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The spring chili cook-off went so well, The Salvation Army decided to stack up the bowls and spoons and get ready to do it again Nov. 9. There will be prizes for the best chili. And while the event is a fundraiser for the community food pantry, it also is an opportunity for people to get together and socialize, said Salvation Army Capt. Chase Green. “There was a lot of excitement” at the April cook-off, which drew 18 entries, he said. “People asked, ‘When are you going to do it again?’” He hopes for 25 chili entries this time. The event is set...
Jeremy Bynum, Grant EchoHawk and Agnes Moran are running to fill the state House seat vacated by 10-year incumbent Dan Ortiz, who decided not to seek a sixth term. The election is Tuesday, Nov. 5. If no candidate gets more than 50% of the votes in the first count, the third-place finisher will be eliminated and voters who picked that candidate as their top choice will have their votes recounted using their second choice. Whoever has the most votes in that second count will win the seat...
This November, when the President steps out on Pennsylvania Avenue and looks toward the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol, he's going to see a Christmas tree from the Tongass National Forest. Better yet, Wrangell High School students were tasked with keeping it alive. Members of the T3 program (Teaching Through Technology), a federally funded teaching nonprofit, teamed up with a local inventor to make sure the tree continues to absorb water on its nearly month-long journey from Wrangell to Washingto...
A major copper-and-gold mining project in the rugged mountains of northwestern British Columbia - upriver from Wrangell - is poised for a boost from the Canadian government. Canada's Department of Natural Resources last month announced that it plans to inject about $15 million U.S. into a massive copper and gold development just 25 miles from the Alaska border. The project is perched above tributaries of the Stikine River - a major salmon-bearing waterway that flows into Alaska waters. The...
Two thousand and ninety to one. Those were the odds of winning the only elk-hunting permit on Zarembo Island this year - the first time in nearly 20 years the state Board of Game has permitted elk hunting on Zarembo after they were urged to do so by the Wrangell Fish and Game Advisory Committee. Quite literally against all odds, Wrangell resident Curtis Kautz won the lottery. His prize? A 31-day window to try and bag a creature Kautz described as smart, skittish and fast. "They're hard to sneak...
Tickets are on sale for “You Can’t Take It With You,” the fall community theater production at the Nolan Center. The comedy is scheduled for 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Nov. 1-2. A volunteer cast of about 15 people, with an additional 10 people working on the set, staging, sound and lighting, are practicing their lines, building the set and getting ready for the show, said Hailey Reeves, co-director. “It’s definitely a group effort,” she said last week, with full dress rehearsals planned for next week. In a first for the Nolan Center, tic...
Jenya Anichenko just wants to know what happened. In 1908, the Star of Bengal - an iron-sided sailing ship carrying 138 people - sank off the coast of Southeast Alaska's Coronation Island. The ship was carrying 106 Chinese, Japanese and Filipino salmon cannery workers, and 32 white crew members. The crew's survival rate was over 50%, but just nine percent of the Asian cannery workers survived. Anichenko's talk explored possible reasons for the racial discrepancies in the survival rates, as well...
Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI) officials hear that processors have mostly cleared out their overflowing inventories of Alaska salmon from the 2022 and 2023 seasons, but the problem remains that Americans don’t buy enough seafood to sustain consistently profitable sales, particularly in years of strong salmon runs. And while last year’s problem was an oversupplied market, which pushed prices paid to fishermen to as low as 20 cents a pound for pink and chum salmon, this year’s harvest may come up short of a robust supply, Greg Smith...
A 30-year-old nonprofit received a five-year, $7.5 million state grant this year, which will enable the organization to do more to share seafood with Alaskans. SeaShare has grown from its 1994 beginnings as a small group of Alaska commercial fishermen who distributed bycatch to food banks into an organization that has shared seafood in 20 states this year, said Hannah Lindoff, the Juneau-based executive director. Though bycatch species still are a part of the organization’s volume, the percentage has declined over the years. Looking at the b...
Evergreen Elementary teachers want the school district office to lock its doors for security. So far, their fight has been an uphill battle. The entire teaching staff of Evergreen Elementary signed a letter last month imploring the school board to make several safety changes. The teachers want to better protect students and staff against hostile intruders and potential school shooters. The teachers requested that the district office doors, which provide entry to the classroom area, remain locked during school hours. They also requested a...
Wrangell's famed Three-Frog Totem on Shakes Island is no more. The clans involved in the pole's history decided its purpose had long since passed. It was taken down in a ceremony on Sept. 6. Kiks.adi clan mother Katherine Geroge-Byrd said the pole's origins date back to the 19th century. A Naanyaa.aayí chief's three sons were slated to wed Kiks.adi women in a series of arranged marriages. Instead, the three women instead fell in love with - and ran away with -slaves. For the Naanyaa.aayí chief,...
The borough is planning to move the senior center from its longtime but aging location at Church and McKinnon streets to the community center’s multipurpose room. The new space, directly across the hallway from the community gym, will receive several upgrades to accommodate its new use, including a full kitchen remodel and new furniture, according to Borough Manager Mason Villarma. The borough also plans on reserving parking at the community center for the senior center bus, which is used for taking seniors to medical appointments, the post off...
SEARHC has organized its annual wellness fair for Saturday morning, Oct. 19, and medical care will not be limited to just people. The Teddy Bear Clinic will be open for children to bring in their favorite plush animals. Health care professionals will guide kids to check out their own animals, using a stethoscope to listen to the heartbeat and breathing, a blood pressure cuff and thermometer. It’s an opportunity to get children familiar with checkup procedures and instruments, getting them to feel more comfortable for when they are the p...
The borough wants a data center to plug into Wrangell. Better yet, it could even move into the unused formal hospital property. Data centers are large hosting sites for multiple servers that provide computing power and storage for cloud-based service providers. While at Southeast Conference, held in Ketchikan last month, borough representatives spoke with Sam Enoka, founder and CEO of Greensparc — a San Francisco-based technology company that specializes in setting up modular, small-scale data centers for cloud computing. Enoka grew up a...
The coffee will be free and the borough wants the information and questions to flow just as freely at the first of its “Our Town, Our Future” informal community sessions. The listening-and-sharing session is set for 9 a.m. Friday, Oct. 18, at the Stikine Inn. The borough has carved out two hours for the meeting, but people don’t have to stay that long, explained Kate Thomas, the borough’s economic development director. The sessions will be held the third Friday of every month through March as part of the borough’s effort to provide more info...
The debate between the school board and the School Advisory Committee (SAC) ended how many bureaucratic disputes end: in a compromise. On Oct. 7, the school board unanimously voted to adopt revisions to Board Policy 1220, which serves as the governing document for the secondary schools’ advisory committee. This policy, which also dictates the committee’s access to the school board, was the epicenter of a lingering dispute between the two parties. According to committee members, their recommendations to the school board often went unanswered by...
An award-winning documentary film about the yearslong struggle of the Tahltan First Nation to protect their sacred headwaters in British Columbia will be shown at 6 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 17, at the Nolan Center. The event is free. Several Tahltan elders from the region across the Coast Mountains from Southeast Alaska will be at the screening to answer questions and talk with audience members after the showing of “Klabona Keepers.” The movie, which was released in 2022, covers about 15 years of the Tahltans’ opposition to industrial devel...
The state primary election is Tuesday, Nov. 5, but Wrangell voters who would rather cast their ballots early can come to City Hall between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. weekdays starting Monday, Oct. 21, through Monday, Nov. 4. Just walk back to the assembly chambers and, if the state elections staff does not recognize you, present a drivers license, voter ID card or other form of identification to get a ballot. On election day Nov. 5, the polling booths will be set up at the Nolan Center from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Voters are reminded that state law prohibits...
A state food safety and sanitation inspector visited Wrangell last week as part of the program’s ongoing efforts to conduct on-site inspections within its limited budget. The inspector was in town for a routine check on a seafood processor that ships some of its products overseas. The U.S. Department of Commerce contracts with the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation food safety and sanitation program to conduct inspections of seafood operations, explained Kimberly Stryker, program manager. “We also did some retail food service work...
The school board on Oct. 7 reelected Dave Wilson as president, defeating John DeRuyter in a 3-2 vote for the position. DeRuyter was elected vice president after board member Liz Roundtree nominated him for the position. Sophomore Kalee Herman will join the board as the student representative. The meeting was the first with newcomer Dan Powers in attendance. He replaced Brittani Robbins, who lost her reelection bid in the Oct. 1 municipal election. Along with Wilson, DeRuyter, Roundtree and Powers, the other school board member is Angela Allen,...
On a rainy Sunday afternoon, a lively gaming session took place at the new location for AK Hobby R.A.W.K.S. in the Churchill Building at 321 Front St. At one table, a group of high schoolers played Dungeons and Dragons, while at two neighboring tables grade schoolers played Disney Lorcana, a popular trading card game released last fall. Owner Wesley Seward said a weekly tournament will be held every Sunday, with the winner to receive a trove pack of the game that features card storage, a...
At 3:44 p.m. on Oct. 3 Rocky dipped her flippers back into the shoreline by Petroglyph Beach. She waded out into the stone-laden shallows, turned back to the crowd as if to say goodbye to the Wrangell residents who saved her life four months ago, and then swam out to sea. Rocky had been in the care of marine biologists at the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward since June. On June 20, Wrangell resident Dan Trail found her wedged between two rocks on Petroglyph Beach. She was just a week old. At the...
The Nolan Center isn’t old enough to drink but that will not stop its supporters from raising a champagne toast to celebrate the building’s 20th birthday. The party is set for 6 to 8 p.m. Monday, Oct. 14. “It’s really a cultural hub for our community,” Nolan Center Director Jeanie Arnold said of the multi-purpose waterfront building that houses the Wrangell Museum and also serves as a movie theater, stages community theater productions, provides space for conferences and is home for multiple community events and dinners every year. Admission...
The number of jobs in Southeast Alaska continued its post-pandemic recovery last year. Yet, employers remain worried about filling job vacancies amid declining — and aging — population numbers. “While jobs continue to grow in 2024, so do concerns about the lack of a sufficient workforce in the region,” according to the annual Southeast Alaska by the Numbers report. “Compared to 2010, when the population was nearly identically sized, the region now has 1,700 more jobs and 5,600 fewer workforce-aged residents,” said the report, prepared by...
Voters approved a $3 million bond issue for repairs to the water-damaged Public Safety Building by a 3-1 margin on Oct. 1. Residents re-elected Patty Gilbert as mayor over challenger David Powell; re-elected incumbent school board member Angela Allen and elected newcomer Dan Powers over incumbent board member Brittani Robbins; and re-elected Chris Buness to the port commission along with newcomer Eric Yancey over challengers Antonio Silva and Tony Guggenbickler. In a close 36-ballot margin, voters rejected a proposition to amend the municipal...