Port Armstrong is an embayment on the southeast coast of Baranof Island that extends west-southwest for 1.6 miles (2.6 km) from Point Eliza on Chatham Strait, about 59 miles (95 km) south-southeast of Sitka and four miles (6.5 km) north of Port Alexander, Alaska, it is the site of a historical whaling station and a present-day salmon hatchery. Captain George Vancouver surveyed and named Port Armstrong in 1794. The watershed draining into the bay is small, fed by a stream that starts at an elevation of 1,900 feet (580 m) and flows generally northeast for 1.6 miles to Betty Lake at 306 feet (93 m), which connects to Jetty Lake at 270 feet (82 m), then drains via a 0.4-mile (0.6 km) cascade to the bay’s north shore. The southern tip of Baranof Island and most of the Port Armstrong watershed consist of the Baranof Accretionary Complex, associated with the Chugach terrane. This complex comprises sedimentary and volcanic rocks derived from oceanic crust that was subducting beneath an island arc. The sedimentary rocks at Port Armstrong developed during the Paleocene epoch, about 60 million years ago, and consist mostly of sandstone with grains of quartz, plagioclase, potassium feldspar, and biotite.

The southeast coast of Baranof Island lies within the traditional territory of the Tlingit Kooyu Kwáan, or Kuiu Clan, historically associated with Tebenkof Bay on the west coast of Kuiu Island, where 148 cultural sites were recorded in a recent archaeological survey. The sites included house depressions, shell middens, cache pits, gardens, stone alignments, intertidal stakes, camps and structures associated with fox farming. In 1799 the Russian-American Company established a trading post at Sitka called New Archangel to supply the maritime fur trade. After the Alaska Purchase in 1867, the Sitka post was transferred to the United States, and within a few years miners, fishers and traders began exploiting the largely unregulated resources. In 1878 the North Pacific Trading and Packing Company established the first cannery at Klawock on Prince of Wales Island. Within ten years overexploitation forced consolidation: out of 31 canneries in Southeast Alaska, only nine remained by 1891. By 1929, however, 13 herring salteries and reduction plants were operating in southern Chatham Strait, including one at Port Armstrong, mostly impounding schools of herring with purse seines.

In 1910 Peter Bogen raised funds to finance the US Whaling Company, purchased the Sommerstad as a floating processor and had three catcher vessels: Star I, Star II, and Star III, built at the Seattle Construction and Dry Dock Company. Whaling operations began in 1912 at a shore station established at Port Armstrong; within six weeks 71 whales were caught. In the first year the ships caught 314 whales and produced 8,500 barrels of oil, only a quarter of the estimate. In 1913 the total catch was 75 sperm whales, but oil yield remained below expectations. The company processed whales into oil, fertilizer and bone meal. From 1914 the three whalers wintered at Eagle Harbor near Seattle and returned to Port Armstrong each spring. In 1916 winter storms partly destroyed the shore station, requiring rebuilding. In 1917 the whaler Star I was delivered to the Navy for service as a minesweeper in the Pacific Northwest during the first world war. The vessel returned to the company in 1919 and all three whalers resumed work, but low whale stocks, high operating costs and the end of wartime demand made the venture marginally profitable. In 1922 the company took 117 whales, including 60 sperm whales; this was its last reported year. In 1925 Buchan & Heinen Company leased the whaling station and bought a new herring-reduction unit from the California Press Manufacturing Company to produce herring oil and fish meal. The herring-reduction plant operated until 1958. Today Port Armstrong is the site of the Armstrong-Keta salmon hatchery. See a short video about shore whaling in the early 1900s here. Read more here and here. Explore more of Port Armstrong and Baranof Island here: