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Three lucky ticket holders came away as winners in the Fourth of July royalty fundraising raffle. Wrangell residents Shannon Smith won the $2,500 first place prize and Marilyn Mork won $1,500 for second place in the drawing. Third place of $1,000 went to former resident Mickel Haug, now living in Seattle. The Sentinel is compiling lists of the other winners of Fourth of July events, supplied by the competition organizers. This week's list includes the winners' names that were submitted to the...
Eight-year-old Greyson Allen may have finished last in the second heat of the Crazy Craft races on July 3, but his determination won loud applause from the crowd at the City Dock. Though he paddled hard on his pool float "Sting Ray," he had trouble steering away from one side of the dock, taking a long time just to reach the halfway point, where police officer Garrett Gablehouse and state wildlife trooper Alisha Seward readily assisted Greyson from the water as spectators cheered his determined...
Georgia-based real-estate developer Wayne Johnson has rescinded his offer to purchase the former Wrangell Medical Center property and six adjacent lots from the borough. Johnson had negotiated a new purchase agreement covering the parcels, but said he withdrew his proposal due to community concerns over the new deal. He blamed a Sentinel headline for stirring up concerns. Johnson notified borough officials on Friday, June 28, of his decision to walk away from the project. The Sentinel reported on Johnson’s requested changes to the l...
The borough has been awarded a $25 million Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity grant to rebuild most of the downtown harbor floats, install new pilings and improve parking. The federal money, which requires no match from the borough, will fund most of the estimated $28 million project that will include an overhaul of the Inner Harbor, Reliance and Standard Oil floats, new fire suppression systems, pilings and relocated parking. The borough will likely get the remaining $3 million for the project through the...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed more than $230 million in spending from the state budget but left intact $6.5 million for repairs to Wrangell school buildings, along with $5 million for stabilization work at the community’s water reservoir earthen dams and $200,000 for the borough to start planning an emergency access route from the southern end of Zimovia Highway. In addition to covering state-provided public services, construction projects and community grants, the budget bills signed by Dunleavy on June 27 also will provide an estimated $1,650 t...
The assembly’s June 25 meeting produced the largest turnout of community members at a meeting all year for the public hearing on the budget for the fiscal year that started July 1. The budget item that drew the most public testimony was the proposed layoffs at the police department, which had been in the draft budget prepared by the borough manager. Though the budget, as approved by the assembly, lacks enough money to fund the entire police force for the full fiscal year, there will be no change in staffing levels for a few months and the assem...
After months of workshopping a proposal that boat owners carry marine insurance, the borough assembly decided June 25 to give up on the endeavor. The proposal would have required most boat owners in the harbor to carry a minimum of $100,000 coverage to indemnify other boat owners and the borough from fire damages or cleanup expenses. Boat owners could opt out of the insurance and pay a monthly surcharge per foot of their vessel. Borough Manager Mason Villarma recommended to assembly members June 25 that they postpone the ordinance...
The Fourth of July is about a red, white and blue parade, street games, races of all kinds for all kinds of boats, logging skills competition — and food. With two days of events left in the holiday week, the area around the downtown pavilion, behind Wells Fargo bank and the Elks Lodge and in the direction of the Stikine Inn will be filled with booths, games and a wide variety of food. Organizers have scheduled a little more time between events this year to allow people a chance to try out the menus on Wednesday and Thursday, July 3-4. The f...
As Wrangell gears up for another Fourth of July celebration, the local chapter of the international sorority Beta Sigma Phi is preparing for its annual pie sale. The sale will start at 10 a.m. Thursday at the covered patio of Arctic Chiropractic until all pies are sold. The event is a fundraiser to provide teddy bears for children in trauma conditions like emergency hospitalization, disasters like house fires or boating accidents. The teddy bears help draw people to the event, said Alice...
Parks and Recreation Director Lucy Robinson has announced the elimination of several regular activities at the swimming pool, starting this month, to manage spending under a cut in the borough contribution for the department. In an email to the community on June 27, Robinson said the cutbacks at the pool will reduce spending on part-time employees. The cancellations include the open swim on Monday afternoons and all swim activities on Tuesdays and Thursdays, including lap/family swims and club/camp swims. “Please note that we have eliminated t...
It's been an adventure for Alisha Armstrong and Kayla Young, who both stepped up at the last minute to become candidates in this year's Fourth of July royalty contest, selling raffle tickets and food at booths in the downtown pavilion. They have been working for more than a month to raise money for the town's holiday celebration. Armstrong graduated high school last month and Young will be a senior this fall. They have worked on donation lists, sponsorship letters, menus, events and gathered vol...
Charlie Webb, of Anchorage, took first place in Wrangell's 69th king salmon derby with his 43.5-pound catch on the opening day of the derby June 15. The annual contest closed on Sunday, June 30, and no one passed Webb. Wrangell's Connor Blake won the 12-and-under youth division with his 22.6-pound king, caught near Fools Inlet on June 28. It was the first king that Connor has ever caught and kept, said Tommy Wells, executive director of the chamber of commerce, which organizes the fishing derby....
The Petersburg-based seiner Pamela Rae took on water and rolled over in Anita Bay the morning of June 25, but the five people on board all made it safely off the vessel. “When we first got there, the vessel was already underwater and appeared to be sitting on bottom,” said Jordan Buness, chief of the Wrangell Volunteer Fire Department, which responded to the call. “It was probably in less than 15 feet of water.” Anita Bay, off the east side of Etolin Island, is about 16 miles south of downtown Wrangell. “We found that everybody was already off...
Sarah Lewis from the University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension Service will return to Wrangell July 27-29 to teach more health and food preservation classes for free. Lewis, based in Juneau, will travel on her family’s boat, the Pacific Sapphire, to visit nine communities in Southeast Alaska during the month to teach a variety of home skills and food preservation classes. “More reliable than the ferry and less expensive than flying,” she said. The Wrangell classes are a collaboration with the federal Tribes Extension Program, 4-H,...
Wrangell is facing a network of aging underground utilities. Some pipes are up to 70 years old, said Tom Wetor, public works director. Since the first of the year, at least five water and sewer line leaks have sprung up around town. Wetor explained that a lot of the underground utility work was done in the 1980s and is beginning to age out. He explained that the environment in Wrangell is particularly harsh and causes pipes to degrade faster than they should. A lot of the pipes in town are made of ductile iron, which he said were estimated to...
Commercial trollers started their summer season Monday, July 1, targeting a catch of approximately 66,700 chinook salmon in an opener that will be closed by emergency order when catch estimates approach that harvest target. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced last week that trollers are expected to hit the limit this weekend, after just six or seven days of fishing. Last year, Southeast trollers brought in about 85,000 king salmon from July 1 to July 12, about 8,000 fish over the target for the first opener of the season. The...
Alisha Armstrong won this year’s Fourth of July royalty crown by raising $84,582. Kayla Young raised $60,500. Combined, the duo more than doubled the numbers of the past couple of years — $53,704 in 2023 and $56,260 in 2022 — when only a single royalty candidate signed on for the annual fundraising effort to help pay for Wrangell’s Fourth of July celebration. The totals were announced at the Nolan Center on Wednesday evening....
The pending sale of the former hospital property to Wayne Johnson, a Georgia-based real estate developer, has been delayed due to further negotiations. Johnson still plans on purchasing the former hospital for $200,000, but now wants the additional six lots behind the building for free in exchange for demolishing the former hospital. The original purchase and sales agreement, which was set to close May 31, stated that Johnson would purchase the hospital property for $200,000 and the six lots for their appraised value of $316,800. The original...
With just days to go before the start of Fourth of July activities, organizers still are looking for more volunteers and sponsors — and, of course, hundreds of people ready to run, paddle, stuff their faces with pies, throw pies at public officials and everything else that goes into the holiday celebration. “You can never have too many volunteers,” said Tommy Wells, executive director of the chamber of commerce, which organizes the events calendar. As of Monday, the chamber still needed volunteers to run the log roll and greased pole event...
Mountain lions are not commonly spotted in Southeast Alaska, but earlier this month one was killed on the south end of Wrangell Island. Alaska Wildlife Troopers and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game were notified that a mountain lion had been shot and killed on June 3. They took possession of the carcass and are conducting an investigation. Troopers leading the investigation declined to comment. Riley Woodford, information officer with the Alaska Division of Wildlife Conservation in Juneau, said he knew of three other documented sightings...
Director Lucy Robinson has announced there will be changes to Parks and Recreation hours and services coming soon, due to a pending cut in borough funding for the department. Recreation Coordinator Devyn Johnson said last week the details were still being worked out. As proposed in the draft budget for the fiscal year starting July 1, the borough contribution to the Parks and Recreation Department would drop from $640,000 last year to $554,000. Borough funds cover more than 70% of the budget for the department’s programs and maintenance, i...
The Wrangell team brought home the national championship trophy from The Salvation Army Bible Bowl competition earlier this month in Pasadena, California — the first time ever for the town. The five Wrangell teens have been on a winning streak the past couple of years. They won the state title this year for the second time in a row and placed third at last year’s nationals in California. The Salvation Army’s website describes the question-and-answer contest as “an academic game where teens match knowledge about a designated portion of scriptu...
In his most recent work, historian Ronan Rooney published a blog post about Walter C. Waters, a man he calls the Walt Disney of Wrangell. Waters was a businessman brought to Wrangell during the gold rush, who opened a curio store in 1922 called the Bear Totem Store which sold Native artifacts and attracted tourists from far and wide. Rooney said this has been his most popular blog post yet, adding, “controversy is always popular.” Waters, Rooney explained, is a controversial figure. He was a successful businessman who did some great things for...
Wayne Johnson, the real estate developer planning to purchase the former Wrangell Medical Center property, won the GOP nomination for U.S. Congress in Georgia’s 2nd District on June 18. Johnson said in an interview on June 20 that his election campaign won’t affect his plans for building a condo development on the former hospital property. He is still committed to Wrangell, he said, adding that he hopes people will like the idea of having someone in Congress with a special interest in the community. With the campaign slogan “Stop the stupi...
The Alaska Marine Highway System allowed only one week for public comment on its proposed ferry schedule for the upcoming fall and winter, but the draft is pretty much a non-issue for Wrangell: The level of service would be the same as it’s been the past couple of years. The schedule for October through April shows one ferry a week northbound and one a week southbound, the same as this summer, last winter and the summer before that. The stops would be southbound on Mondays and northbound on Fridays. The state released the draft schedule on J...
