Squaw Harbor is a historical cannery and fishing village situated on the north shore of Baralof Bay on the east coast of Unga Island in the Shumagin Islands, about 258 miles (415 km) east-northeast of Unalaska and 7 miles (11 km) south-southwest of Sand Point, Alaska. Unga Island is the largest of the Shumagin Islands, a group of 20 islands and islets in the Eastern Aleutians located a few miles off the south coast of the Alaska Peninsula. The Unangan Aleut name for the island was first reported as ‘Ounga’ in 1827 by Admiral Adam Johann von Krusenstern of the Imperial Russian Navy, and in 1840 the spelling was changed to ‘Unga’ by Father Ivan E. Veniaminov. The western part of the island is formed by rocks of the Unga Formation that developed during the Miocene and Oligocene and consists of conglomerate and interbedded sandstone, siltstone, tuff, and diamicton, dominantly with grains of volcanic origin. Fossils are locally very abundant but are restricted to thin zones that contain numerous specimens of a few genera of bivalves, gastropods, and worm tubes. Petrified wood, including logs and stumps in growth position, is common and is typically associated with debris flows that engulfed then existent forests of Metasequoia sp. The eastern part of the island is represented by Popof volcanic rocks that developed during the late Eocene and Oligocene and consists mainly of lava flows, lahar deposits, ash flows, tuff, and debris flow deposits.
The Unangan Aleut people historically lived throughout the Aleutian Islands including the Shumagin Islands, and the Alaska Peninsula, with an estimated population of around 25,000 before European contact. When the Russians first occupied the Aleutian Islands in the mid-18th century, Unangan Aleuts inhabited hundreds of villages in the area. After a century of Russian occupation, only 39 villages remained. The attenuation of the villages was due to Russian-introduced diseases, massacres, and village consolidation policies of Russian administrators. Following the Alaska Purchase in 1867, the U.S. government census of the Aleutians recorded 22 villages, and by 1970, only 11 villages were inhabited including Squaw Harbor. In the early 20th century, the village supported gold mines and cod fish and salmon salteries. In 1922, the Shumagin Packing Company opened the first salmon cannery in the Shumagin Islands at Squaw Harbor that processed fish until 1954. The facility then became a fish camp, purchasing fish from local fishermen and sending them to the cannery at King Cove for processing. In 1960, the cannery was reopened by the Pacific American Fisheries Company to process crabs, but then turned its crab operation over to the King Cove cannery in 1969 and converted to shrimp processing.
The cannery at Squaw Harbor owned virtually all the level land as well as the houses in the village so that cannery workers had no option but to live in company housing and submit to whatever conditions were imposed. The single-species processing at Squaw Harbor also resulted in seasonal employment and many workers were forced to move when the cannery closed. Unlike the Squaw Harbor cannery, Wakefield Fisheries at Sand Point engaged in diversified processing, beginning with halibut and salmon, and adding crab in 1953. This diversification provided nearly year-round employment for local fishermen and fish processors, drawing many families from Squaw Harbor. Squaw Harbor’s population declined by one-half between 1950 and 1970. The school closed permanently in 1970. Consequently, the village was unable to secure or maintain modern services and facilities. The growing community of Sand Point, and its harbors and processors, offered a reliable school, air service, roads, mail service, telephones, health care, a movie theater, a community hall, a saloon, and a restaurant. Most of the residents of Squaw Harbor migrated to Sand Point and the old village was abandoned in the early 1980s. Read more here and here. Explore more of Squaw Harbor and Unga Island here:
