Gwent Cove is a small community at the site of the former Hidden Inlet fishing village and cannery, about 45 miles (72km) north of Prince Rupert and 61 miles (98km) southeast of Ketchikan, Alaska. It is located adjacent to and west of the entrance to Hidden Inlet, an estuary that trends generally north for six miles (9.7km) from the western shore of Pearse Canal. The local name for Gwent Cove, after a county in south-east Wales, was published on charts in 1936 by the US Coast and Geodetic Survey. The surrounding rocks are part of the Tracy Arm terrane and comprise granodiorite that developed from an igneous intrusion during the Paleogene or Cretaceous period. The northern shore of the cove consists of Quaternary sediments deposited by a receding glacier and subsequent river discharges.
Pearse Canal is a channel forming part of the Canada-United States border at the southern end of Southeast Alaska and adjacent to the mouth of Portland Inlet. It lies on the north-west side of Wales and Pearse islands, which are in British Columbia. The channel also forms part of the south-western edge of Misty Fjords National Monument. It was named for William A. Pearse, commander of HMS Alert, by Captain Daniel Pender in 1868 as part of a coastal survey by the steamship Beaver to define lands purchased in 1867 by the United States from Russia. In 1903 Pearse Canal was established as the border between Canada and America under the Hay-Herbert Treaty, otherwise known as the Alaska Boundary Settlement.
In 1902, when Wales Island was still claimed as American territory, a salmon cannery was built on the eastern shore of Pearse Canal, on the island’s north-west coast. But after the 1903 Alaska Boundary Settlement, the American owners forfeited the facility. At the same time, a Canadian cannery at Hidden Inlet, situated 14 miles (23km) farther north on the west shore of Pearse Canal, suffered the reverse fate and found itself in American territory. Today the Hidden Inlet resort occupies the site of the former cannery. Read more here and here. Explore more of Gwent Cove and Pearse Canal here: