The Way We Were

Jan. 11, 1923

M. O. Johnson has ordered a small roadster, which he will convert upon its arrival into a delivery car for his laundry. The car was bought from J.O. Gross, who has an automobile business in Tacoma and who is a brother of W. L. Gross.

Jan. 9, 1948

A short but severe windstorm here Wednesday, in which gusts up to 55 miles an hour were recorded, damaged the City Float in the small boat harbor and scattered fishing boats helter-skelter for a while. No severe damage was reported to any boat. Campbell-House Shipyard suffered the worst loss when a gust lifted the roof of their ways and practically demolished the structure. The loss is estimated at between $2,500 and $3,000, not covered by insurance. The shipyard is covered by fire insurance but not against wind. Maximum high temperature during the week was 44 on Jan. 7 and the minimum was 26 on Jan. 3. The Alaska Coastal plane, bound for Ketchikan, was grounded here yesterday and was still held here by weather until shortly after noon. Hunt Gruening, a veteran war flier, was the pilot.

Jan. 12, 1973

District Ranger Gary McCoy announced this week that timber scaled from the 1.5 million-acre Wrangell Ranger District totaled 57.3 million board feet in 1972. This compares to 65.3 million board feet scaled in 1971 and 44.3 million feet scaled in 1970. Logging operations active on the Wrangell Ranger District in 1971 were Tyler Bros., at St. John Harbor; Galla Logging, at Deep Bay; Nelson Logging, at Sokolof Island; Hamilton Logging, Etolin Island; Southeast Logging, Zarembo Island; and Tidewater Logging, Canoe Pass. McCoy stated that output from the operating camps was as expected. The drop in production was due to the shutdown of Sykes Logging at Bradfield.

Jan. 15, 1998

During the Wrangell City Council on Tuesday, Mayor Bill Privett included some information in his report that pertained to the recent meeting between Petersburg and Wrangell officials, meant to keep communications open about where the border would lie between future boroughs formed by the respective communities. Privett said that while there was a willingness between the concerned parties to continue discussions, “We won’t give up one inch of the river.” The Stikine River has long been directly linked with the community of Wrangell, and Mayor Privett gave examples as far back as prehistory to substantiate this community’s stronger claim. Privett, who cited the victory by Wrangell Tlingits over the upriver Tahltans as a major prehistoric event that set the economic and political environment found by the competing European interests whose activities led to today’s boundaries in the area, also says that more recent patterns reinforce Wrangell’s claims. He said that Petersburg’s plans for the boundary between the future boroughs to run down the middle fork of the Stikine were unacceptable, and suggested instead that the line lie farther north, such as somewhere in the vicinity of LeConte Glacier.