Starting this summer, the borough is taking over permitting and collecting fees from commercial tour operators that bring customers to the Petroglyph Beach State Historic Site.

The Alaska Division of Parks had been in charge of permits and fees, but few operators in Wrangell bothered to register with the state.

The borough worked for more than 18 months with state officials, renegotiating a joint management agreement that had been in effect since 1998.

“I never thought it would happen,” Mayor Patty Gilbert said before the assembly voted unanimously on July 8 to accept the new agreement.

“This agreement … introduces updated provisions to strengthen local management and improve site operations,” according to a staff summary prepared for the assembly meeting.

City Hall and the community have wanted the fees collected from tour operators to stay in town, rather than go to the state Division of Parks which could not guarantee the money would be spent to improve the beach site.

Keeping the fees “comes with an added burden to us,” with additional responsibilities for any site improvements, Economic Development Director Kate Thomas said in an interview the day after the assembly meeting.

The top priority will be installing new restrooms at the property, Borough Manager Mason Villarma told the assembly.

Petroglyph Beach is one of the town’s most visited tourist attractions. It is the highest concentration of the ancient stone carvings in Southeast. There are at least 40 carvings, which archaeologists believe were carved about 8,000 years ago by early Tlingit.

“Cultural sensitivity is a central consideration of the agreement, with formal recognition of the nearby ancestral graves and other culturally significant areas,” according to the staff summary for the assembly.

“The Wrangell Cooperative Association is identified as the primary local contact for consultation on cultural resource management and site-related cultural issues.”

The borough’s ultimate goal, Thomas said, is to transfer management and maintenance to the tribe.

The waterfront property about a mile north of the ferry terminal was designated a state historic site in 2000, which brought it under the Division of Parks’ permit and fee structure for commercial users.

But without any parks personnel in Wrangell, the state failed to publicize or enforce the rules until a 2023 public complaint about tour operators offloading visitors on the beach instead of at the upland viewing platform brought the issue to the attention of the division.

Under the new five-year agreement, the municipality will be required to charge the same fees as the state — an annual $350 permit for a commercial operator, and a $6 charge per customer. All of the money will go to the borough for “maintenance and future improvements to the site,” according to a staff report prepared for the assembly.

Without any data from past years, it’s hard to estimate how much the borough might collect in permit and visitor fees, Thomas said.

But, for example, if four or five tour operators get a permit and they take a total of 6,000 customers a year to the beach, the borough could collect close to $40,000.

The Economic Development Department will set up and manage the permitting system, Thomas said. The Parks and Recreation Department will handle maintenance at the site.

Thomas said City Hall will expect tour operators to pay the per-person $6 fees for the entire year, even though it will be a few more weeks before the borough has a system in place to issue permits and collect the fees.

She has talked with several commercial tour operators and they are aware of the pending collections, she said.