Sorted by date Results 652 - 676 of 8072
Cruise ships have started to make their appearances at the City Dock, and the Wrangell Cooperative Association has geared up for the season by hiring Ed Caum as tourism coordinator. Caum, known by some in town as "Fast Eddy" from his rock and roll radio shows on KSTK in the '70s, started the position at the beginning of May. The tourism branch of WCA is set up to grow exponentially, Caum said. Economic development and bringing new money into town are two of his goals. He emphasized that the...
The 33rd Alaska Legislature came to a shuddering but active end early Thursday morning, May 16, as lawmakers passed the state’s annual budget and several high-profile bills. While legislators met their short-term goals, they didn’t hit some lawmakers’ big targets, including a long-term plan to bring state finances into order, significant changes to the state education system or a revival of a pension program for public employees. While the budget includes a one-time increase in K-12 school funding, legislators didn’t permanently raise the per...
A retirement potluck party for Sandy Churchill will be held at 4 p.m. Saturday, June 1, at the Nolan Center. All residents are welcome to attend and bring prepared food or dessert. "Bring a dish to share and a story to tell," Head Start coworker Dawn Welch said. "This party is to celebrate the years and years of Sandy's commitment and dedication to our Head Start program," Welch said earlier this month in a Facebook post about the party. Churchill will step down at the end of the school year...
A U.S. Coast Guard marine casualty investigation into the capsizing of a charter fishing boat and the death of all five aboard on May 28, 2023, near Sitka has determined that the Awakin likely capsized after its well deck flooded in rough seas. The investigators cited the skipper’s decision to steer close to Low Island as a precipitating factor in the sinking. They also took note that the boat had no life raft or automatic emergency beacon. The first alert about the emergency was a call to the Coast Guard from the Kingfisher Lodge reporting o...
Families who use Alaska’s homeschool program will soon have clarity on how they may spend their annual allotments of state money. Lawmakers directed the Alaska Board of Education to write temporary regulations for the state’s correspondence school program that comply with the state’s constitution. The law, passed on the last day of the legislative session May 15, also requires that the education department begin monitoring allotment spending for the first time in a decade. House and Senate members approved the bill unanimously. The move comes...
Students were recognized for their outstanding achievements at the annual academic and scholarship awards ceremony held the afternoon of May 15 at the high school gym. Faculty, staff, community and business leaders gathered to present ninth through 12th graders with certificates, plaques and checks for their accomplishments at the end of the school year. Awards were presented in the areas of general education, shop class, finance, the arts, student government and others. Scholarships presented...
The dates for this year’s king salmon derby have been set for two weekends: June 7-9 and June 14-16. The chamber of commerce is still deciding other details like the prizes for the largest fish and cost of tickets, said Tommy Wells, executive director of the chamber, which sponsors the annual event — now in its 69th year. King salmon runs have been weak in recent years — only 15 fish were turned in for weighing during last year’s derby. District 8 in front of Wrangell and the Stikine River is closed again this year to king salmon sportfi...
Alaska Airlines has launched a $60 million plan to improve its terminals and other facilities around the state over the next few years. The airline is also expanding its cargo capacity to serve Alaska, company officials said May 16. The projects include upgrades and potential expansions at some of the 13 terminals owned by the airline, in some cases for the first time in decades, Marilyn Romano, the airline’s vice president of the Alaska region, said. “We’ll be taking a hard look at each one,” she said. “The details have not been finalized...
Matanuska-Susitna Borough residents will have access to free or low-cost weapons training under a new borough grant program targeted at compensating for limited local law enforcement. Officials estimate that the $75,000 grant could pay for private firearms safety training for up to 300 residents over the next year. The grant was approved in a 5-2 vote by the borough assembly this month as part of the larger approval process for the borough’s $455 million budget for 2025. The program is designed to give residents the skills to respond to t...
More Alaskans will be able to access food stamps following lawmakers’ vote to raise the income limit to qualify for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The change comes after more than a year of extreme delays in food stamp distribution across the state that left thousands of vulnerable Alaskans without aid for months at a time, driving many into debt and inundating food pantries with food insecure families. State workers caught up on the backlog in March. Alaska will join 42 other states in using an approach called “broad-based cat...
The Alaska Legislature has passed a bill that combines underground storage of carbon dioxide, new regulation of underground storage of natural gas, state financing for new Cook Inlet natural gas development and an expansion of the state’s geothermal energy program. The measure, House Bill 50, sets up a regulatory and commercial framework for Alaska to stash carbon gases that would otherwise stream into the atmosphere, where they reinforce the greenhouse layer that is heating the planet. The bill started as one in a pair introduced last year b...
The Nolan Center is unveiling a new display this weekend featuring repatriated clan items that were returned to Wrangell last fall. Objects in the display include xóots shákee.át, a bear headdress; tsax l'axhk'eit, a marmot mask; kéet shakee.át s'áaxhw, a killer whale hat (a replica); and gunakadeit s'eikdaakeit, a sea monster tobacco pipe. The items were returned to Wrangell from the Thomas Burke Memorial Museum at the University of Washington. Though most historical details of the objec...
Several of Wrangell’s requests are included in the state capital budget of public works projects that the Legislature approved last week, sending the spending plan to the governor for signature into law or veto. Unless the governor uses his veto powers to eliminate or reduce the appropriations, Wrangell would receive $5 million toward stabilization work at the earthen dams that hold back the community’s water reservoirs; $200,000 to start planning what’s being called an “escape route” for Zimovia Highway residents to drive across the island to...
Next year’s Fourth of July celebration, Wrangell’s most popular holiday, may be in jeopardy – the May 1 deadline to turn in paperwork yielded zero royalty candidates. It takes a village to put on the fireworks and countless other festivities for the Fourth every year. To offset costs, high school students or recent graduates run as royalty contestants – selling tens of thousands of $1 raffle tickets and running food booths downtown to raise money for the chamber of commerce, which organizes the celebration’s events. Royalty candidate...
Wrangell High School will hold its graduation ceremony at 7 p.m. Friday, May 17, in the high school gym. Principal Jackie Hanson will welcome the 10 seniors and teacher Jack Carney will serve as the commencement speaker. This year's valedictorian and salutatorian had not been announced as of the Sentinel's printing deadline on Monday. Each senior has tickets for 10 friends or family for seats on the gym floor, with overflow space in the bleachers. The ceremony can also be viewed online at...
Alisha Seward is Wrangell's new state wildlife trooper - her fifth move in nine years. Wrangell is one of the smaller posts among the 37 locations staffed by the Alaska wildlife troopers division and she is the only officer in town, with no corresponding state trooper. "Right now, my goal is just to learn my patrol area, which is big and vast," she said. "I just spent the last couple days out on a boat patrol with Chadd (Yoder), who was just here, learning my area and all that encompasses it."...
Ronan Rooney picked the Nose for his latest history lesson. The podcaster recently wrote a blog post about one of the island's most photographed landmarks: Elephant's Nose. It's at the northern tip of Woronkofski Island, 4.5 miles west of Wrangell across Zimovia Strait. Rooney's blog digs into the history behind the Nose and how it got its popular name. Fannie Kellog Young, wife of the Rev. S. Hall Young, gave the Nose its name. The couple moved to Wrangell in 1878 and lived just in front of...
Wrangell now has a total of 56 security cameras up and running across all its harbors and the Marine Service Center. The cameras run 24 hours a day and pick up clear footage in all lighting situations, said Harbormaster Steve Miller, even capturing images well in complete darkness. The harbormaster and staff have access to the camera footage, which is stored for 30 days. Rather than monitoring the videos, harbor staff will go back to access the feeds if information is needed. But the cameras are equipped with motion sensors that highlight...
The town’s population could double for a day. Holland America Line’s Nieuw Amsterdam, with accommodations for just over 2,100 passengers plus a crew of more than 900, is scheduled to tie up at Wrangell at 8 a.m. Thursday, May 16, staying until 7 p.m. It will be the ship’s only visit to Wrangell this summer. It will be the largest ship to bring travelers to town, just beating out Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth, which is scheduled to visit twice — July 18 and 29 — and can carry up to 2,081 passengers. The Queen Elizabeth is actually a little long...
As of last week, just one Wrangell business had obtained the required state permit to provide commercial tours at Petroglyph Beach State Historic Site. The largest cruise ship of the summer is scheduled to tie up in town on Thursday, May 16, bringing as many as 2,000 visitors to Wrangell. The ancient stone carvings at the beach are among the community’s most popular visitor attractions. “We’re hoping we can work with everyone to get them into compliance,” Preston Kroes, the Southeast Alaska superintendent for state parks, said May 10. The par...
The Stikine River is closed to subsistence fishing for king salmon May 15 through June 20 to help preserve weak returns of the highly prized fish. It’s the eighth year in a row for the federal closure. “The preseason forecast for the Stikine River is 12,900 large chinook salmon (greater than 28 inches in total length), which is below the escapement (spawning) goal range of 14,000 to 28,000,” the U.S. Forest Service reported in its closure announcement May 8. The closure was ordered under the authority delegated by the Federal Subsistence Board...
High schoolers crammed a lot of sightseeing, education and history into this year's Close Up trip to the nation's capital and to its largest city. The students were able to view many of the great landmarks and monuments, including the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial and White House in Washington, D.C., and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Statue of Liberty on Ellis Island in New York City. Instructors held classes at each location. "The whole 10 days we're gone, it's like a...
The 649-foot Seabourn Odyssey dropped anchor just off Klawock on May 6, marking a new era of cruise ship tourism on Prince of Wales Island. About 3,700 people could visit Klawock and Craig this summer by way of three different cruise ships making a total of six stops. The Seabourn Cruise Lines ship was the first to ever visit the Port of Klawock and brought about 300 passengers to Prince of Wales near the end of a 43-day, one-way voyage from Hong Kong to Vancouver, British Columbia, that included stops in Korea and Japan, as well as Alaska...
The seniors graduating this week are Alisha Armstrong, Cody Eastaugh, Keegan Hanson, Sean McDonald, Kayla Meissner, Mindy Meissner, Spencer Petticrew, Nate Rooney, Mia Wiederspohn and Lily Younce. The 10 took time from their final days as high school students to answer questions about what lies ahead for each. Here are their responses. Alisha Armstrong What's your favorite thing about going to school in Wrangell? "The people." What's your advice for next year's seniors? "Do your senior project...
A group of high school students who participated in an environmental research program won third place in Southeast competition for their work comparing the amount of microplastics in the water at Wrangell harbors. The science fair, sponsored by the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES), was held virtually on April 30. The students were presented with awards for their work, including third place overall. The University of Alaska Southeast has been running the Rural Alaska...