Squaw Harbor Cannery

08 Jun Squaw Harbor Cannery

If you want the full story on why we came to Squaw Harbor, the Anders Olsen post covers it. What I want to talk about here is what we found when we got there.

                                                                                                            Location of Squaw Harbor in red

Squaw Harbor sits on the north shore of Baralof Bay on the east coast of Unga Island, about seven miles south of Sand Point in the Shumagin Islands. Unga is the largest of the Shumagins, a chain of about 20 islands hanging off the south coast of the Alaska Peninsula. The Unangan Aleut people lived throughout this chain for thousands of years before Russian contact, with a population estimated around 25,000. After a century of Russian occupation marked by disease, massacre, and forced village consolidation, only a fraction of that remained. Commercial fishing arrived in the early 1900s, and in 1922 the Shumagin Packing Company built what became the first salmon cannery in the Shumagin Islands. Pacific American Fisheries bought the plant in 1934 and it processed fish until 1954, when Peter Pan Seafoods was the last company to operate it commercially. After that Sand Point won, families followed year-round employment, the school closed in 1970, and by the early 1980s the village was empty.

 1930 – 1955 Aerial view of the Pacific American Fisheries cannery at Squaw Harbor Shumagin Island Barelof Bay

Today as we pulled in the first thing we saw when we pulled in was a husky, a big beautiful dog, just standing there on the dock. Then a man came strolling down behind him. We asked if we could tie up next to the barge and he said sure. Without us asking he walked off and fired up the generator so we could see the cannery and have a proper look around, then came back and walked us through the whole place.

                                                                                                       Starr Docked up at the Cannery

The site is privately owned now and used mainly as storage. If you need something mechanical, maritime, or just old, Its probably here. Old engines, cars, trucks, boats, fishing gear, lines, nets, hardware, parts for things that stopped being manufactured decades ago. The cannery building is stacked floor to ceiling in places. The whole property has clearly served as a long term home for old boats as well, and a lot of those have ended up on the shore over the years. For a photographer it is a goldmine, weathered hulls at every angle sitting in the grass and gravel right at the waterline.

                                                                                       Abandoned WW2 Era converted factory fisheries ship

                                                                                                         Alaskan Fishing boat fully beached

The wood shop is where we really lost it, and where Rick (the caretaker) told us his story. It has been restored as an actual working shop and the whole setup is belt driven, every machine connected through leather belts running off overhead line shafting. Lathe, planer, table saw, drill press, all of it. It runs off a generator now but the original power source was a steam plant that is still on site, one engine distributing power mechanically through belts and shafting to every piece of equipment in the shop. Standing in there Don asked Rick how long he had been out here. He said he had shown up, didn’t have anywhere to go or anything to do, and now it was 22 years later. He is the sole caretaker, stays year round, and gets a food drop at the start and end of summer. That is the whole arrangement, just Rick, his dog, his cat, and the Shumagin Islands.

Both Don and I are tool people so we spent a good amount of time in that shop asking Rick more questions than he was probably used to answering. It is a genuinely impressive setup and the fact that it still works is a testament to whoever decided it was worth restoring and to Rick for keeping it that way.

                                                                                                                           Endless motors!

                                                                                                                        An old Donkey motor winch 

                                                                        Walking though the buildings

                                                                                             More motors and everything you could want!

                                   The Cannery from the front facing dock, where the old fishing boats would unload

Beyond the wood shop the rest of the cannery was slowly losing the fight. Roofs sagging, floors going soft, walls leaning in ways that make you pick where you step. But even in that state it was an absolute sight to see. The scale of what these operations once were is hard to grasp until you are walking through the bones of one. Between the cannery and the Anders Olsen, I am glad we made the detour. Some stops you plan and they deliver exactly what you expected. This one delivered considerably more.

Related posts:

1082nm from Los Cabos, 09d 55.00 N, 122d 54.00 W – Friday, 23nd March, 2001 Mainland Coast of Mexico: Puerto Vallerta to Barra de Navidad – December 17, 2000-January 18, 2001 Seattle to Mexico – November, 2000 Seattle, Washington – September, 2000