Prince of Wales Island Located in Southeast Alaska

Welcome to Prince of Wales Island in Southeast Alaska

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Prince of Wales Island is one of the islands of the Alexander Archipelago in the Alaska Panhandle. It is the 4th largest island in the United States (after Hawaii, Kodiak Island, and Puerto Rico) and the 97th largest island in the world. The island is 135 miles (215 km) long, 45 miles (72 km) wide and has an area of 2,577 sq mi (6,675 km²), about 1/10 the size of Ireland and slightly larger than the State of Delaware. Approximately 6000 people live on the island. Craig is the largest community, founded as a saltery in the early 1900's, it has a population of 2000. 750 people live in Klawock, a long-established village that grew with the fishing industry. Hollis was a boom and bust mining town from 1900 to about 1915, abandoned, it was reestablished as a logging camp in the 50's, and now has a population of 100.

Terrain
Mountain peaks all but the tallest of which were buried by Plesticene glaciation, reach over 3000 feet. Fiords, steep-sided mountains, and dense forests characterize the island. Extensive tracts of limestone include karst features such as El Capitan Pit, at 598.3 feet the deepest vertical shaft in the United States.

Prince of Wales Flying Squirl Weather
Moist, maritime conditions dominate the weather. For more information on local weather visit the WEATHER page.

Wildlife
The Tongass National Forest covers most of the island. The Prince of Wales flying squirrel (Glaucomys sabrinus griseifrons) is found nowhere else.

History
POW is the homeland of the Kaigani Haida people. In 1741, Alexi Chirikov, commanding a ship on Vitus Bering's second voyage of exploration out of Kamchatka, made the first European landfall on the northern west coast of North American - near Prince of Wales Island. Juan de Fuca reached as far north as the Strait of Georgia in 1592, and other Spaniards later sailed as far north as Oregon, but not till 1775 did a Spanish expedition reach Prince of Wales Island and claim it for Spain. A British expedition in 1778, under Captain James Cook, accurately mapped much of the the coast of Alaska, including Prince of Wales Island. Comte de La Perouse led a French expedition to the area in 1786. Mining of gold, copper, and other metals on the island began in the late 1800's. Gold production came from underground lode mines exploiting: gold-bearing quartz veins in metamorphic rocks (such as the Gold Standard, Sea Level, Dawson, Golden Fleece, and Goldstream mines); skarns (at the Jumbo and Kassan Peninsula copper-gold mines); zoned mafic-ultramafic plutons, as at the Salt Chuck silver-gold-copper-PGE mine; and VMS deposits such as Niblack. Uranium was mined at Bokan Mountain in the 1950's and 1970's.
Logging
Logging has historically been a mainstay of the collective Prince of Wales economy, however, recently there has been a decline in the industry leaving only a few small-scale sawmills operating. In 1975, Herbert Zieske, Chuck Zieske, and Alan Stein and the Point Baker Association hired Dick Folta of Haines to sue the US Forest Service to prevent logging 400,000 acres (1,600 km2) on the northern portion of the island. In December 1975, Judge von der Heydt issued a ruling enjoining clearcutting. In March 1976, Congress responded to the suit by passing the National Forest Management Act which removed the injunction. Subsequently half of the marketable timber was cut on the north end of the island.