Tongass Island is the site of Fort Tongass, an early U.S. Army post at the southern end of the Alexander Archipelago in Southeast Alaska, about 19 miles (31 km) northwest of Lax Kw’alaams, British Columbia, and 54 miles (87 km) southeast of Ketchikan, Alaska. The island is bounded by Nakat Bay to the west and Port Tongass to the east, and it lies close to the Canadian border. The island’s Native name, Kut-tuk-wah, was recorded by the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1869. The area geology represents a highly faulted belt of Paleozoic to Mesozoic arc-related rock. The island is formed by metamorphosed sedimentary, volcanic and intrusive rocks of the Taku terrane, characterized by andesite, rhyolite, and basalt with small amounts of limestone, marble, and conglomerate. Steep, forested mountains and deep valleys characterize the surrounding terrain. Nakat Bay was first charted by Captain George Vancouver in 1793. The bay runs about 5 miles (8 km) northeast from Cape Fox, and its name possibly derives from the Tlingit word for fox, “nakatse.”
The name Tongass comes from the Taantʼa Ḵwáan, a Tlingit people whose name translates to “sea lion tribe.” They belonged to the Ganaxadi clan of the Raven moiety and lived in villages at Cape Fox and on Tongass Island, where about 200 people lived on the eastern shore during the fort’s years. The Russian-American Company founded Sitka in 1799 and built a redoubt at Wrangell in 1834, using trade and religion to extend its influence over Indigenous communities. After the Alaska Purchase transferred the territory to the United States in 1867, the Army set up a post near the Dixon Entrance border with Canada. Captain Charles H. Peirce commissioned the post on April 29, 1868, and the fort housed Battery E of the 2nd U.S. Artillery, the first U.S. Army base in Alaska. Its purpose was to establish a military presence and a customs port for traffic bound for the Stikine River, a main route to goldfields that later fed the Cassiar Gold Rush. The site offered timber, pasture and abundant fish and game, but the anchorage for sailing ships was poor. The Army wound down its Alaska garrisons in 1870, closing posts at Kodiak, Wrangell and Tongass. A customs official stayed on for several years, and government records continued to call the island Fort Tongass.
In 1899 the Seattle Post-Intelligencer sponsored a goodwill tour of the District of Alaska for “leading Seattle citizens,” who sailed aboard the steamer City of Seattle. When the ship stopped at the island, the residents were away fishing. Believing the village abandoned, the party removed one of several totem or “crest” poles as a souvenir. The totem had been carved about 1790 to honor a Raven clan woman, Chief-of-All-Women, who drowned in the Nass River while visiting an ailing sister. It was unveiled in Pioneer Square on October 18, 1899. The Tlingit claimants had asked for $20,000 and settled for $500, paid by the newspaper. Fire and rot damaged the pole in 1938. The original was returned to Alaska and laid to rest, and a replica carved by Tlingit craftsmen, including descendants of the original carvers, was raised in 1940. It still stands in Pioneer Square. Today Tongass Island lies within Misty Fjords National Monument and wilderness, part of the Tongass National Forest. Proclaimed by President Jimmy Carter in 1978 and confirmed by Congress in 1980, the monument covers about 2.3 million acres, nearly all of it designated wilderness, and is known for granite cliffs and glacially carved fjords. The Taantʼa Ḵwáan community lives mainly in Ketchikan. Read more here and here. Explore more of Tongass Island and Nakat Bay here:
