Funter Bay History: Seattle High School Students

In the summer of 1919, a group of Seattle high school students traveled to Alaska to work at the Funter Bay cannery. One or more of the group took a number of photos during this and possibly subsequent trips. I have been posting photos from this collection over the last several weeks.

The above photo was likely taken soon after arrival at Funter Bay. The boys are wearing outfits more appropriate for school than for cannery work. One boy on the left has a Ballard HS letter jacket.

A list of the students along with contact information for their parents is labeled “Contracts… Funter Bay”. The back has some of the same names along with numbers, perhaps related to hours or pay.

   

The names on the list are:
Clarence Hawley
George Anderson
Malcolm Owen
Harold Hendrickson
Roy F. Swenson
Marvin Kleve
Ed Wilkerson
George Fraley
Gilbert Swart
Elmer Green
Cedric Hilton
Eugene Walby
Robert Stevens
Webster Hallett

Twelve of these boys attended Ballard High School, while two (Owen and Hallett) attended Lincoln High School.

Professor Carl Milton Brewster taught Chemistry at Washington State University. Some of these students went on to study Chemistry at various Washington colleges. Prof. Brewster is likely the older man seen in several of the group photos (at center, below). The students have acquired more rugged outfits and a variety of hats in this photo:

Some of these photos are RPPCs, or private photos printed on postcard stock. Several images are wallet-size prints with writing on the reverse side, and some of the smaller prints are partially hand-colorized. There were also a few commercial postcards, likely purchased during the trip. As some of the photos in this set are from later years, one or more of the boys probably returned for subsequent summers. Cannery work reportedly paid better than the summer jobs available in Seattle at the time.

Written on the back of this photo; “We are rowing boat on the bay”. The cannery bunkhouses are visible in the background:

And on this photo; “We boys cross the bay and go up to the tunnel of the gold mine”. Apparently a visit to the mine required fancier clothes! This may have been a day off for the boys, or could have been an educational visit to learn about assaying or other mine-related topics.

This photo of Harold Hendrickson is labeled “Me (Buck)”. He may have been the photographer of some or all of these images:

After graduation several of these boys attended the University of Washington, including Harold Hendrickson, Clarence Hawley, and Gilbert Swart. Hawley and Swart both went into chemical engineering. Hendrickson seems to have followed the relatively new field of air conditioning, writing several papers on the subject. He is listed in the 1940 census as an Air Conditioning Engineer in California.

Some associated photos from the same collection were taken at other locations, possibly by the same people on their way to or from Funter Bay. These include more RPPCs, trimmed wallet-size prints, and at least one commercial postcard.

Inside passage view, possibly from a steamship:

View from a ship, probably of Taku Glacier near Juneau:

The next two images show the Steamship Admiral Evans, which occasionally called at Funter Bay. The first appears to be a commercial postcard, possibly purchased on board. The 2nd seems to be labeled in the same way as some of the cannery tender photos from this collection. This may have been taken on the way to Funter Bay at the start of the 1920 season.

Many of the Ballard students seen here went on to form a club called the “Knights of the Moon”, established January 31, 1920 (Per the Seattle Times). As described in a 1994 Times article, the club was started by 13 friends who attended Ballard High School in 1917, 1918, and 1919. Most of the club members were school athletes who played basketball and baseball, and the club fielded Church League and City League teams after high school.  Several members were good singers, who would go to “Ballard Beach” in Seattle to “bay at the moon” according to Clarence Anderson (George Anderson’s brother). The club would put on dances, beach parties, and theater parties. Anderson reported that there was no drinking at these parties, and credits the club for keeping some young people out of trouble.

Eventually the club reached 50 members, pledging new members like a fraternity, and not missing a monthly meeting until 1987. The Times article went on to report the final meeting in 1994, as only three charter members were still alive.  (Charter Members were listed as Carl Anderson, George Fraley, George Frazier, Clarence Hawley, Harold Hendrickson, Herman Leander, Richard Smith, Roy Swenson, Edwin Wilkerson, Rolf Wiggen, Clarence Anderson, George Anderson, and Harold Shepard).

Several of my recent posts feature other photos from this collection, possibly including and/or taken by some of these people. They are:
Steam Donkey Part II (includes another group photo of the Ballard Students)
1920s Cannery Postcards
1920s Cannery Workers
Cannery Tender Operations
Navy Ships
Dano Mine Part II

I would like to thank Dr. Alice Eagly for providing information about her father, Harold Hendrickson. I would also like to thank the Ballard High School foundation for providing research material on these students.

Funter Bay History: Canning Process

I have previously mentioned some of the techniques and methods involved in early 20th-century cannery operations, but this post follows the entire salmon canning process from the ocean to the grocery store!

At Southeast Alaska canneries like the one at Funter Bay, the first step was the fish trap, either the floating or pile variety (I discussed fish trap types and issues here, and have a location map here).

Image courtesy of Historic American Engineering Record / Library of Congress, Tim Whitely 1993. Modified from http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ak0437.sheet.00002a/

After the trap was filled with fish, it would be “brailed” or emptied into a scow (barge) by lifting the nets and dumping the fish. I previously posted a set of postcard images showing this process here.

Courtesy University of Washington Freshwater and Marine Image Bank

Full scows were then towed by cannery tenders to the wharf. Below are several loads of salmon arriving at the Funter cannery:

Courtesy of the Alaska State Library, William R Norton collection, P226-445

The following diagrams from the Historic American Engineering Record show the canning process at a typical Alaska operation (The Kake cannery, which was under the same ownership as the Funter Bay cannery in the 1930s):

Courtesy of Historic American Engineering Record, National Park Service, Tim Whiteley and James Creech, 1993 & 1995.

Courtesy of Historic American Engineering Record, National Park Service, Tim Whiteley and James Creech, 1993 & 1995.

Once at the cannery, the fish were unloaded by hand into a “Fish Elevator”, an angled conveyor belt which moved them up to the level of the processing line. A video clip of such a fish elevator in action can be seen here. The salmon were then sorted by species (unwanted bycatch fish were usually discarded at the scow before loading onto the elevator).

The sorted salmon were run through the canning line one species at a time, each species typically had its own brand and label. First the salmon were cleaned and dressed. Originally this was done by hand with a crew of laborers (often Chinese, Japanese, or Filipino, although the Thlinket Packing co initially had many Tlingit Native employees). Later the cleaning process was automated, with an unfortunately-named device replacing many of the labor-intensive steps in preparing the salmon.

During the fish cleaning process, offal (heads, gills, and guts) was conveyed to a waste bin. It was later loaded back into empty scows for disposal, as seen in this post. A small amount was sometimes sold to fur farms to feed fox and mink, but most was simply discarded. This is still commonly done in many canneries.

The hills in the photo below seem to match the head of Funter Bay, this could have been taken while dumping fish waste near the mouth of the bay.

The following five photos are from a standard cannery of very similar design to the Thlinket Packing Co’s Funter Bay plant. These are from the Pacific Fisherman Volume 4 Annual Yearbook, of 1906, and are used as public domain per the Freshwater and Marine Image Bank’s policy. The article describes this as a cannery in Puget Sound, although one of the photos used in the article  is also labeled on a postcard as “Robert Barron’s Cannery” of “Fonters Bay”.

After cleaning, the next step for salmon bodies was cutting, originally by hand and later done by a mechanical gang knife. This sized the fish appropriately to fit in cans.

Cans were filled, crimped, washed, topped, and soldered shut. Again, more and more of this process became automated over time.

The soldered-shut cans were cooked in a retort, essentially a large steam pressure cooker (a small vent hole was left in the can during cooking, and soldered shut afterward). At the Washington cannery this was done for 1 hour and 15 minutes at 240 degrees F and 15psi.

After being removed from the retort and given time to cool, the cans were run through a labeling machine to receive the appropriate label for the species and brand. Quality control workers checked the weight and seal at various points during the process.

Some can labels from the Thlinket Packing Co are seen in this post.

Finished cans were packed into boxes built from prefab sections and assembled at the cannery.

The next two images were in a batch of photographs from Funter Bay, taken around 1919. The first photo appears to show cans moving through some machinery (perhaps the soldering machine) and stacking up on a cooling rack prior to being loaded into a retort for cooking. The exposure is long enough that the top row of cans appeared on the pile while the shutter was open (they look transparent). People moving in the background are also blurry. Assembled wooden boxes are seen in the background.

The next photo is a little harder to make out, but includes an angled ramp on the right hand side, similar to the can filler machine. Empty cans were stored in the loft above the canning floor, and dropped down to the working stations through these ramps. Overhead belts fed power to the equipment from a central engine. A spare belt is seen wrapped around the top of the machine.

The filler machine at Funter Bay can be seen below. empty cans are being fed in from overhead ramps:

Courtesy of Alaska State Library, William R. Norton Photograph collection, ASL-P226-453

The interior of the T.P. Co Cannery at Funter is seen in this 1907 image (below). Metal cooling racks are stacked on the right, while conveyors are in the center. A vent hood near the middle could be a soldering station. A slightly different version of this image labeled “Interior Canning Department” can be seen here.

Courtesty of UW Freshwater and Marine Image Bank.

Another image from about the same time shows 75,000 cases of salmon in the Thlinket Packing Co’s warehouse. The cans have not yet been boxed up. Another warehouse view is here.

Courtesty of UW Freshwater and Marine Image Bank.

Once packaged, the finished product was shipped South on commercial steamers or on freight ships owned by the cannery, to be sold to wholesale grocers for delivery to the consumer. Salmon in a can would appear on the shelf much as it does today, in fact the colors and art used on labels today is very similar to that of historic labels.

Sea Rose Brand Salmon Label from Thlinket Packing Co., c. 1905. Image courtesy of the Juneau-Douglas City Museum, 2005.06.191.

 

Modern salmon cans, photo by the author.

 

 

 

Funter Bay History: Cannery Tender Operations

Some photos from July of 1920 show several of the cannery tenders (fish handling boats) and barges at the Thlinket Packing Co.

Above, the Anna Barron maneuvers two loaded fish scows up to the cannery wharf. This vessel is discussed further here.

A close-up of one of the scows shows a full load of salmon fresh from the traps:

Below is another Thlinket Packing Co boat, the Barron F, seen in front of the cannery wharf with Highwater Island and Mt. Robert Barron behind. This 98-year-old boat is still working the West Coast, I have a number of photos courtesy of the present owner available here.

Unlike the Anna Barron, which was configured as a tugboat, the Barron F was a packer or cargo vessel with large midships hold. The Funter Bay cannery had several of each type of vessel, used somewhat interchangeably depending on the task at hand.

The next photo shows a scow, now emptied of salmon, being loaded with waste from the canning line. Elevated wooden bins held heads, guts, and other unwanted bits of fish until they could be dumped into a scow. The scow was then towed to deeper water and dumped. This kept the cannery smelling slightly better, with fewer bears nosing around, than if the waste were simply dumped directly in front. The cannery’s oil tank is visible on the point in the background.

In the last photo, we see one of the cannery tenders towing a piledriver out of the bay. The profile of the vessel suggests it might be the Anna Barron. Smoke is coming from the pile driver’s steam engine, which suggests it will soon be at work on one of the fish traps outside the bay.

Funter Bay History: Cannery Workers in the 1920s

My last post displayed some 1920s-era postcards (RPPCs) from Funter Bay, showing buildings and boats of the Thlinket Packing Company’s salmon cannery. Other postcards from the same set show some of the workers and people associated with the cannery in the same time period. It is not clear if these are commercial mass-produced postcards or personal images printed on postcard stock.

Here we see a group of men unloading items from the hold of a ship. The items are likely knocked-down cases for canned salmon. These would be assembled, filled with cans, and then shipped out again. An example of assembled cases can be seen here. In the background are Tlingit native houses and a scow or barge.

The next two photos are not labeled as Funter Bay, but were found alongside Funter Bay photos in the same collection. The firewood behind the seated man looks very similar to the wood stacked next to the boardwalk seen in a previous post. Also visible in the background is a wooden frame for clotheslines with hanging laundry, and some fencing or netting, similar to the garden fencing and clotheslines seen before. I suspect this fellow was one of the Tlingit Natives who worked at the cannery during the summers.

The next photo is labeled (in reverse) “Native Cannery Hands”. The photo seems to be printed in the correct orientation based on the product held by the small boy, reading “Sw… Pr…” (perhaps candy?). In a previous post I linked to a report indicating native children as young as 8 sometimes worked 9-hour days for 10 cents an hour.

There is a lot going on in the above photo. The man on the right is making some sort of gesture or counting 3. The younger people are all looking at the camera and many are smiling, while the older woman stares away with a stern expression. This phenomenon is noted in “The Tlingit Encounter with Photography” where author Sharon Gmelch points out that Tlingit women photographed at Funter Bay tended to look away from the camera unsmiling. One explanation is that smiling for a picture was considered disrespectful by elders. (As another side note, the 1907 photo of the Tlingit women apparently found its way onto a commemorative porcelain plate made in Germany in 1910, which is now at the Juneau-Douglas City Museum).

Another notable feature of these 1920s photos is the popularity of hats or headgear. The children display a variety of hats, including what looks like a naval hat on the smallest boy (marked with a steering wheel at the front). The men unloading the ship mostly have caps, while someone in the hold and someone in the foreground seem to have fedoras (perhaps the bosses?). Earlier photos of Funter Bay workers also show a wide variety of hats, especially among the men. I am not sure if hats were universally popular among all Alaskans/Americans at the time, or if this were a local cultural habit.

A man rowing a boat near the cannery may have been another cannery employee. He appears to have several cut logs in the boat, perhaps for firewood.

Another portrait shows a man of possible Asian heritage, standing on the wharf at the cannery (Mt. Robert Barron is barely visible behind him). He appears to be the only hat-less person in this post!

Several people are shown on the cannery wharf with fish in the photos below. These may be some Ballard (Seattle) High School students who visited Funter Bay in 1919, as the images were in the same batch and are colorized similarly to some photos of that group (to be detailed in a later post).

These two have caught salmon, likely with rod and reel:

And here we see a large halibut (probably in the 150-200lb range). The men are standing on nets, but halibut are usually caught with rod or ground tackle (longlines).

If any readers happen to recognize any of the people shown here, I would love to hear about it!

Funter Bay History: 1920s Cannery Postcards

I recently came across a batch of postcards showing Funter Bay in the 1920s. These appear to have come from the estate of someone associated with the cannery. I was able to purchase several of these, and was generously given permission to use copies of the others here.

It is not clear which of these were commercially-sold postcards and which were private photos printed on postcard stock. “Real Photo Post Cards“, or “RPPCs” enabled people to make a postcard from any photo. Kodak began offering pre-printed postcard stock early in the 1900s, and Federal law allowed postcards with written messages on the back in 1907. Some RPPCs were mass produced and some were unique prints by private individuals. Some of the cards in this set are labeled, dated, and/or have a photographers name, but most are unlabeled. Based on what I can identify of the people and vessels depicted, the dates range from around 1918 to the early 1920s.

The following map helps place some of these photos. This is part of the US Fish and Wildlife Service records from the National Archives, showing the cannery in 1942. The general layout is much the same as it was in the 1920s, with only minor changes. The 1929 Aerial photo that I previously posted is also helpful.

Below is a colorized version of the first photo above. This view looks out over the cannery buildings from near the Native employees’ houses. The main wharf with long packing and warehouse buildings are seen, along with the twin chimneys of the boiler house. Bunkhouses and residences are in the foreground, with the mess hall and company store near the middle.

The next photo shows an open area behind the mess hall and bunkhouses. Boardwalks lead between buildings, with what appear to be vegetable gardens on either side. Stacks of firewood are seen along the boardwalk, with long logs split into quarters. Clothes are hung to dry on the left of the nearest boardwalk, the laundry and bath house was located just off-camera to the left. The building on the far right is probably the repair shop which still stands today, behind it is the Superintendent’s house and just to the left of it are homes for managers and guests (one of these has also been referred to as a schoolhouse).

Below is a photo of the summer housing for Tlingit cannery workers. This is sometimes referred to as a village, although other accounts state that it was not occupied year-round. These structures were later demolished to make way for saltery buildings. Several canoes and a motor launch are visible.

A more distant view of the “village” shows its relationship to the cannery buildings (at left):

A smaller photo or print shows a boat at the cannery’s floating dock, with Mt. Robert Barron in the background. This seems to have been taken from near the bunkhouse which sat partly over the high tide line:

Two more photos show the floating dock from the other direction, taken at different stages of the tide with different small boats at the dock. A sign on the approach ramp appears to read “Private Float, no gas boats allowed”. The bottom photo shows scows with rolls of netting or fencing in the front, likely fish trap materials. Some of the boats seen in prior photos are moored to pilings in the background:

The next photo shows a higher angle view of the float approach and bunkhouse, maybe from the mast of a ship. The cannery’s wooden water tank is visible in the background. The cleared area between the tank and buildings would later hold the Chinese and Filipino bunkhouses. The company store is on the left. An interesting feature is the narrow ramp extending from the rear of the store into the water. This was the cannery’s trash chute where garbage was dumped into the bay. The base of this chute was very popular for bottle hunting at low tide in later years!

The next photo shows the rear of one of the waterfront buildings. A scow is moored to a piling in the middle ground, with the mountain shrouded in clouds behind. This may be from 1919:

The next image also looks out over the cannery buildings, Mt. Robert Barron is in the background:

And finally, a view out over Funter Bay to the South, showing Station Island (two sections, one forested), Rat Island, and Bare Island (low rock at left). Clear Point is on the right, and Chichagof Island’s mountains are visible in the distance:

Funter Bay History: Navy Ships

As I’ve previously mentioned, the USS Marblehead visited Funter Bay in 1919 on anti-piracy duties. Cannery owners including James Barron had complained to the government about the depredations of fish pirates, leading the navy to dispatch several patrol vessels.

Below is a photo of what appears to be the Marblehead anchored in Coot Cove near the Thlinket Packing Co at Funter. The photographer was near the scow slipways.

The next photo shows the USS Marblehead from a similar angle, helping to identify the ship seen at Funter.

USS Marblehead stern view, courtesy Library of Congress

This Marblehead was the 2nd ship to bear the name, a Montgomery-class cruiser 269ft long powered by two steam engines and armed with various 5-inch guns and torpedoes (Wikipedia page). Launched in 1892, the visit to Funter Bay seems to have been one of the ship’s last missions. It was retired in August of 1919. Additional information is available here.

USS Marblehead, courtesy Library of Congress

The masts and rigging indicate a ship capable of sail as well as steam propulsion. A photo of the USS Montgomery under steam and partial sail can be seen here.

Another vessel of similar appearance visited Funter Bay on April 28, 1923; the Coast Guard cutter Unalga (Navy History page). This vessel had only one stack, so does not match the one seen in the photo from Coot Cove. The ship’s logs (p1 and p2) from that day mention the motor boat Ceasar which had broken its crankshaft off Funter Bay on the way to Tenakee. The Unalga towed the Ceasar from Funter to Tenakee Inlet. (The source for these logs, oldweather.org, is a project to transcribe ship logs for historic weather data. These logs also contain other interesting information such as records of towns and vessels, wildlife, and general ship operations).

A slightly more modern ship can be seen in Coot Cove in the following photo, circa 1920. Clear Point is visible in the distance, the foreground rocks were near the cannery wharf where the photographer was probably standing.

This is the USS McCawley, DD-276, a 314ft Clemson-class destroyer (Wikipedia page). When photographed in Coot Cove it may have been taking part in the 1920 inspection tour of Alaska conducted by Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, Interior Secretary John B. Payne, and Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral Hugh Rodman. A note in the Kinky Bayers files reports the McCawley arriving in Juneau along with the destroyers Sinclair and Meyer on July 13, 1920, carrying Secretary Daniels and party. A photo of the McCawley in Juneau can be seen here. A photo of the VIP group visiting a glacier can be seen here. The Thlinket Packing Co was upheld as a model Alaskan industry by promoters, cruise lines, and publishers, so it easily could have been part of the inspection tour.

An article in the Seattle Times of July 10, 1918, reported that salmon packer “J. E. Barron” asked Navy Captain J. J. O’Donnell to take custody of L. Clarito, Joe Budous, and Martin F. Bolina, “Filipinos who are charged with sabotage”. The trio were brought from Funter Bay to the Juneau city jail aboard a “US Warship” and federal charges were expected to be filed. The actual “sabotage” seems to have been the un-patriotic act of inciting native workers to request higher pay.

I was not able to find a Captain J. J. O’Donnell in 1918, but as the article got J. T. Barron’s middle name wrong, it may not have been 100% accurate with the navy captain’s name either.

Funter Bay History: 1929 Ordway Aerial

The Juneau-Douglas City Museum recently posted a 1929 aerial image of Funter Bay, and gave me permission to use a high-resolution scan. This photo was taken by Frederick Ordway, “Alaska’s Flying Photographer”. Ordway opened a photo shop in Juneau in 1927 and was known for photographing many Alaskan subjects. He died in 1938 in in a crash in Oregon.

The photo was taken the same year as the US Navy’s aerial photo survey of Southeast Alaska (previously shown here and here), but offers a different angle on the bay. Click the image below to view it full size:

Funter Bay, Alaska Postcard, 1929, photograph by Fred Ordway. Image courtesy of the Juneau-Douglas City Museum, JDCM 88.45.001.

Mount Robert Barron dominates the skyline in this image, showing nearly its full 3,475′ elevation (the very top seems to be cut off by the edge of the photo). The cannery is seen in the middle left, with Coot Cove (“Scow Bay”) in front of it. Across the bay is the AAGMC mine camp. Floating fish traps are visible in the foreground, just above the title text. These would be moored in a shallow area for winter storage, to prevent storm damage.

The view looks a little different today, as a section of the mountain experienced a landslide in the 1990s after heavy rains.

Another interesting feature from the 1929 postcard is visible in Crab Cove beyond Highwater Island. This white blob is in the right location to be the camp of the Mansfield Mine. I have not previously seen this mine photographed, so despite the lack of detail it’s still an interesting white blob!

Close up of Funter Bay, Alaska Postcard, 1929, photograph by Fred Ordway. Image courtesy of the Juneau-Douglas City Museum, JDCM 88.45.001.

A survey from 1915 shows the Mansfield Company’s “Hidden Treasure Millsite”. The land claim seems to have been cancelled or denied, as it does not appear on master title plats for the area (it overlapped some other mineral claims). Unfortunately the accompanying field notes are largely illegible, so there are no details about the size and construction of buildings. The survey plat for MS 1035B shows a cabin and shed near the location photographed above.

Today all that remains of the Mansfield camp is a faint rectangle of decaying logs where the cabin and shed used to be. Anecdotal evidence describes a stable for pack mules at this location. The Mansfield Mine hauled some equipment up to their tunnel site, including track and a single ore car, seen in a previous post.

 

 

Funter Bay History: Early Tourism

The Alaskan tourism industry grew rapidly in the early 20th century. Publicity from high-profile private “expeditions” (such as the Harriman Expedition) sparked an interest in Alaska among America’s middle class. Shipping lines quickly recognized the value of Alaska as a vacation destination, bringing the curious to see strange landscapes, animals, and cultures.

Early tourist cruises to Alaska often shared space on cargo ships or combined cargo/passenger vessels (which I’ve mentioned several times before). Even purpose-built “excursion” vessels usually had a large cargo capacity, and often made stops at industrial ports like Funter Bay during their tour circuits. Shipping lines capitalized on this by calling such stops “Surprise Ports”.

“Decidedly popular… extra calls located off the regular lanes of travel in secluded coves or fjords, and not shown in printed schedules. Here, while the ship loads or unloads, the angler may try his luck in nearby streams or lakes, and the hiker may explore wooded mountain trails, to vistas of incredible beauty.”
(Excerpt from “Looking Ahead to Alaska”, pamphlet of the Alaska Steamship Company, ca 1934).

Of course, the downsides of such “surprise ports” were never mentioned in the advertising… the noise of cargo loaded late at night, the aroma of a fish processing plant, or the unexpected wait if the captain misjudged a tide and went aground at low water.

While canneries like the Thlinket Packing Co could be an unexpected stop, at least one steamer line made a point to incorporate it into their regular routes and advertising. A 1911 brochure from the Pacific Coast Steamship Company lists Funter Bay among its regular stops and attractions.

The Salmon Cannery
Funter Bay Cannery is a revelation to those who have not seen the workings of the packing of food fish for market. Millions of salmon annually are taken from these waters, packed in tins after most approved modern methods and take place in the food supply of the world. Passengers have ample opportunity to inspect the cannery or to photograph the beautifully located nearby Indian village.” (From Pacific Coast Steamship Co “Alaska via Totem Pole Route, Season 1911”).

A 1909 advertisement also mentions Funter Bay as a stop for the Pacific Coast’s steamer Spokane.

I’ve previously posted this photo, which was labeled as the SS Spokane at Funter Bay in 1905. I am unsure of the source.

Dr. Eugene Talbot was a passenger on the Spokane in July of 1905 and described the steamer’s stop at Funter:

The steamship brochures also took every opportunity to push native art and trinkets, asking readers “Have You Collected Indian Carvings?” and “Is Alaska Represented in Your Den?”. Every port seems to have had a dockside market of souvenir merchants, including Funter Bay. An undated photo from the Clarence Leroy Andrews collection is described as “Natives with baskets for sale to tourists. Wharf at Funter’s Bay”.

By 1914, the Pacific Coast Steamship Co seems to have dropped Funter from their tour route and replaced it with a stop at Killisnoo’s herring reduction plant. The SS Spokane continued to visit Funter on cannery business, including a 1920 trip where cannery workers and officials made up the entire passenger complement. Another trip in 1925 saw the former Spokane, now renamed the Admiral Rogers, delivering a load of mining equipment to Funter Bay.

Funter Bay History: Census Takers and Logging Camps

Related to an an earlier post about population and census-taking, the following excerpt comes from the account of one Joseph Hewitt, census-taker for part of Northern Southeast Alaska in 1909-1910. Hewitt’s diary “Forty One Days of Census Taking in Southeast Alaska” describes his travels to “all the towns, camps, ranches and settlements located on Chatham Strait, Icy Strait and all their bays and inlets”. He traveled by gasoline launch chartered by the government and operated by its owner, B.F. Dennison, and Dennison’s 11 year old son Dewey. The census enumeration was performed in winter to ensure transient native populations would be in their home villages. Larger communities with schools were expected to provide a census via the local teacher, with people like Hewitt filling in the details for smaller outlying settlements like Funter Bay.

The full document is available here, both in original written form and typed transcription.

“The next day I enumerated twelve at Funter Bay. This is the site of the “Klinket Cannery”. This is a large establishment and it was their logging camp we found in Kelp Bay. We came into Funter Bay on Friday Jan 7th and had the delectable experience of being bottled up by a storm for six days. In shifting the boat one dark night from one part of the bay to another, a thing we frequently had to do to escape destruction during that siege, we lost one of our anchors overboard. The wind and waves seemed bent on driving us out of that bay. The storm outside was so fierce as to tie up the big steamers. Inside it was playing “puss in the corner” with us, and every time it said scat we had to hike. Had it not been for a small island and an unused steamer that was anchored out I don’t see how we could have escaped being driven on the rocks. On Monday morning we made an attempt to escape but were very glad to come back in and fight it out where the trouble started . Finally on Wednesday morning we got away.”

The description of Kelp Bay earlier in the manuscript reports a logging camp abandoned before the first snow, along with a few hundred new cut piles (pilings for dock and fish trap construction). Kelp Bay is on the NE side of Baranof Island, across from the southern end of Admiralty Island about 65 miles from Funter Bay. Although Hewitt reports the logging camp deserted, he did find around 15 people in the Kelp Bay area. A Tlingit family is listed in the 1910 census as associated with the Kelp Bay logging camp, including James Hanson, employed as a woodcutter, and his wife Mary. The court case between Funter canneryman James Barron and rival Claire Alexander (discussed in this post) also mentions Thlinket Packing Co superintendent Fred Barker towing logs from Kelp Bay to Funter for use at the cannery. The cannery tenders Buster and Anna Barron were used to tow rafts of trap piles.

It may seem strange that the T.P. Co would harvest timber so far from the cannery, but a possible explanation lies in the geography of Kelp Bay. Not only is it protected from storms, the bay offers very steep hillsides along the shore, an ideal place for gravity-assisted hand logging. The best trees could be selected and cut so as to slide into the water below. Around Funter Bay, most of the near-shore land is flat, and would require logs to be hauled by equipment or animals. (Limited near-shore logging did happen at Funter, as discussed here). Kelp Bay continued to be logged and clearcut into the 1990s.

 

Funter Bay History: More 1929 Photos

I recently came across some additional photos from the 1929 Alaskan Aerial Survey, conducted by the US Navy. Thanks to Richard Carstensen for sharing these! Richard had an excellent website at juneaunature.org. Also thanks to Kim Homan with the Southeast Alaska GIS Library for providing some reference information. They have put together An ArcGIS interface for locating and viewing additional aerial photos from this set.

These are very large photos, click to open them full size (may take a while to load on a slow connection).

Funter Bay viewed from the North, looking almost directly South down Chatham Strait towards Chichagof Island:

1929 US Navy Alaska Aerial Survey Expedition (Sargent, R. and Moffit, F. 1929. Aerial photographic surveys in Southeast Alaska. USGS Bull 797-E.)

Green Mountain is in the foreground on the left. Mt Robert Barron is further ahead on the left. The large island at the head of the bay is Highwater Island, with a medium tide filling the estuary behind it, but not covering the sandbar connecting it to shore.

The next photo is not at Funter, but across Lynn Canal at Swanson Harbor (behind Point Couverden). This location was used by the Thlinket Packing Co to store fish traps in the winter, and as a convenient harbor for packers during rough weather. I found it interesting because several complete and partial fish traps are seen stored in the shallows at the head of the harbor.

1929 US Navy Alaska Aerial Survey Expedition (Sargent, R. and Moffit, F. 1929. Aerial photographic surveys in Southeast Alaska. USGS Bull 797-E.)

This area goes dry at low tide, as seen in the modern photo below:

Photo from NOAA Alaska Shorezone (https://alaskafisheries.noaa.gov/shorezone/) used as public domain.

The traps have long since disintegrated from weather and tides, ending up as mossy logs on the beaches. The pilings driven into the mudflats in the 1929 photo have also disappeared.

In addition to use as a fish trap staging area, Swanson Harbor was tied to Funter by mail service. A few homesteads and fox farms at Point Couverden received their mail at the Funter Bay post office. A cannery was reportedly begun at Swanson Harbor around 1902 by Buschmann, Thorpe & Co, but the company failed before construction was completed. There may have been a cannery or saltery prior to this, 1897 nautical charts indicate a cannery in the same location.  An 1880 map of Swanson Harbor shows an “Abandoned Indian Village” in the location of the structure seen in 1929. This is drifting further off topic, but I found it interesting enough to include here: