New Gallery – Second Album from Alaska

You’ve got some amazing shots here, Steve…..probably because Corky was watching your back with that big 44 strapped to his chest???

I just came across your website. I am impressed with your pictures of Snug Harbor Cannery. I spent my childhood summers there and although I haven’t been back in over 30 years, I think you captured a lot of the spirit of the place. It is hard to see it so run down but it is an expensive place to maintain. One of my earliest recollections is of a blacksmith’s shop in the vicinity the electric generator house almost in line with the dock.

I’m not sure where the red chair was from but I believe that it is similar to the one that was in the room above the store for the bookkeeper. I think there was another one in the main bunk house.

Your picture of the Snug Too is very appropriate. That boat was built on the premises on an flat space where the carpenter shop is now. They used to burn coal in the boilers and the clinkers were dumped in that area making smooth volley ball court in the summer and a place to store boats in the winter. The planking was steamed in the retorts and there are a couple of snapshots showing fellows running the planks out to the ribs before they cooled. The boat was originally call Lindy.

With statehood came the outlawing of traps and the necessity of a fishing fleet. The first boats purchased for that fleet were named Snug and Snug One. The Lindy was rechristened Snug Too. Snug Three was the first of several boats with the same design. I think the design change repeatedly after Snug Ten. As I recall, Morrie Porter was the first fisherman for Snug Three.

FYI the closest driven trap to the cannery was on the outside of Chisik Island near the water all that cascades off the top of the Island from the same fault zone that creates the waterfall going into the Lagoon just south of the Winter watchman’s house.

Janis Fribrock Ward