Village Islands is a group of six large islands and numerous smaller islets extending 1.7 miles (2.7 km) along the western shore of Uganik Bay, on the northwestern coast of Kodiak Island, about 147 miles (237 km) southwest of Homer and 42 miles (68 km) west of Kodiak, Alaska. The area’s bedrock includes the Late Cretaceous Kodiak Formation, a thick sequence of sedimentary rocks formed in an ancient marine basin. The formation consists largely of interbedded sandstone and shale, with occasional conglomerate beds. The islands were named in 1897 by Lieutenant Commander Jefferson F. Moser of the U.S. Navy, commanding the Bureau of Fisheries steamer Albatross, after the nearby Koniag Alutiiq village of Uganik. The Alutiiq place name is recorded as Unganuut or Unganuuk and was documented by Russian explorer Yuri Lisiansky in 1805. The village remained inhabited in 1914 but was subsequently abandoned.

In 1929, Albert and Josie Sandvik established a small hand-pack cannery on the site of the abandoned village. Josie Sandvik operated it with local workers from Kodiak, processing mainly red salmon until 1948. The salmon were caught using fish traps and purse seines. West Point Packing Company subsequently acquired and expanded the cannery, operating it until 1965. The facility was then sold and renamed the Village Island Canning and Packing Company, which closed in 1969. The history of the village and cannery reflects the region’s transition from longstanding Alutiiq settlement to commercial salmon processing. Although the village and cannery are no longer operating, the Village Islands and the former cannery site on the adjacent Kodiak Island shoreline include private and Native-owned inholdings used for seasonal residences and hunting cabins.

Purse seiners catch salmon by encircling a school with a long net and drawing its bottom closed to trap the fish. Alaska’s so-called limit seiner were designed for salmon fishing in Southeast Alaska and built to comply with restrictions on vessel length. The 58-foot (17.6-m) limit became a defining feature of Alaska’s commercial salmon-seining fleet. Many of these vessels were built in Puget Sound and traveled north each summer through the Inside Passage, a route of roughly 700 miles (1,130 km). Canning companies often owned the boats and maintained shipyards where they were repaired during the offseason. As salmon canneries spread across the Gulf of Alaska, the fleet expanded into new fishing grounds. Navigation hazards, including poorly charted reefs and shoals, posed serious risks to vessels operating in these waters. Today, the former cannery site in Uganik Bay is a remnant of this commercial fishing history, while the surrounding islands remain used for seasonal recreation and hunting. Read more here and here. Explore more of Village Islands and Uganik Bay here: