. On July 3, 1930, Congress authorized funding for the Army Corps of Engineers to dredge a channel wide to a depth of below mean lower low water from Chatham Strait into Port Alexander, and an inner channel wide to a depth of below mean lower low water into the back lagoon. The contract for the dredging was awarded to Keeney and Semple of Juneau who bid $18,900 for the job. The work was completed in 1931 by the Puget Sound Bridge and Dredging Company's dredge Everett. A 1945 authorization to deepen the inner channel was cancelled due to the reduction in use of the harbor associated with reduced fishing.

Seafood processing in Port Alexander

There was no refrigeration on the small fishing boats at Port Alexander, so when trollers returned to port they needed to sell their catch before it spoiled. Some of the fish were bought to be taken to canneries and salteries elsewhere. This practice lasted for a century. The Columbia & Northern Fishing & Packing Company had a floating buying station at Port Alexander in 1913 which transported salmon to the company's plant at Wrangell. The New England Fish Company bought salmon in the harbor in 1930. In July 1938 the Union Trading and Packing Company's tender Magnolia landed of Port Alexander salmon at Petersburg for processing. As late as 1996, Sitka Sound Seafoods maintained a floating buying station at Port Alexander aboard the Alaska Queen. Between 2000 and 2010 the number of fish buyers in Port Alexander varied between one and three.
Some of the fish caught by the trolling fleet were processed in small plants at Port Alexander. Martin B. Dahl was a pioneer. He began mild curing salmon on a floating plant in the harbor in 1913. In late 1915 Dahl organized a new company to carry on his business. He became general manager of the Northland Trading & Packing Company. His new company built a shore station to process fish in 1916. He sold Northland Trading & Packing to Southern Alaska Canning Company in 1918, but continued his fishing business at Port Alexander in 1919 as M. B. Dahl & Co.
Karl Hansen took up where Dahl stopped. He ran the Pacific Mild Cure Company's floating processor Volante at Little Port Walter, and in 1920 moved to Port Alexander and started his own operation based on his boat Leif II. He operated a mild curing plant at Port Alexander until 1943, starting afloat and moving to a shore station in 1923. He also owned a general store at Port Alexander selling supplies to residents and fishermen.
Conflicts over pricing between fishermen and buyers at Port Alexander were frequent. For example, in July 1919, fisherman refused to sell to Pacific Mild Cure Company for two weeks. In response, Alaska Union Fisheries, Inc., was incorporated in 1919 by the Alaska Labor Union to create a cooperative for fishermen that would buy and process their fish. In 1920 it used the barge Vashon II to mild cure salmon at Port Alexander.
Trollers at Port Alexander struck for three weeks in 1927, costing an estimated $200,000. In June 1928 the fishermen at Port Alexander, led by the Alaska Trollers Association, went on strike again for higher prices. Buyers had dropped the price they paid for king salmon from 18 cents a pound for large fish, 8 cents a pound for small fish, and 5 cents a pound for white king salmon, to 15, 8, and 5 cents. The strike lasted seven weeks. The fishermen struck again in 1931 over a drop in prices, with Karl Hansen one of the few buyers in Southeast Alaska who held his prices steady. A troller strike in 1933 was also settled with Hansen agreeing prices with the Trollers Association.
Most of Port Alexander's catch was processed in Alaska and shipped south to Vancouver and Seattle, from whence it was distributed globally. When the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway reached Prince Rupert in 1914, fishermen and processors had an alternate route to bring their fish to market. Rather than striking for higher fish prices, some fishermen dealt with low prices in Alaska by selling their fish at Prince Rupert. In some years this drove price competition between the two markets.

	Mild cure salmon	Pickled herring	Salted salmon	Company	Notes
1913	yes			M. B. Dahl
1916	yes			Northland Trading & Packing	Run by M. B. Dahl
1917	yes			Northland Trading & Packing	Run by M. B. Dahl
1917	yes			Pacific Mild Cure Co.
1918		620		M. B. Dahl & Co.
1918	306			Pacific Mildcure Co.
1919	300			M. B. Dahl & Co.
1919	65			Patton & Hibbs	Sold the floating curing scow in 1921
1920	341			Karl Hansen
1920	yes			Alaska Union Fisheries, Inc.
1921	512			Karl Hansen
1921	647		127	Alaska Union Fisheries, Inc.
1922	380			Karl Hansen
1922	358			Alaska Union Fisheries, Inc.
1923	576			Karl Hansen
1924	912			Karl Hansen
1925	602			Karl Hansen
1926	631			Karl Hansen
1926	Yes			Union Trading & Packing Co.
1927	990			Karl Hansen
1928	Yes			Baranof Mild Cure Co.	Floating processor B. M. Co. No.1
1928	549			Karl Hansen
1929	Yes			Baranof Mild Cure Co.	Floating processor B. M. Co. No. 1
1930	Yes			Baranof Mild Cure Co.	Last year at Port Alexander
1941	408			Karl Hansen
1942	356			Karl Hansen
1943	43			Karl Hansen
1944	59			Karl Hansen	Last year at Port Alexander