The Way We Were

May 8, 1924

It is with considerable pleasure that the Sentinel is able to report that the ice making department of the Wrangell Ice and Storage Co.’s new plant will soon be in operation, and Oliver D. Leet, the manager, says the fish freezing department will be complete within another week. This new plant, from a standpoint of efficiency and economy of operation, cannot be surpassed by any plant of equal capacity. The power is furnished by Fairbanks-Morse diesel engines of the latest type, and a 256-kilovolt generator furnishes the electricity for the several small motors used about the plant and also for the lighting. The ice machinery was furnished by the York-Ohio Ice Machine Co. In order to guard against any interruption of operation on account of any breakdown in power or refrigeration, two engines and two compressors have been installed, making two complete operating units.

May 13, 1949

The diesel river tug, Totem, of the Ritchie Transportation Co., was successfully launched at 1 a.m. this morning at the Campbell-House Shipyard. This climaxed a month’s work to convert a floating cannery barge hull to a river tug by the addition of two tunnels, two 225-horsepower diesels and a wheelhouse. The old deck house was remodeled to allow for the new wheelhouse and a cargo hole. The most serious mishap on the Friday the 13th launching was when the bottle of champagne, donated by Brander Castle to christen the Totem, was dropped overboard before it could be put to a good purpose. “Admiral” Ritchie of the transportation company was passing the bottle to “Director” House when it missed connections and went beneath the waves. Two other members of the launching party, L. T. Campbell and Leo Berowski, are reported to have cried.

May 11, 1974

It appeared this week after a visit by Bureau of Indian Affairs officials that the Wrangell Institute, the Native boarding school which has been a part of the Wrangell Island community for four decades, will be closed. With an annual budget in excess of $1 million including a payroll of nearly $800,000 the school is the victim of decreasing enrollment, rising costs and a campus in need of major renovation, according to the BIA. “We are,” said Clarence Antioquia, acting director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Alaska, “having a difficult time justifying continual operation.”

May 6, 1999

Horses and mules have been a part of Wrangell’s history since the first gold rush times. Al Binkley, one of Wrangell’s oldest residents, says he doesn’t remember seeing mules as a boy but knew miners used them because there were mule shoes at his family’s farm on Farm Island. Horses were used for hauling freight in town until Bjorge’s truck appeared in the 1920s. Horses hauled wood and other heavy items. Binkley’s father, William, had one he used to help deliver milk from his dairy with a two-wheeled cart. Horses were also used on the family farm to plow before planting potatoes and to cut hay for the other horses and cows. When the family left Farm Island in 1943, they left the horse to the wild and it survived until old age, another 10 years.