Naukati Bay is a community at the site of a former logging camp and log transfer facility situated on a peninsula on the western coast of Prince of Wales Island between Little Naukati Bay to the northwest, Kaikli Cove to the northeast, Naukati Bay to the east, and across Tuxekan Passage from Tuxekan Island to the west, about 71 miles (114 km) northwest of Ketchikan and 18 miles (29 km) southwest of Coffman Cove, Alaska. The village name was reported as ‘Naukatee Bay’ in 1904 by Captain E.F. Dickins on the U.S. Coast and Geodetic steamer Thomas R. Gedney, which according to Captain Cyrus Orr who resided at the cannery at Shakan was the local name used by the Takjik’aan Tlingit. Prince of Wales Island is formed by the Alexander terrane that comprises much of coastal British Columbia and Southeast Alaska. The terrane likely amalgamated to the North American plate during the late Paleozoic and was shaped into its present form by Pleistocene glaciation creating fjords, steep-sided mountains that today support dense forests on private lands and as part of Tongass National Forest. The watershed surrounding Naukati Bay is underlain by greywacke, limestone, sandstone, and argillite that developed during the Silurian period.
The Takjik’aan and Hinya Tlingit numbered about five hundred in 1880. Their chief settlements were at Shakan, Tuxekan, and Klawock. Their territory or ‘kwaan’ included the southwestern tip of Kuiu Island and the western part of Prince of Wales Island as far south as Meares Pass. South of Meares Pass lived the Haida-speaking Kaigani whose chief towns are modern Hydaburg and Kasaan. Tuxekan was located about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) northwest of Naukati Bay. The village consisted of 19 houses, with 7 forming the first row in front of 12 forming the second row. The houses were owned by families that dispersed in the summer to fish camps at Sarkar Cove and Karheen. In Tlingit culture, totem poles were most often carved from western red cedar logs in the design of matriarchal lineage crests. In the late 19th century, about 142 crest poles were present at the village of Tuxekan to commemorate human remains or gravesites. Over half the population of Tuxekan succumbed to diseases introduced by Euro-American explorers and settlers. The dwindling population combined with the encroachment of logging and mining industries on Tlingit lands resulted in the abandonment of the village and migration to Klawock where a cannery promised jobs, a school, and a church. Vegetation soon encroached on the plank houses and many of the crest poles were either moved to totem parks by the Civilian Conservation Corps or were looted.
Southeast Alaska has supported commercial logging since the early 1900s when the largest trees with relatively easy access were cut. Logging increased dramatically in the 1950s following the signing of exclusive timber contracts with Ketchikan Pulp Company and Alaska Pulp Company. A second dramatic increase occurred in the early 1980s when Alaska Native corporations initiated logging operations. The industry peaked in the 1990s and employed crews in the thousands living in remote camps with limited access such as Naukati Bay. The majority of logged timber was assembled into large rafts for in-water storage or transport to pulp and sawmills or shipping export facilities. Coves and bays such as Naukati Bay provide the best protection from wind and waves and were the preferred locations for log transfer and storage, but are also often the most biologically productive areas of an estuary. All log transfer and log raft storage activities result in bark loss that often accumulates in extensive benthic deposits and the related effects on the marine environment have been known since the early 1970s. By the late 1990s, the federal government declined to renew a 50-year contract with a pulp mill in Ketchikan, which, along with tightening environmental and production standards, dealt a fatal blow to the largest consumer of timber in Southeast Alaska. State-owned land parcels at Naukati Bay were sold and the community of Naukati Bay has developed over the past 30 years from its original logging camp status to an independent community. Read more here and here. Explore more of Naukati Bay and Prince of Wales Island here:
