We left Thursday night at 10 pm with a rare clear and starry night where the Milky Way was nothing short of stunning and we all go to see several shooting stars and satellites as we watched. The solarium deck on the Alaska Marine Highway's M/V Matanuska was our home for the night, sleeping on lounge chairs in our sleeping bags for the bulk of our 200 mile, 12-hour journey.
Petersburg, Alaska, "Little Norway"
We pull into Petersburg during a very foggy dawn with a lovely view northeast across Frederick Sound toward the high mountains of the Coast Range with the Baird Glacier almost in view.
Petersburg is where daughter Bess and son-in-law Patrick first saw Alaska when Pat was considering joining the Coast Guard. His friend Erich White was stationed here, where the 110 foot patrol boat Anacapa (WPB-1335) and 65 foot buoy tender Elderberry (WLI-65401), shown here, are ported. The Elderberry looks so small here next to the Anacapa, and much smaller than the 225 foot CGC Sycamore (WLB-209) that Pat was stationed on in Cordova.
Petersburg is Alaska's "Little Norway" having been settled by Norwegian Peter Buschmann in 1890 who used ice from the nearby LeConte glacier to start the Icy Strait Packing Company. By 1920, some 200 Norwegians populated the town so it gains it's moniker legitimately. Here I stand, a ¾-blooded Norwegian by ancestry, in front of the town welcome station.
The Fisherman's Memorial next to the Sons of Norway hall features a bronze of a working fisherman stands above the names of those lost at sea. Behind is a replica of a Viking war ship, the likes of which never saw the Alaska coast!
A large number of the buildings in the downtown area of Petersburg are decorated with rosemåling, a traditional Norwegian building decoration.
Including the local bar!
Each May, the town celebrates Syttende Mai, literally May 17, commemorating the day the constitution of Norway was signed in 1814 with the Little Norway Festival. I'm told one can "enjoy" lutefisk in great quantity then. If you haven't been around this pickled codfish, you haven't missed much. If they have lefse, I'm going!
Murals are common on the sides of buildings, here showing the bounty of the sea and its creatures on the side of the Hammer and Wikan True Value Hardware store.
A pair of Tlingít totem poles rise at the corner of Haugen and Nordic Drive that tell the story of the native people's travel from the interior of Canada down the Stikine River to settle in the coastal area some 2,000 years ago. Here the base of one is the head of one of the Indians.
While Norwegian folk art dominates, this clever use of pots caught my eye.
Wrangell Narrows
After a nice walk through the quaint town, we head back to the 408-foot M/V Matanuska for the continuation of our journey to Wrangell. Our stay in Petersburg was extended twice; first for fog and then for low tide. The "Mat" needs five feet below keel line or a total depth of 21.5 feet to safely traverse the narrows. We depart on a rapidly incoming tide, flowing from the south up the narrows.
Marker 58, just a short ways south of the Ferry Dock greets us with seven Pelagic Cormorant.
This traverse is dangerous enough that each passage requires a watchman to be at the bow of the ship, keeping an eye out for any danger. This is especially important here, at the narrowest part of the narrows. The Alaska Marine Highway ferries are the largest ships that can traverse the narrows so the cruise ships do not visit either Petersburg or Wrangell and have to head out of the Inside Passage to the outer sea.
It's obviously low tide as we make our way through the narrows at about 8 knots which takes nearly two hours to accomplish. Here marker 39 is high and dry on the rock that is totally submerged at high tide. Note how close we are to the rock, making it clear why the boat needs a bow watchman!
Marker 37 indicates the southern end of the narrowest portion.
At the southern end of the narrows we pass by Woewodski Island where I see my first SEAK major logging evidence. The southern end of the Alexander Archipelago features low and rounded islands with slopes easily cut for timber, very much unlike most of the land in the Juneau area. There is a sign at water's edge just below this cut saying 72 acres of it are "For Sale". Some 80% of the large old growth in SEAK has been cut and logging is a tiny fraction of what it used to be. There is only a small mill in Petersburg and a slightly larger one in Wrangell where lumber was the primary industry.
I'm very curious about the pattern of growth here where the Sitka alder show up in very linear bands. This is usually a large shrub to a small tree but here they stand out boldly in way I'd need to explore on the ground to be able to explain.
Wrangell counted 2,369 souls in the 2010 census, down 83 from 2000. Most of SEAK's inhabited places are suffering a decline in population as the logging industry has not been replaced by anything comparable. Fishing and government are now the primary job sources in the town today.
We approach the city dock in Wrangell, located at the foot of Dewey Hill on the northern end of Wrangell Island.
Here the longshoremen are women! I managed to catch the throwing of the line from the deck to the pier.
Petroglyph Beach State Historic Site
Located at the northern end of Wrangell Island is a beach littered with boulders of both Coast Plutonic Complex tonalite (foreground rock that looks like granite) and Gravina Belt metaclastic rocks (black rock). As we wander among these, we find a large number of petroglyphs that have been inundated by the rise and fall of the tides for some 10,000 years! A petroglyph is distinguished from petrographs as they are carved into the rock by breaking out flakes of rock where petroglyphs are "painted" on the rock.
These markings are from people far older than the Tlingít as they have no oral or artistic record of patterns such as these and elders today cannot interpret them. The oldest Tlingít relics in SEAK date to about 4,000 years. Apparently the simple circle and spiral patterns are the oldest and date to about 10,000 years ago. This places them after the Great Ice Age and well before the Little Ice Age, a period much warmer than today. Little is known about them or their culture.
This is clearly a fish of some sort.
Probably the head of a killer whale.
Scallop
Primitive face, presumably human.
Leisure at IoF
I took no pictures other than this game of Blackjack at Island of Faith Lutheran Church--I guess I was too busy working!
Add a comment