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Ketchikan: Ward Cove has been Ketchikan economic engine for 100 years; Cruise ship port would redevelop pulp mill site By DAVE KIFFER -This summer's announcement that a multi-ship cruise terminal is planned for the old Ketchikan Pulp Mill site in Ward Cove is a reminder of the important economic role the cove has played in the community over the years.

Ward Cove has been home to a cannery, the pulp mill, numerous smaller businesses and even a town that sought to supplant Ketchikan as the main community in the area.

Ward Cove also comes with a built-in mystery. Just who the heck was "Ward?"

No one knows exactly.

In the 1960s and 70s, regional historian and Alaska place names expert Bob DeArmond spent a fair amount of time trying to determine where the name came from. He was more successful at debunking theories. He first determined that the "Dictionary of Alaska Place Names" was incorrect in determining the name came from the US Coast Survey of the early 1880s. Place Names said "Ward" was one of the officers on the USS Patterson that surveyed the area, but DeArmond found the ship had no such officer.

DeArmond also investigated the claim that it was a misspelling of the name "Waud"" after W.W. Waud who had a salmon saltery in the area from 1883 to 1892. But DeArmond determined that the name "Ward's Cove" predated the saltery.

DeArmond wrote in "Names on the Chart" that it had been likely named after a Hudson's Bay employee back in 1879, when HMS Osprey stopped in the cove.

From the early days, Ward Cove was prized as one of the best natural anchorages in Southeast Alaska. It is interesting to think how Ketchikan would have developed differently if the community had begun in Ward Cove and the Ward Lake/Lake Harriet Hunt drainage with all its flat land, as opposed to the narrow, rocky shoreline along Ketchikan Creek.

Several American survey missions used Ward Cove as bases of operations in the 1880s and 1890s. While those missions were undergoing, steamships such as the Ancon and the Idaho stopped in the cove to provision the surveys, creating  some of the first economic activity in Ward Cove.

Besides Waud's, another saltery was based in Ward Cove. Henry Imhoff opened the facility in 1896. Imhoff's daughter would later marry Eugene Wacker, another important name in Ward Cove history.

In  1901, William Connell opened the Alaska Fish and Mining Company in the cove. It failed, as did an effort for a third saltery owned by T.L. Foster.

Meanwhile, former Territorial Governor August P. Swineford had hatched a plan for his own town in Ward Cove, the city of Revilla. (See "Revilla Hoped to Eclipse Ketchikan," SITNEWS, July 31, 2009).

At the time, Ketchikan and Loring were battling to be the location of the custom house for Southern Southeast Alaska. All ship traffic entering Alaska from Dixon Entrance was required to stop at the custom house and whichever city that had it would likely become the dominant city in the region. Swineford, also the publisher of Ketchikan's first newspaper - the Mining Journal, offered a third option with Revilla, located in the best harbor in the area.

Swineford even got the government to set up a post office in Revilla, He wasn't the only one to see potential in the cove. The Pacific Coast Steamship Company had also built a small wharf in the cove.

When federal fishery official Jefferson Moser visited the area in 1898, he noted that besides the steamer wharf and the post office, the community had a handful of stores and several dwellings. There was also a sawmill owned by William Harper and the Revilla Hotel and Restaurant. Development taking place in both Loring and Ketchikan proved a ready market for the sawmill which supplied both of the Revilla's competitors.

Unfortunately for Revilla, and Loring, the government finally chose Ketchikan as the customs house site. More than anything, that act solidified Ketchikan's future as the primary community in the region for the next century. Revilla had ceased to exist as a separate town by 1902. The sawmill continued to operate for several more years, under the management of William Connell and later J.R. Heckman.

During this time, Ward Cove was accessed by boats. But prelimary efforts had begun to build a "pioneer" road the five miles between Ketchikan and Ward Cove. It would be completed in 1924. - More...
Friday PM - November 29, 2019

Unique sled dogs helped the inuit thrive in the North American Arctic
A team of Greenland sled dogs working in Greenland’s Disko Bay. The ancestors of these dogs arrived with the Inuit to the North American Arctic.
Photo Courtesy Tatiana Feuerborn

Arctic: Unique sled dogs helped the inuit thrive in the North American Arctic - Inuit sled dogs have changed little since people migrated to the North American Arctic across the Bering Strait from Siberia with them, according to researchers who have examined DNA from the dogs from that time span. The legacy of these Inuit dogs survives today in Arctic sled dogs, making them one of the last remaining descendant populations of indigenous, pre-European dog lineages in the Americas.

The latest research is the result of nearly a decade's work by University of California, Davis, researchers in anthropology and veterinary genetics, who analyzed the DNA of hundreds of dogs' ancient skeletal remains to determine that the Inuit dog had significantly different DNA than other Arctic dogs, including malamutes and huskies.

Dr Carly Ameen, an archaeologist from the University of Exeter who led the study, said: "Dogs have lived in North America for as long as humans, but we show here that the Inuit brought new dogs to the region which were genetically distinct and physically different from earlier dogs.

Experts had thought the Inuit used dogs to pull sledges, and this is the first study which shows they introduced a new dog population to the region to do this. These dogs then spread across the North American Arctic alongside Inuit migrants.

"Thousands of years ago there was not the huge number of dog breeds as we know them today. Through analysing the DNA and morphology of the remains of hundreds of dogs we've found that the dogs used by the Inuit had distinctive skull and teeth shapes, and would have likely looked different in life to dogs already in the Arctic."

The article, "Specialized sledge dogs accompanied the Inuit dispersal across the North American Arctic," was published Wednesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. From UC Davis, authors include Christyann Darwent, professor of anthropology; Ben Sacks, adjunct professor and director of the Mammalian Ecology and Conservation Unit, Veterinary Genetics Laboratory, School of Veterinary Medicine; and Sarah Brown, a postdoctoral researcher. Lead author Carly Ameen is an archaeologist from the University of Exeter; Tatiana Feuerborn is with the Globe Institute in Denmark and Centre for Palaeogenetics in Sweden; and Allowen Evin is at the CNRS, Université de Montpellier, Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution in Montpellier, France. The list of authors includes many others from a large number of collaborating institutions.

Qimmiit (dogs in Inuktitut) were viewed by the Inuit as particularly well-suited to long-distance hauling of people and their goods across the Arctic and consuming local resources, such as sea mammals, for food.

The unique group of dogs helped the Inuit conquer the tough terrain of the North American Arctic 2,000 years ago, researchers said. Inuit dogs are the direct ancestors of modern Arctic sled dogs, and although their appearance has continued to change over time, they continue to play an important role in Arctic communities. - More...
Friday PM - November 29, 2019

DAVE KIFFER: Cast Those Stones, Ketchikan is Without Sin! - Ketchikan has come a long way in the last 90+ years.

The 1920s were a rollicking time in the First City. The city was shaking off the economic doldrums of the teens and the salmon canning industry was booming thanks to the fish traps that supplied hundreds of thousands salmon each year to Ketchikan's 13 canneries.

It was the time when Ketchikan, rightfully, called itself the "Salmon Capital of the World."

But, there was something else that Ketchikan was known for, far and wide.

Vice.

While Prohibition was making the rest of the country very thirsty, Ketchikan's proximity to ready alcohol in Canada meant that any boat that could float was being pressed into "rum running" across Dixon Entrance.

And, with the hundreds of single fishermen in the community, more than 100 women of negotiable affection were plying their trade on Creek Street and elsewhere.

In fact, vice was getting so prevalent that the leaders of Territorial Alaska were taking to the newspapers and the floor of the Congress to decry how low Ketchikan had apparently sunk.

The previous Congressional representative James Wickersham was quoted in the Los Angeles Times as calling Ketchikan the "wickedest place" in the country.

And the current (1920s) Alaska representative to Congress Dan Sutherland called Ketchikan the "worst pest hole in America" in a speech to Congress.

It was an interesting time in Ketchikan.

Now, apparently, not so much. - More...
Friday PM - November 29, 2019

Political Cartoon: Black Friday, Cyber Monday
By Christopher Weyant ©2019, The Boston Globe, MA
Distributed to paid subscribers for publication by Cagle Cartoons, Inc.