Funter Bay History: 1965 Aerial Photos

Recently I was browsing through the USGS Earth Explorer website, looking for historic aerials for another project I’m working on. I came across a set of 1965 aerial photos of Funter Bay that I don’t think I’ve seen before.

The photos run in a series of 4, going approximately North to South over the West side of the bay. They clearly show the Thlinket Packing Co cannery (owned by Peter Pan Seafoods at the time).

These are pretty high-resolution photos, I’m only able to post snippets here since the full size images are huge! Other areas of detail include several homes and cabins, like Harold and Mary Hargrave’s place:

You can also see the “neighborhood” where I grew up, Crab Cove. This was before most of the modern houses and cabins were built, some of the structures seen here were later torn down or incorporated into larger buildings. My family’s house would be near the top middle, between the creek and the railroad-like marine slipway

These photos were taken on July 8th, 1965, during the fishing season. The time may have been later in the evening, as you can see several salmon trollers anchored or reversing to anchor:

You can also see various ruins and abandoned relics around the bay, such as the old Keeler Cabin (upper middle):

The wreck of the Nimrod:

And another wreck, likely one of the cannery tender vessels, next to some abandoned fish trap frames:

The original images are far too large for my website, at ~250mb each. You can find them on https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/ with the following steps:

– Scroll to Funter Bay (or other area of interest). Make sure the area you want to search is centered in the website, as seen below, and click “Use Map”:

Next click “Data Sets”:

Then expand the “Aerial Imagery” section, select “Aerial Photo Single Frames”, and click “Results”:

You should now see a bunch of aerial photos of your selected area. For Funter Bay there are at least 6 pages to scroll through, and some of them are mis-matched photos from different areas.

Since it’s a government site it’s not very user-friendly, but it does have a lot of neat content. They are apparently still adding photos and data as archives are scanned, so it’s worth checking back every few years to see if anything is new!