Hydaburg sits on the north shore of Sukkwan Strait, at the northern end of Cordova Bay, opposite Sukkwan Island on the convoluted southwestern coast of Prince of Wales Island in the Alexander Archipelago, about 160 miles (258 km) southeast of Sitka and 48 miles (77 km) west of Ketchikan, Alaska. The community takes its name from the Haida people, who settled the island in the early 1700s after moving from northern Graham Island in the Haida Gwaii archipelago, British Columbia. The archipelago extends about 300 miles (480 km) along the Southeast Alaska coast, from Cross Sound in the north to Dixon Entrance in the south. Its roughly 1,100 islands are the tops of submerged coastal mountains, separated by deep, ice-scoured channels and fjords, and most of the land lies within the Tongass National Forest. Prince of Wales Island is part of the Alexander terrane, a continental fragment that originated far from its present position and drifted into the northern Panthalassic Ocean, where it merged with the Wrangellia terrane in the late Carboniferous. The Alexander terrane was accreted to western North America in the Middle Jurassic, while the combined Wrangellia composite docked with the continent during the Cretaceous. The present landscape reflects several glaciation episodes during the Pleistocene, and much of the land is still rebounding vertically as the weight of retreating ice is released.

Prince of Wales Island was Tlingit territory until the early 1700s, when bands of Kaigani Haida moved in from Haida Gwaii. Accounts attribute the move to food shortages, population pressure and internecine warfare among Haida groups. Prince of Wales Island has numerous species of wild animal meat sources, such as deer, mountain goats and sheep, as well as herring spawning areas, and an abundance of salmon. The Kaigani first settled at its southern tip. In 1741, the Russian navigator Aleksei Chirikov became the first European to sight the western coast of the island. In 1774, Juan José Pérez Hernández sighted land at Dixon Entrance, near the south coast of Dall Island, and the following year Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra entered Bucareli Bay off the island. James Cook explored the area in 1778, and in 1787 George Dixon began trading sea otter pelts with the Haida. Around 1840, John Work of the Hudson’s Bay Company recorded six Kaigani villages on the island, including Kasaan, Sukkwan, Howkan, Klinkwan, Koianglas and Kaigani.

Following the Alaska Purchase in 1867, the federal government and missionaries expanded their authority in the region. They offered schools, financial support, and mail and steamer service, which created local dependence, and families were eventually coerced into moving to new settlements. Hydaburg was formed in 1911 when the Howkan, Sukkwan and Klinkwan villages consolidated on the present site. The new town was laid out with European-style houses, a school and church near the center, and a salmon cannery nearby. The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act passed in 1971 and created the regional corporation Sealaska, which was incorporated in 1972, and the village corporation Haida Corporation. Both are now major landholders and economic developers in the region. In 2021, Sealaska and the Tongass National Forest both announced intentions to move away from large-scale old-growth logging. Sealaska has refocused on ocean-based businesses, and the U.S. Forest Service has pledged support for community-based conservation through the Sustainable Southeast Partnership. Today, Hydaburg is home to the federally recognized Hydaburg Cooperative Association and roughly 400 residents. Village life still centers on subsistence hunting and fishing, and on traditional arts, including a totem park whose restoration was completed in 2015. Read more here and here. Explore more of Hydaburg and Prince of Wales Island here: