The Way We Were

March 5, 1925

The rivers and harbors bill containing an appropriation of $500,000 for the dredging of Wrangell Narrows has been passed by Congress and signed by President Calvin Coolidge, according to a cablegram received by the publisher of the Sentinel from Alaska’s congressional delegate, Dan Sutherland. There are 14 reefs or shoals in the 21-mile channel between Sumner Strait and Frederick Sound. The project which has now been authorized calls for the first four stages of work. This will result in the removal of the worst five of the reefs, which will afford over half of the relief expected from the completed project.

March 3, 1950

Numerous inquiries have been made concerning the progress of the new school project for Wrangell. There is a very good chance that work on the school will begin this spring. The city council at a recent meeting voted to increase the amount of the application for a school addition to $300,000. When building is complete, Wrangell will be expected to bear 50 percent of the cost of the project, or $150,000. To finance the city’s portion will require the city to issue $150,000 in general obligation bonds.

March 5, 1975

The Wrangell Wolves are Southeast Alaska basketball champions. The Wolves took the crown Saturday in a truly championship-caliber game against the Sitka Wolves in the Juneau high school gym before a standing-room-only crowd. Wrangell beat Sitka 75-70 after a breath-catching last minute of play which saw Wrangell in the lead by only two points and Sitka desperately trying to tie it up for overtime. But it wasn’t to be. Wrangell held the Sitkans and picked up three more points on foul shots to clinch the No. 1 berth. Both Wrangell and Sitka are traveling this week to the state tournament in Anchorage, with Wrangell slated to meet Bartlett High School tomorrow.

March 2, 2000

As promised more than three months ago, Doyle Hyett of HyettPalma returned to Wrangell on Feb. 24 to review and discuss the proposed downtown revitalization plan. The plan developed by his firm is 87 pages long and full of ideas, observations, useful improvement and a controversial suggestion or two. The main point of the plan is to make better use of waterfront, to connect the downtown area to the waterfront through line-of-sight views and open public spacing, while encouraging and facilitating the mutual use of the waterfront by both marine industry (critical to the life of Wrangell) and tourism (which provides many Wrangellites with their living).