Nanwalek is a community on English Bay, a small embayment on the eastern shore of lower Cook Inlet at the southern entrance to Port Graham on the Kenai Peninsula, about 24 miles (38 km) southwest of Homer and 3.4 miles (5.5 km) west of the village of Port Graham, Alaska. Originally, Nanwalek was the Russian fort and trading post known as Alexandrovsk, later called English Bay. In 1991, the name was officially changed to Nanwalek, meaning “place by lagoon.” The English Bay River drains a 15,567-acre (6,300-ha) watershed and flows northwest for 12 miles (19 km) from the northeast flank of Peak 2350 to English Bay Lagoon. The lagoon is formed by a gravel spit extending 0.5 miles (0.8 km) south from Russian Point. This spit is likely created by an ocean current that curls clockwise off Point Bede, forming an eddy. The village of Nanwalek is located at the base of the spit, which serves as a runway for local air taxis. The English Bay River watershed is underlain by three rock formations of the Chugach accretionary terrane. The outermost section, beneath Nanwalek, primarily consists of the Talkeetna Formation, locally known as the Pogibshi Formation. This formation, dating to the Early Jurassic, comprises at least 17,000 feet (5,270 m) of andesite and dacite tuff, volcaniclastic conglomerate, sandstone, mudstone, and minor coal and limestone. The presence of coal suggests that some of this formation was deposited in a nonmarine environment. The middle section of the watershed contains the Port Graham Formation, characterized by dark-gray limestone, volcanic tuff, and sedimentary rocks, including tuff and chert. This formation has an estimated minimum thickness of 5,000 feet (1,500 m), with bivalve fossils indicating a Late Triassic age for most of the unit. The innermost section extends into the Kenai Mountains and comprises the McHugh Complex, which consists mainly of conglomerate and massive graywacke of turbiditic origin. Regionally, the graywacke formed from the Early Jurassic through the Early Cretaceous.

In 1786, the Russian fort Aleksandrovsk was established at the present-day site of Nanwalek by the Shelikov-Golikov Company, based on Kodiak Island. This was the first Russian post on mainland Alaska. In 1793, a rival company led by Pavel Lebedev-Lastochkin, based near the village of Kenai, attacked Aleksandrovsk with 60 men and Dena’ina warriors. They organized provocations and beat the local natives, seizing furs destined for Shelikov’s company in Kodiak. However, they failed to capture the fort. In the summer of 1794, Aleksandrovsk was relocated to a higher site because the original structures had rotted and begun to collapse due to high tides, suggesting the first location might have been on the spit. In 1798, when the Dena’ina rose against Lebedev-Lastochkin’s company in Kenai, Tyonek, and Old Iliamna, a detachment from Aleksandrovsk arrived in time to save the Kenai colony from destruction, but the Tyonek and Iliamna colonies were razed. By 1818, Aleksandrovsk had been reduced to an “odinochka,” a one-man post. In the 1830s, a trading post and Russian Orthodox chapel were established on the outer coast at Yalik village. By 1880, Yalik had a population of 32. Due to the devout adherence of the Alutiiq Sugpiat people to the Russian Orthodox Church and the difficulty in servicing such a remote location from Kenai, Yalik residents were asked to move to Alexandrovsk, where the Saints Sergius and Herman of Valaam Church was founded in 1870. The population of the outer coast gradually declined, and by the 1950s, the last community to be abandoned was Portlock in Port Chatham. Most Nanwalek and Port Graham residents trace their ancestry to the Alutiiq Sugpiat who lived in one of 19 settlements along the outer coast. Contact with Russian fur traders and their conscripted Aleut hunters in the late 1700s, as well as Euro-American and Asian immigrants in the 1800s, led to intermarriages and families of mixed ancestry.

The English Bay River flows through a series of lakes that were once significant producers of sockeye salmon, supporting a commercial fishery. In 1985, commercial fishing closures were implemented as sockeye salmon production declined. Despite the reduction in commercial fishing, sockeye escapements into the English Bay Lake system did not increase. To boost production, a juvenile sockeye fry stocking program began in 1990. Limnological studies revealed that the English Bay Lakes are nutrient-poor, and the watershed’s rapid flushing rate results in low primary production of phytoplankton and secondary production of zooplankton. Since zooplankton biomass is the primary food source for rearing sockeye juveniles, excessive fry stocking, combined with natural recruitment, could lead to overgrazing of available zooplankton. Stocking juvenile sockeye fry beyond the system’s capacity to produce sufficient zooplankton could cause the zooplankton community to collapse. The low densities and small sizes of zooplankton, along with the small size of smolts, indicate intense competition for food and suggest that the English Bay Lakes’ rearing conditions are near capacity. Lake productivity generally depends on an adequate nutrient supply. In sockeye nursery lakes, the decomposition of adult carcasses provides essential nutrients for algal growth, which in turn supports zooplankton productivity. Fishery managers aim to balance juvenile recruitment from both wild production and hatchery stocking with the available forage base to achieve sustainable smolt production and a consistent total return of adult salmon. The English Bay Lakes sockeye salmon enhancement project seeks to supply adult sockeye salmon to the lower Cook Inlet commercial fishery, support hatchery cost recovery, and meet personal and subsistence needs for the communities of Nanwalek and Port Graham. Operating for over 20 years, the project involves collecting eggs from English Bay Lakes, incubating and rearing fry at a hatchery, and releasing them back into the lake system. Since 2004, the Cook Inlet Aquaculture Association has assisted by transferring eggs to the Trail Lakes Hatchery for incubation, rearing, and releasing fry into the lake system or smolt into Port Graham Bay. Read more here and here. Explore more of Nanwalek and English Bay here: