Wrangell is a community steeped in rich history, home to people for thousands of years. It is an island community in southern Southeast Alaska that has experienced the boom and bust resource development process so prevalent in Alaska’s past.
The watercourse running from the Spatsizi Plateau to the Pacific Ocean is a territory of superlatives, yet known simply as the Stikine River. Naturist John Muir’s initial trip up the river changed his life. He noted 300 glaciers along its shores. Details are in his book Travels in Alaska. Muir says of the Stikine, it’s a “Yosemite 100 miles long.”
Naturalist John Muir first explored Alaska during a trip to the Island of Wrangell on July 14, 1879. Muir wasn’t impressed, saying “the most inhospitable place at first sight I had ever seen.
Abandoned for nearly four decades, Ukivok is one of Alaska’s ghost villages hovering precariously on a rocky cliff facing the Bering Sea on King Island. Remains of village buildings perched on poles stand eerily on the unforgiving terrain and wait for the elements to scour them from the rocks back into the sea.
