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Every summer, Alaska's glaciers melt and send vast quantities of water gushing through silty gray rivers, past towns and villages and finally into the sea. Some glaciers calve directly into the ocean, instantly losing car-sized chunks of ice and wowing boats full of tourists.

ANGOON

ANGOON

For many years there were herring reduction plants in Alaska scattered along the shores of Alaska. In Southeast, most were in the bays of western Kuiu and eastern Baranof Islands because the herring runs returned along the southern end of Chatham Strait. A correction is needed on my column on the Washington Bay salmon cannery that turned into a herring reduction plant: it indents Kuiu not Admiralty Island. Here we learn about Big Port Walter and New Port Walter on Baranof Island.

American Bay, across Kaigani Strait from the Native village of Howkan, was briefly the home of a Northwest Trading Company post. It chose this bay on the east coast of Dall Island in 1883 to attract the fur seal hunters of the Native villages especially Howkan and Kaigani, the latter at Cape Muzon.

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On May 21, Gov. Sean Parnell signed the Fiscal Year 2014 budget into law. Funding for the first and largest phase of the PeaceHealth Ketchikan Medical Center Addition and Alteration project is in that budget.

JUNEAU

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Japanese bombs fell on the Aleutian Islands during World War II, a historical fact most people know. One of the little known events was the balloon bomb attacks on other parts of Alaska and the Pacific Coast.

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The salmon industry rushed to meet the needs for canned salmon when World War I began to escalate. This became a staple food for the soldiers in the trenches. Because of this, two short-lived canneries were built in 1918 at Washington Bay, which indents Admiralty Island on its northwest shore off Chatham Strait.

Can you believe that Billy the Kid, a name prominent in the history of the West, has a connection with Alaska in Wrangell? It was one of those "six degrees of separation" moments for our late museum director, Dennis Chapman, while he was reading "Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride" by Michael Wallis.

ANGOON

Many of my friends have stories of encounters with an octopus, that tentacle-legged mollusk of the seas.

She knows who you are - you went into labor on the deck, tossed into the drunk tank, smuggled a dog onto the solarium, travel to Kake every other week, eat more ketchup than fries. She knows about you, Lavina Sargent does. She knows because she worked as a purser for the Alaska Marine Highway System for close to three decades.

ANGOON

As robins arrive in the spring so, too, do Wrangellites flock to the Nolan Center for Wrangell's annual Health Fair. This year's event saw record numbers of blood screenings performed, including a new test, which measures vitamin D level. The Wrangell Medical Center lab, working with volunteers from the Fire Department and community, drew blood for 13,310 separate tests this year. The lab processed 510 Health Profiles, up from 461 last year, and 330 people had the new vitamin D test. Wrangell Medical Center has offered the $25 reduced-rate screenings at the Health Fair for over 15 years, screenings that cost anywhere from $125.66 (HA1C) to $546.39 (Health Profile) when normally ordered by a doctor.

Wednesday, April 24

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Writing about Native villages is a perilous task for me. The Elders who started Hydaburg are no longer with us. And the memories of the descendents often do not include many of the things that I want to know. Why did the people decide to start what was said to be one of the most progressive Native villages at that time and not stay in their traditional villages? I had to rely on what the "white man" wrote at the time.

ANGOON

ANGOON

Five Alaska Territorial Guard heroes were honored in Ketchikan March 5 and were given their official U.S. Army honorable discharge certificates, nearly 70 years after their admirable service in defending Alaska during World War II.

Wednesday, March 27

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The U.S. Forest Service announced recently it would partner with Oregon State University and Sealaska to plant experimental plots in Southeast Alaska. Red and yellow cedar seedlings will be planted between Connell and Harriett Hunt Lake near Ketchikan. Some seedlings will also go to Prince of Wales Island. These four-inch to two-feet tall seedlings will be planted in areas recently harvested. The experiments are to determine how to prevent deer browsing from killing young trees.

ANGOON

The Cutting Packing Company, a San Francisco-based corporation, built one of the first two canneries in Alaska in 1878. Although two canneries were built and operated that season, the facility at Klawock is often called the first cannery in Alaska. It appears that the one at Klawock holds the honor of being the "first" because it put salmon in the cans before Cutting Packing did later in the season.

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It is difficult, when standing on the Ketchikan Creek bridge overlooking Thomas Basin, to see the actual "mouth" of this creek. In the mid-1880s, when vast numbers of pink salmon returned there, they swarmed up a stream that rushed across an extensive tide flat extending over what is today Thomas Basin. Over the years the basin was dredged and much of the Federal building site and the building west of the basin are built on fill that now covers the tide flats.

ANGOON

ANGOON

This was a photograph of the Clark and Martin saltery! Huddled over a desk in the National Archives building outside of Washington D.C., I was pouring over a dusty, original manuscript written by Jefferson Moser. This Naval captain, commanding the U.S. Fish Commission's steamer ALBATROSS, had undoubtedly proof-read these very pages about his voyage to Alaska in 1897.

Roller Derby is taking off in Southeast Alaska - so don't be surprised if there's a run on booty shorts, crazy socks and stockings, and wild make up in your town.

ANGOON

Elizabeth Peratrovich is the face behind the civil rights movement in Alaska. Strong. Beautiful. Visionary.

My fellow Wrangellites who like to garden usually grow potatoes. Despite the cold and wet weather last summer, we grew red, white and Yukon gold potatoes. However, potatoes are nothing new in Southeast Alaska. It is said that Tlingit and Haida people had gardens more than 200 years ago, and potatoes were one of their most important crops.