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With the Alaska Marine Highway System’s maiden ferry, the M/V Malaspina, making a celebratory tour throughout Southeast Alaska next week, the Sentinel is taking a look back in time at some of the events and stories that led up to the development of the system many Alaskans and lower 48 residents rely on every week. During the Malaspina’s docking in Wrangell, guests will be able to tour the bridge, dine onboard, and visit the gift shop for new 50th Anniversary items. The Malaspina will dock in...
The Alaska Marine Highway System is celebrating 50 years of service to Alaskans this year. In light of this, the Wrangell Sentinel is looking back at the stories that shaped the development of the system, which began with one ship in 1963 and has grown to eleven vessels serving more than 350,000 passengers a year. It all began with the M/V Malaspina, when the first ship in the newly formed system docked in Ketchikan on Jan. 21, 1963. Three days later the vessel docked in Wrangell for the first...
Verizon is on its way to Southeast Alaska – just not for the foreseeable future in Wrangell or Petersburg. According to company spokesman Scott Charlston, the move to bring cell and data service to rural Alaska is in its first phase and that network facilities are currently in Juneau only. “It’s no secret that we have towers in Juneau and we can’t hide that,” Charlston said. “But, we are not poised to go into some of the more rural areas at this point. Wrangell and Petersburg would be in that. There might be something in phase two, but I have...
A new mayor, renovations to the Shakes Island Tribal House and Marine Service Center, and the ongoing Wrangell Medical Center debate – all of these stories were newsmakers in 2012. Let’s take a look back at some of the biggest stories in Wrangell over the past year. JANUARY A late night blaze destroyed a trailer and sent a woman to Wrangell Medical Center with severe burns on Dec. 22. The fire, which began at 10:30 p.m. in a small pull-behind trailer near the top of the park, severely inj...
PETERSBURG — The Alaska Marine Highway ferry Matanuska crashed into the face of the Ocean Beauty Seafoods dock in Petersburg at 1:00 p.m. Monday. The M/V Matanuska was negotiating a turn in Wrangell Narrows prior to the accident as it prepared to dock at the Petersburg ferry terminal on its southbound trip. Heavy damage was sustained to the face of the Ocean Beauty dock. Dock piling were broken and the hydraulic crane was dangling over the water. In addition to the dock damage, the second f...
Passengers of the M/V Matanuska said they barely felt the impact when the ferry crashed into Ocean Beauty Seafoods on Monday. None of the 60 passengers aboard the M/V Matanuska were injured when the incident occurred around 1 p.m. According to Petersburg resident John Bringhurst, who was a passenger at the time, the impact was barely felt from the observation deck where he was standing. “I was a little distracted. I was talking to my wife,” Bringhurst said as the M/V Matanuska began a 360-degree turn. “Then my wife said, 'John, what is he do...
To the Editor: Did you know that our disadvantaged people are being discriminated against right here in our own hometown? They have actually been asked not to come into certain eating establishments as it upsets their patrons. There people are people who have been in accidents, in which they may have lost an eye, a leg or had a head injury, a stroke or they may suffer from dementia or Alzheimer’s. Many of these things could cause a person to laugh loudly at something only he or she may be thinking about or they might just start to cry s...
Re: Alaska Marine Highway, and the future of our ferry system (DOT, yearly “Scoping Plan” report, Wrangell Sentinel Oct. 27, 2011.) I didn’t know that DOT had a yearly “scoping plan.” I have lived in Alaska since 1963, when our ferries first started. I was here, when they enlarged our fleet so as to get our ferry service to our Indian villages, and our logging camps, so that all of us who lived in outlying towns would have access to our ferry system. I worked for the ferry system for many years, and I watched as DOT did less and less maintenan...
The Alaska Housing Finance Corporation has awarded a portion of $1.7 million in new funding to the Alaska Community Development Corporation for administration of the HOME Opportunity Program. Alaska CDC was awarded the funding to expand the HOP to Wrangell, Petersburg, Ketchikan, Sitka, Haines, Juneau and other communities in Southeast Alaska. HOP currently serves just the Matanuska-Susitna Borough and Kenai Peninsula. The program provides principal buy-down, down payment and closing cost...
The Alaska Department of Transportation presented its 2011 scoping report update for the Southeast Alaska Transportation Plan on Tuesday, Oct. 18 at the James and Elsie Nolan Center in Wrangell. The purpose of the meeting, which has also been held in other communities across Southeast, was to inform the public about six possible outcomes of ADOT’s long-range planning for transportation issues in the region. The alternatives presented range from no change in the current plan to the d...