Shaw Island lies near the entrance to Kamishak Bay on the western shore of lower Cook Inlet, about 119 miles (192 km) east-northeast of King Salmon and 79 miles (127 km) southwest of Homer, Alaska. The island is 2.5 miles (4 km) north of the Alaska Peninsula mainland and within Katmai National Park and Preserve. Captain George Vancouver named it ‘Shaw’s Island’ in 1794 during his survey of Cook Inlet. The Alutiiq Sugpiat name ‘Shunakhtuli’ appeared on Russian Hydrographic charts in 1847. The island is flat and grass-covered, and its surrounding rocky ledges are exposed or awash at low tide and used by seals, sea otters and sea lions as a haulout. The bedrock is composed of quartz monzonite that formed in the late Cretaceous, and the ledges were shaped by wave erosion. That bedrock belongs to the Alaska Peninsula terrane, a package of late Paleozoic to Quaternary rocks that records a succession of magmatic arcs. The wider park is underlain by Mesozoic sedimentary and volcanic rocks, and glaciers have carved its coastline into long, narrow fjords.

Following the Alaska Purchase in 1867, Hutchinson, Kohl & Company took over the Katmai trading station from the Russian-American Company. The station stood at Katmai village, on the Shelikof Strait coast near the mouth of the Katmai River. In 1868, the Alaska Commercial Company was formed to operate the trading posts. They continued the Russian practice of organizing sea otter hunting parties. Unangan Aleuts were provisioned and large boats transported them and their kayaks to lucrative hunting grounds such as Kamishak Bay, even as sea otters declined. The nearest trading station was at Douglas on Shelikof Strait, which the company opened in 1878. Each spring, hunters from several villages on both sides of the Alaska Peninsula migrated to the area. Seasonal camps lined the shore from Augustine Island in the north to Cape Douglas in the south, and hunters also occupied nearby islands, including Shaw Island. Schooners carried furs around the Cook Inlet area to the Douglas station. Poor hunting returns and epidemics led to the depopulation of the Katmai region, and the Douglas station closed in 1901. Katmai village was abandoned after the 1912 Novarupta eruption, and its residents moved to Perryville.

The Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred in Prince William Sound on March 24, 1989, when the tanker struck Bligh Reef. About 10.8 million US gallons (roughly 257,000 barrels, or 37,000 tonnes) of crude oil flowed into the Gulf of Alaska, and the Alaska Current carried it west and southwest to the southern end of Shelikof Strait. Storms mixed the oil with water to form a water-in-oil emulsion called mousse, whose volume was significantly greater than that of the original crude. Rafts of mousse stranded sporadically along the Kenai Peninsula, the Kodiak Archipelago, and the Alaska Peninsula. Cleanup concentrated on the most heavily oiled shores. In 1992, stranded oil was found on Cape Douglas and Shaw Island, but no chemical testing was done to determine it’s provenance. Today, small pockets of oil persist on Shelikof Strait beaches, sheltered beneath boulders, according to 2014 research. Most of Katmai is designated wilderness and the coastline is largely protected. The park boundary extends offshore to include all islands within 5 miles of the mainland. Read more here and here. Explore more of Shaw Island and Cook Inlet here: