Excursion Inlet is an embayment extending 11 miles (18 km) north-northwest from the northern coast of Icy Strait to the mouth of Excursion River, about 38 miles (61 km) west-northwest of Juneau and 9.5 miles (15 km) east of Gustavus, Alaska. The bay was likely named by Captain William E. George, who entered the estuary in 1883 on the excursion steamer SS Idaho. Captain George was a local ship pilot employed by the Pacific Coast Steamship Company, of San Francisco, operating the State of California, the Ancon, the Idaho and other famous vessels north from Portland, Oregon to Alaska. In 1897 he joined the steamer City of Seattle at the time of the Klondike gold rush, operating on the Skagway run from Seattle for Dodwell & Company.

Excursion Inlet was originally the site of a Tlingit village on an alluvial fan created by North Creek and South Creek near the mouth of the inlet on the eastern shore. A fish cannery has occupied this site since 1891. During the early stages of American involvement in the second world war, the US Army built a major barge terminal at Excursion Inlet. It was capable of handling large ocean-going cargo ships and was intended to be manned by thousands of soldiers. The terminal was built to serve as a logistics base for the army’s efforts to liberate the Aleutian Islands. However, by the time the terminal was completed in late 1943, the Aleutian Campaign was effectively over and the army opted to shut it down quietly. German prisoners of war were later brought in to dismantle the base and salvage usable materials. The docks and some of the buildings were sold to the cannery and remain standing today. The only access is by boat and small plane.

Seven canneries were established over the years in the Icy Strait district. The Excursion Inlet cannery was constructed in 1918 and was one of the largest and most successful canneries in Alaska. It mostly processed pink and chum salmon, as well as salmon roe, Pacific halibut, and sablefish (also known as black cod). The facility persisted for a century through the proliferation of salmon traps, the Great Depression, fluctuating salmon runs and other huge changes in the structure of Alaska’s salmon-fishing industry. In 2003, the Excursion Inlet Packing Company was sold to Seattle-based Ocean Beauty Seafoods. OBI Seafoods was formed in 2020 through a merger with Ocean Beauty Seafoods and Icicle Seafoods, two of the oldest and most successful seafood companies in Alaska. In 2021, OBI Seafoods announced the suspension of cannery operations at Excursion Inlet citing poor salmon forecasts. Read more here and here. Explore more of Excursion Inlet and Icy Strait here: