Sorted by date Results 1136 - 1160 of 7954
A former garnet seller was reunited with one of her customers last week after 34 years. In 1989, Eva Lee Henderson traveled to Wrangell from Chicago for a ferry trip with a friend. During her roughly 30-minute stop in town, she had just enough time to purchase two garnets from an 11-year-old girl at City Dock - Kristy Nore, now Kristy Woodbury. The garnets came with a handwritten note, explaining how they were formed and where they were excavated from. "I thought it was very interesting that...
The borough this week went out to bid for a contractor to supply and install corrosion-preventing aluminum anodes on the steel pilings at Heritage Harbor. The job is estimated at $1.5 million. The plan is for the contractor to start work in February and finish by April 2024, Harbormaster Steve Miller said last week. Bids are due Oct. 2. The pilings for the harbor floats “are still in good shape,” Miller said, but are starting to corrode. Anodes were not included in the job specifications when Heritage was built. The harbor and its floats were c...
The Zarembo Island parking lot is free, as are the tags to put on the windshield. What’s changing is that the U.S. Forest Service now wants people to get a new tag each year so that the agency can keep better track of vehicles left at the Roosevelt Harbor parking lot on Zarembo Island. After it spent a couple hundred thousand dollars to improve the drainage and parking surface at the lot, and clear out abandoned vehicles, the agency would like to keep the area in better shape. “We’re hoping the public will help us self-police the site,...
Wrangell-Petersburg area hunters took 118 moose last year and a similar harvest is expected this year. Harvest levels have remained fairly constant in recent years, area game biologist Frank Robbins said last week. The season opens Friday, Sept. 15, and runs through Oct. 15. The annual harvest has averaged 120 moose over the past five years, Robbins said. That covers state Game Management Units 3, 1B and the southern portion of 1C, which includes Wrangell, Mitkof, Kupreanof, Kuiu, Zarembo, Woronkofski and Etolin islands, and the mainland....
A legal challenge by the state to the Biden administration’s reinstatement of the roadless rule, banning logging and road building on more than nine million acres in the Tongass National Forest, was filed Friday, Sept. 8, in federal court. The complaint continues more than two decades of battles over the roadless rule protections initially enacted in 2001 under a policy initiated by then-President Bill Clinton. In recent years then-President Donald Trump nullified the policy and opened the forest area to development, with the administration o...
About 20 years ago, a booster club helped raise money for the community’s youth athletics, but the organization has since shut down. Now, a new fundraising organization is about to step up to support student athletes — the Wrangell Athletic Club (WAC). The club will raise money for elementary, middle and high school sports and activities, independent of the school district, explained high school cross country coach Mason Villarma, who is leading the planning effort. Parents, coaches and community members who want to get involved can attend the...
Community members have a couple of ways to participate in the Alaska Recreation & Parks Association conference that is coming to town Sept. 19-22. One way is to donate artwork and handmade crafts for a fundraising auction. Another is to sign up for a leadership training session for members of nonprofit boards and commissions. “We would love the opportunity to showcase Wrangell’s talented artists and makers through the silent auction,” Wrangell Parks and Recreation staff said in asking for donated items. “All proceeds raised from the auction...
A pair of Juneau teachers needed good news after they lost nearly all their possessions when their house collapsed last month into the Mendenhall River swollen by a glacial-outburst flood and their cat went missing. Elizabeth Wilkins was holding onto hope that if any animal would survive the house falling into the river on Aug. 5, it would be Leo, the couple's resilient big-eyed, black-and-white cat who shows no fear of bears. "I knew that he's pretty smart, and so I felt pretty confident that h...
Parks and Recreation is inviting people during the month of September to participate in something new — a BioBlitz community event — to create an online snapshot of the variety of pollinator wildlife that can be found in Wrangell. It’s part of Parks for Pollinators BioBlitz, a five-year-old nationwide campaign hosted by the National Recreation and Park Association that asks people to take photos of pollinators and upload them to the website or iNaturalist app. According to information on NRPA’s Parks for Pollinators website, the goal is to r...
More than half-a-million cruise ship tourists will have visited Sitka this summer — a record number — and slightly more are expected next year, Sitka Sound Cruise Terminal owner Chris McGraw told an audience at the online chamber of commerce meeting Sept. 6. He said it looks like the end-of-summer number will total 271 cruise ship stops in Sitka, which includes vessels that pull into his terminal and others that anchor offshore and lighter their passengers to city facilities. He estimates the year’s traffic will total 514,000 passengers at hi...
The Biden administration on Sept. 6 announced it is canceling the last remaining oil and gas leases in the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Those seven leases, all held by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority and sold in a controversial auction held in the final days of former President Donald Trump’s administration, have been in limbo ever since President Joe Biden was sworn into office. On his first day, Biden issued an order requiring a hold on Arctic refuge development to allow for further scrutiny o...
Members of the Tlingit community gathered outside the Wrangell airport last Friday while chests carrying four objects -a mudshark hat, a mudshark tunic, a blanket and a blanket with a killer whale stranded on a rock while hunting - were carefully lowered back into their hands after 91 years of separation. The objects, which belong to the Naanya.aayí clan, were taken by Wrangell police from the home of Mary Kunk, Eva Blake and Betty Carlstrom in the 1930s. In an effort to right past wrongs,...
The school district has submitted its application for a spot on the Alaska Department of Education’s list of schools in need of major repair and rebuilding grants. The department reviews and lists projects from across Alaska in order of priority, and then each year the Legislature and governor decide how much state money to commit — which has been only enough in recent years to cover less than 10% of the projects. The district is hoping for $6.5 million from the state to go along with $3.5 million from a bond issue approved by Wrangell vot...
Voters will choose two borough assembly members, a school board member and a port commissioner in the Oct. 3 municipal election — but only one of the four seats is contested. There are two candidates for the one school board seat on the ballot. John DeRuyter, a clinical psychologist, is running for a three-year term on the school board. Incumbent Esther Aaltséen Reese, tribal administrator for the Wrangell Cooperative Association, is seeking reelection to the board. She was elected to a one-year term last year. DeRuyter is a self-employed cl...
A year after an effort that failed to attract any bidders, the state is again looking to hire a shipyard to build a replacement for the ferry Tustumena. Design work is still not complete, however. The new ferry, which will mostly serve Gulf of Alaska communities, is expected to cost almost $325 million, with the federal government picking up much of the cost. It would give Alaska its first new mainline ferry in decades. In a meeting with the Alaska Marine Highway Operations Board on Aug. 25,...
Wrangell's cool, rainy climate might be ideal for banana slugs and bears, but it doesn't usually appeal to cold-blooded animals that rely on the sun's warmth to maintain their body temperatures. However, one reptile-loving resident is committed to providing a safe home for any turtles and tortoises that find their way onto the island as pets. Charity Hommel has been raising and rescuing reptiles for over 20 years now. Her lasting love for the animals began in the early 2000s, when her children...
The Nolan Center team has decided that “Cinderella” will be the perfect fit for its winter musical, and the community theater is preparing to search the realm far and wide for potential princesses, princes, stepsisters, kings and chorus members to join the cast. Auditions will be held Wednesday and Thursday, Sept. 6 and 7, between 4 and 7 p.m. at the Nolan Center. “We chose ‘Cinderella’ because we were looking for another show that we thought would connect with people,” said director Haley Reeves, who also helmed the Nolan Center’s pr...
The Wrangell School District has increased its annual state travel fee for student athletes from $350 to $400 to help cover the cost of travel to state meets. It also clarified its policy in which those funds, if not used by the end of the school year, would be deposited into an account to pay for future state travel. The fee increase was implemented for this school year in an effort to catch up with increasing costs, bolster the district’s overdrawn state travel account and shore up funds for future years. District representatives said the p...
The Wrangell Convention and Visitor Bureau’s new interactive, destination-focused map pinpoints dozens of businesses, community services, recreational opportunities and more, providing useful information for anyone planning a trip or thinking of setting up their family or business in town. It’s only been a couple of months since the app was launched and the visitor bureau’s QR Code — its digital link to information — already has been scanned more than 5,000 times, steering people to the new 3D map of the community and surrounding area. The...
A Washington state resident was sentenced last week to two years in federal prison for selling fake Alaska Native artwork in Ketchikan. Cristobal “Cris” Magno Rodrigo, 59, pleaded guilty in April to one federal count of conspiracy and another count of misrepresentation of Indian-produced goods and products. Alaska U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Burgess sentenced Rodrigo on Aug. 28 to serve two years in federal prison, the longest a defendant has received for any Indian Arts and Crafts Act violation in the U.S., according to the Indian Art...
The Southeast king salmon troll fishery opened Friday, Sept. 1, for the third time this summer, though relatively few fish remain in this year’s allocation, the Department of Fish and Game announced. With only about 3,200 kings remaining in the season quota, Fish and Game said the 10-day opening will be a rare “limited harvest fishery,” with each permit holder allowed to take only nine chinook. As a limited fishery, it comes with a few additional rules as well. Fish kept for personal use will count toward the commercial harvest limit, and k...
The community helped Missy Wright celebrate her 100th birthday with a festive, purple-themed party on Friday, Sept. 1. The party took up the entirety of the Nolan Center's main event space and featured lavish decorations, live music and catered foods. Wright welcomed her guests from the comfort of a sparkly, purple throne at the front of the room....
Gov. Mike Dunleavy has vetoed a bill that aimed to minimize the use of harmful refrigerant chemicals that exacerbate climate change and also reduce the risk of spills of a different chemical that can pollute drinking water. The legislation would have banned most firefighting departments from using a type of firefighting foam that has contaminated drinking water in dozens of places across Alaska and many more in the Lower 48. The bill, originally introduced by Anchorage Rep. Stanley Wright would have allowed newly constructed buildings in...
A board appointed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy has decided in favor of a new state regulation that would ban transgender girls from participation in high school girls sports. The decision by the state board of education on Thursday, Aug. 31, came less than six months after the board passed a resolution indicating its members were interested in such a policy. All seven Dunleavy-appointed board members voted in favor of the new policy, which says that only girls whose sex assigned at birth is female will be able to participate in girls sports. The only...
On a visit to Alaska last month, the leader of the national community service agency AmeriCorps said the group plans to increase its investment in the state. AmeriCorps received an additional billion dollars for its nationwide budget as part of the American Rescue Plan in 2021. Last year, more than 400 people worked or volunteered with AmeriCorps in Alaska. The federal program spent more than $4.3 million in the state by funding community-led initiatives in schools, youth centers, health clinics and shelters. AmeriCorps CEO Michael Smith said...
