Port Walter is located on the southeastern coast of Baranof Island in Sitka City and Borough, Alaska. It is a body of water with two main arms, Little Port Walter and Big Port Walter. The land surrounding Port Walter is part of the Tongass National Forest. In the first half of the twentieth century it hosted three major seafood processing plants, producing primarily herring and salmon for human and animal consumption, fish oil, and fertilizer. In 1917 there were 375 men and women working at the Port Walter processing plants.
Little Port Walter is the site of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's Little Port Walter Research Station. This facility was established in 1934 and is the oldest year-round biological research station in Alaska.
Geography Port Walter is a glacially-carved fjord in semischistose Sitka graywacke rock on the southeast coast of Baranof Island. It opens into Chatham Strait on its east. The main arm of Port Walter, tends roughly west from its opening to the sea. It consists of an outer bay and inner bay, also known as Big Port Walter, joined by a narrow channel. A smaller arm, Little Port Walter, tends to the southwest. It also has an outer and inner bay joined by a narrow channel.
Various features around the shore of Port Walter have been given official or common names. The southern point of its entrance from Chatham Strait is Hutchinson Point. New Port Walter is an inlet where the outflow from Lake Osprey empties into the main arm. Lover's Cove is an inlet on the north side of the inner bay, while Denmark cove is a dent on the south side of the outer bay.
The fjord is surrounded by steep-sided hills that rise over within a mile of the bay in some places. Borodino Lake, Lake Osprey, Ludvik Lake, and Sashin Lake on the heights above all drain into Port Walter. In the case of Borodino Lake, this takes the form of a dramatic waterfall at the head of Big Port Walter. So much fresh water flows into the inner bay of the main arm that it may freeze to a depth of ten feet in the winter.
Recent settlement has been focused in four areas. The Big Port Walter processing plant was at the head of the main arm. The Little Port Walter Research Station is in a small cove on the north shore of the inner bay of Little Port Walter. The fish processing plant in Little Port Walter was in a cove on the east shore of the inner bay. The New Port Walter plant was built at the inlet of the same name.
History
It is a certainty that Tlingit natives knew and used Port Walter long before contact with Europeans. Regrettably, the history of this period is lost. Given Tlingit involvement in fisheries throughout Southeast Alaska, it is likely that natives both fished for and worked in the fish processing plants in Port Walter.
Among the earliest written references to Port Walter is found in the 1901 United States Coast Pilot. It was described as having a good anchorage, suggesting regular use by local mariners. The Bureau of Lighthouses established a 10-candlepower fixed red light on a wooden scaffold 20 feet tall on the northern entrance to Port Walter in 1914. In November 1918 this light was upgraded from a fixed to flashing light, and from an oil-wick to acetylene gas light of 130-candlepower. The investment in aids to navigation also suggests that Port Walter was used as a harbor before any permanent settlement occurred.
World War I reduced global food supplies as fields were destroyed in the fighting, millions of farmers left their land, tons of agricultural products from the United States bound for Europe were sunk by U-boats, and poor weather reduced harvests. Prices rose in the face of scarcity and food riots broke out in New York, Philadelphia, and other cities. Germany faced starvation. Prices for Alaska's seafood rose, and the U.S. government placed large orders for canned fish to supply its army in Europe. The seafood industry in Alaska responded by making large investments in new canneries, salteries, fish oil, and fish meal plants. Nine new plants were built in Southeast Alaska in 1916 and 1917, including two in Port Walter.
The seasonal influx of hundreds of cannery workers at the new plants produced a significant community at Port Walter. A. U.S. post office was established at Little Port Walter in 1918. Elections were administered and dances were held. Standard Oil opened a fuel and lubricant distribution station. Electricity was abundant since the plants had hydropower from the lakes in the hills above. Each cannery had its own fleet of tenders to bring supplies in and take finished products to market. The Big Port Walter plant had five tenders in 1919, Einar Beyer, Fanshaw, Petrel, Shamrock II, and Shamrock III, while one of the Little Port Walter's tenders, Apex, was large enough to deliver 24,000 cases of canned salmon to Anacortes. Another of Big Port Walters tenders, Fern, was a former lighthouse tender. Between the cannery tenders and the fishermen bringing their catch to the plants, Port Walter was a busy harbor.
At the end of World War I, government contracts were cancelled, and previously purchased fish was returned. Faced with overcapacity, the industry shrank rapidly. The Little Port Walter cannery closed permanently in 1925. After years of sporadic production, the New Port Walter plant closed in 1937, and the Big Port Walter facility closed in 1966.
The same abundance of fish that caused the canneries to site their plants in Port Walter, also brought a Bureau of Fisheries research station in Little Port Walter in 1934. This facility is now the only occupied site in Port Walter. Big Port Walter
Alaska Pacific Herring Company and successors (1917-1966) In February 1917 the Alaska Pacific Herring Company let a contract for 20,000 feet of piling and wharf at the head of Big Port Walter. The construction plan for that spring included not only the wharf, but also three 40' by 100' cold storage buildings, a 40' by 100' sorting building, a 36' by 100' cannery building, a power house, store, superintend's home, and separate dormitories for white and oriental workers. The motive force for this effort was the Norwegian-American community. Eigil Buschmann, son of Petersburg founder Peter Buschmann, was instrumental in planning the facility and became its superintendent. Einar Beyer, an investor in the shipping and fisheries businesses, provided the funding. Beyer put his nephew, Hakkon Beyer Friele, in charge of the plant in 1917.
The Alaska Pacific Herring Company was acquired by the Southern Alaska Canning Company in 1919 which had the effect of combining the assets of the Big Port Walter plant with other operations owned by Einar Beyer and Eigil Buschmann. In 1920 a fish meal and fish oil reduction system produced by California Press Manufacturing Company was installed at the plant.
In 1921 the Big Port Walter plant was leased and operated by Elling Arentsen and Andrew Buchan. In 1922 the partners split and Arenstsen operated the plant as E. Arentsen & Co. Southern Alaska Canning Company fell into bankruptcy by 1924 without involving the Big Port Arthur plant, suggesting that Arentsen bought the facility in 1922 or 1923. He experienced boom years, such as 1934 when the plant shut down for lack of storage for the large catch, to bust years, such as 1940-1944 when there were no operations at all due to World War II. Arentsen remained actively involved in the Big Port Walter facility until retiring in 1940. Elling's son, Harold A. Arentsen, took over the Big Port Walter plant in 1940. The company went bankrupt and its assets were sold by the U.S. Marshal Service in August 1954.
Wilbur-Ellis Company, a San Francisco corporation in the fish meal and fish oil business, bought the plant at the Marshal's sale in 1954. It operated it through 1958 when it sold its interest to Edible Herring Products, Inc. When the plant closed on August 30, 1966, it was the last herring reduction facility in Southeast Alaska. The company went bankrupt in 1968 and abandoned the Big Port Walter plant. It left behind 45,000 gallons of contaminated oil in two rusting tanks which sat on rotting pilings, a major pollution risk. The U.S. Forest Service and Standard Oil cooperated to remove this oil in December 1972.
Chatham Straits Fish Company (1919-1937) Construction of the hydroelectric dam at New Port Walter began in 1919, and the Chatham Straits Fish Company produced its first barrels of pickled herring that year. In 1926 the company installed a new herring reduction plant to produce fish meal and oil that was the largest in Alaska at the time. New tanks were installed giving the plant storage capacity for 65,00 gallons of fish oil. This processor remained in operation until 1931. Thereafter, the plant operated sporadically, its last season of packing in 1937. In 1939 the Chatham Straits Fish Company bought the cannery at Zachar Bay on Kodiak Island and moved the herring reduction machinery at New Port Walter there.
Newport Fisheries, Inc. was granted a license for a dam and power plant at New Port Walter in February 1950, presumably with the intention of opening a plant there, but there is no evidence that this occurred.
In 2002 as much as 600 gallons of bunker oil spilled into the water when a seam split on an old tank at the abandoned processing plant at New Port Walter. Little Port Walter Alaska Herring and Sardine Company (1916-1927)
In 1914 Captain Ashton W. Thomas began fishing at Port Walter for herring to be sold as halibut bait. By 1916 he and a partner, Lee H. Wakefield, had formed the Alaska Herring and Sardine Company, built a processing plant, and hired twenty young women, mostly from Ballard, to can herring at Little Port Walter. The 1916 pack amounted to about 30,000 cases of kippered herring. Each case contained 48 one-pound cans and sold for $7. They were marketed under the brand name of "Wakefield's Kippered Herring". Thomas continued to sell herring for halibut bait, and the heads and viscera of the fish were ground into fertilizer and animal feed. In 1917 the facility also began to mild cure salmon.
The workers were housed in twenty small cottages which had electric lights. The plant included a radio telegraph set and was issued the callsign KEQ in July 1916. Thomas built an 8-room house on the property for his family.
The Bureau of Fisheries published a detailed description of the kippering process used by the Alaska Herring and Sardine Company in 1916:
...the fish are first spread in a thin layer and sprinkled with salt. A few hours later the heads and viscera are removed. The fish are then placed for a brief period in a salt solution after which they are hung by the tails on sticks, studded on each side with sharpened nails, and subjected to alderwood smoke for several hours. During the smoking process the surplus moisture drains from the body cavities and the outer surfaces. The kippered fish are then packed into oval 1-pound cans. From five to eight fish are required to fill a can. The tops are then put on and the cans closed without the addition of any oil or other preparation. After being closed, the cans are immersed for about two hours in boiling water heated by steam. When cool the cans are ready for labeling, boxing, and shipping.