Kodiak History

Native Peoples of Kodiak

For thousands of years, the Alutiiq people have resided on what is today Kodiak Island. Their realm extended from the Prince William Sound to Kodiak. Their language is also called Alutiiq. They are not to be confused with the Aleuts, whose territory extended further to the southwest, along the Aleutian peninsula.

The Alutiiq people have traditionally lived a coastal subsistence lifestyle; their diet consisted of fish, such as salmon, halibut, and whale meat, as well as berries and land mammals.

Prior to the Russian conquest of the Alutiiq on Kodiak Island in the 18th century, the Alutiiq people lived in dozens of villages in the area. In the villages, they lived in semi-subterranean homes called barabaras. Their leaders were hereditary chiefs.

Through masked dances and ceremonies, they communicated with the sensitive and powerful spirits of animals and natural forces. Art, design, and intellectual life were rich and unique, but also influenced by contacts with other Alaska Native cultures. Alutiiq people traded and intermarried with the Unangan of the Aleutian Islands, the Central Yupiit and Dena'ina Athabaskans to the north, and the Tlingit to the east. Oral histories also tell of battles fought over territory and resources.

Alutiiq elders have a saying: "This is the land that we belong to, not the land that belongs to us."

Kodiak Native Artifacts

Russian Conquest & Settlement of Kodiak

The first European contact with Alaska occurred in 1741, when Vitus Bering led an expedition for the Russian Navy aboard the St. Peter. After his crew returned to Russia bearing sea otter pelts judged to be the finest fur in the world, small associations of fur traders began to sail from the shores of Siberia towards the Aleutian islands.

Russian fur trader Stephen Glotov discovered Kodiak Island in 1763. Fifteen years later, on his third voyage, English naval captain James Cook visited the island, writing the word "Kodiak" in his journals. In 1784, Russian Grigory Ivanovich Shelikov arrived on Kodiak Island. Shelikov's mission was to establish a permanent settlement on Kodiak Island, so as to restrict the inroads of British fur traders and expand the sea otter hunting industry for his company. He and his men, equipped with modern artillery, defeated the Alutiiq people in a series of battles and subdued the islanders.

Shelikov chose to establish a settlement at Three Saints Bay, near the present-day village of Old Harbor. He pressed the Alutiiq people into hunting sea otter for his enterprise, the Shelikhov-Golikov Company.

In 1792, Alexander Baranov arrived in Kodiak, having been appointed head of the Shelikhov-Golikov Company. In 1799 he assumed the leadership of the Russian-American Company, a joint-stock enterprise chartered by Tsar Paul I, and which assumed the assets of the Shelikhov-Golikov Company. Baranov went on to establish a settlement at St. Paul's Harbor, which is now the site of the city of Kodiak. Baranov encouraged a colonization program in the early part of the 19th century, and Kodiak became the commercial center of Russian trade. As the trade in otter pelts flourished, Baranov constructed an otter pelt warehouse, or magazin, on a hill overlooking St. Paul's Harbor. (It is worth noting that the warehouse still stands, and the building today is home to the Baranov Museum.)

Baranov would continue his leadership of the Russian-American Company until 1818, when he was ousted over concerns of embezzlement, and the company was taken over by the Russian government. During his leadership of the Russian-American Company, Baranov was the de facto governor of Russian America. In 1808, he moved the capital of the Russian colony from Kodiak to Novo-Arkhangelsk, which is today's city of Sitka.

The Russian Orthodox Church played a significant role during the colonization of Alaska by the Russians. Russian missionaries emigrated to the area, and many denounced the cruelty and exploitation of the native people by the Russian fur traders. Baranov had a stormy relationship with the missionaries, who often proselytized and secretly helped the natives. Churches were built in several of the towns; the Holy Resurrection Russian Orthodox Church, with its blue onion domes, is a landmark in today's Kodiak downtown area.

The Russians never fully colonized Alaska, and the colony was never very profitable. By the middle of the 19th century, the sea otter populations were nearly extinct, and 85% of the Alutiiq population had disappeared, due to tribal violence and disease.

Gregory Shelikov

Alexander Baranov

The Purchase of Alaska

In the late 1850s, Russia was in a difficult financial position and feared losing Russian Alaska without compensation in some future conflict, especially to the British, against whom they had fought a decade earlier in the Crimean War. While Alaska attracted little interest at the time, the population of nearby British Columbia began to increase rapidly in the late 1850s.

The Russians feared that in any future conflict with Britain, their hard-to-defend region might become a prime target, and would be easily captured. This Great Powers calculus led Tsar Alexander II to sell the territory. Perhaps in hopes of starting a bidding war, both the British and the Americans were approached. The British, however, expressed little interest in buying Alaska. The Russians then turned their attention to the United States.

Two years after the end of the Civil War, Secretary of State William H. Seward began negotiations with the Russians, and came to an agreement to purchase the Alaskan territory on March 30, 1867 for $7.2 million. While most public opinion was in favor of the purchase, several newspapers editorialized against the extravagant sums paid for the territory. They derided it as "Seward's Folly," "Seward's Icebox," and Andrew Johnson's "polar bear garden."

The United States Senate ratified the treaty on April 9, 1867, by a vote of 37-2. However, the appropriation of money needed to purchase Alaska was delayed by more than a year due to opposition in the House of Representatives. The House finally approved the appropriation in July 1868, by a vote of 113-48.

After the purchase of Alaska, the economy of the region shifted from furs to fish. In particular, salmon fishing became the economic mainstay of Kodiak, and by the 1890s, commercial canneries could be found throughout the island.

During the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, animals such as the mountain goat, Sitka deer, rabbits, muskrats, beavers, squirrels and others were introduced to the island, and the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge was created.

William H. Seward

The Volcanic Eruption of 1912

On June 6, 1912, the largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century took place on Mount Novarupta, which is situated north of Kodiak on the Alaska Peninsula. Six cubic miles of earth blew into the air, resulting in a dense ash cloud that descended on Kodiak Island. The city of Kodiak received a coating of 2 feet of ash, creating panic among its 500 residents.

For two days, the falling ash was so thick that the light from a lantern held at arm's length could not be seen. The populace of Kodiak Island relied on the church bells of the Russian Orthodox Church to guide them to the waterfront, where the U.S. Revenue Cutter Manning rescued them, and took them to safety.

The immediate effect of the ash was the destruction of vegetation and the clogging of salmon streams. Commercial salmon fishing was halted during the remainder of the year. However, in subsequent years the ash served as fertilizer for native vegetation and gardens that regularly grew bumper crops.

Ash-covered house, 1912

Kodiak in the 20th Century

Kodiak enjoyed a fishing renaissance during the 1920s, as halibut fishermen from Oregon and Washington began stopping in Kodiak. Herring and cod were also fished in the inter-war period.

It wasn't until 1940 that Kodiak was officially incorporated as a city.

By the late 1930s, concerns over the defense of Alaska came to the fore, and in 1938 and 1939, the U.S. Congress approved the funding for the construction of a naval base and an army fort in Kodiak. Fort Abercrombie was built in 1939, and later became the first secret radar installation in Alaska. Additional military installations were also built on the island. During World War II, as many as 15,000 servicemen were stationed on Kodiak.

After the war, the Navy base on Kodiak was turned into a Coast Guard base, and it is currently the largest such facility in the United States. The facility is home to Integrated Support Command Kodiak, Air Station Kodiak, Communications Station Kodiak and Aids to Navigation Station Kodiak. The U.S. Navy maintains a small training base on Kodiak, called the Naval Special Warfare Cold Weather Detachment Kodiak which trains United States Navy SEALs in cold weather survival and advanced tactics.

During the 1960s, commercial fishing and fish processing drove the economic growth of the city and the island.

On March 27, 1964, the largest earthquake on record--a magnitude 9.2--rocked Alaska. While the earthquake caused relatively minor damage to most Alaskan towns (save for Anchorage), a series of tsunamis was responsible for significant damage to coastal towns.

In Kodiak, the fourth and largest tsunami wave crested at 35 feet above mean low tide. While most of the city's residents found refuge on Mount Pillar, the city's waterfront and central business district were severely damaged. Most of the city's landmarks--save for the Baranov magazin--were destroyed, while most fishing vessels were lost, and the fish processing plants were reduced to rubble. Other coastal villages on Kodiak Island were wiped out in the violence of the tsunamis. In all, 15 people were killed, and the damages in 1964 dollars came to $30 million.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers became responsible for the rehabilitation of the city of Kodiak, and they redesigned the infrastructure of the town as it exists today. The WWII liberty ship Star of Kodiak was brought to Kodiak to serve as a temporary fish processing plant, and it has become a permanent fixture in Kodiak.

In March 1989, the megatanker Exxon Valdez went aground in Prince William Sound, spilling 11 million gallons of cruse oil into the Gulf of Alaska. The oil made its way to Kodiak island by the middle of April, wiping out the year's fish harvest. The newly unemployed fishermen were commissioned to help in the cleanup effort; the toll on marine life is estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands of seabirds and animals killed. Even today, damage from the oil spill is being felt.

However, financial settlements from Exxon have helped preserve a variety of Kodiak's public lands, adding acreage to the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge, Afognak Island State Park and Shuyak Island State Park.

Tsunami damage in Kodiak

Today's Kodiak

Fishing remains the mainstay of the Kodiak economy. The 1976 Magnusson Act extended the U.S. jurisdiction of marine resources to 200 miles offshore, which has reduced the competition from foreign fleets. Kodiak is home port to Alaska's largest and most diversified fishing fleet, with over 700 commercial fishing vessels in service.

Tourism remains an afterthought in Kodiak. Cruise ship arrivals in 2010 will be down 10% from the levels seen in 2009. Nonetheless, Kodiak is an interesting port to visit, if only to experience the home port of the Discovery Channel reality TV show The Deadliest Catch.