Diamond NN is a historic cannery in South Naknek at the mouth of the Naknek River that flows into Kvichak Bay, an arm of Bristol Bay, about 56 miles (90 km) southeast of Dillingham and 13 miles (21 km) west of King Salmon, Alaska. The salmon cannery was built by the Alaska Packer’s Association in 1894, on the site of a saltery built by the Arctic Packing Company in 1890. The name is from the diamond-shaped accounting symbol around the initials ‘NN’, which likely was for ‘NakNek’. The cannery was rebranded as the <NN>, pronounced “Diamond NN”. Naknek River is a name from the Yup’ik language first reported in 1821 by the Russian explorer, Captain Mikhail Vasilyev, who wrote the name as ‘Naugeik’. In 1826, Lieutenant Gavril Sarychev reported the name as ‘Naugvik’, and in 1836, Captain Friedrich B. von Lütke published the name as ‘Naknek’. The river starts at the outlet of Naknek Lake and flows generally west for 35 miles (56 km), draining a watershed of 2,398,984 acres (970,834 ha). The watershed mostly consists of glacial and alluvial deposits from the Pleistocene and Holocene. Approximately 10,000 years ago, a super-size Naknek Lake was dammed by a moraine that eventually breached, causing the lake water to drain and forming the present-day Naknek, Brooks, Coville, and Grosvenor lakes in the upper watershed.
When Russian fur hunters occupied the northern Alaska Peninsula around 1820, the Yup’ik speaking Alutiiq Sugpiaq people occupied all settlements except on the shore of Bristol Bay which were held by the Central Yup’ik speaking Aglurmiut people. The archaeological record indicates that an Aglurmiut intrusion occurred between 1800 and 1810 AD. In 1829, the maps by Captain Mikhail Vasilyev show two Aglurmiut villages at the mouth of the Naknek River, with Paugvik on the north shore which is ancestral to modern Naknek, and Kougumik, now spelled ‘Qinuyang’, on the south shore which is ancestral to present-day South Naknek. The 1912 eruption of Novarupta Volcano displaced most of the Alutiiq villages, but the two settlements at the mouth of the Naknek River were relatively unaffected. The Alutiiq village of ‘Old Savonoski‘ located at the eastern end of Naknek Lake was abandoned and today, many descendants of Old Savonoski live in the present-day villages of King Salmon and South Naknek and continue living a traditional subsistence lifestyle.
Soon after the 1867 Alaska Purchase, the commercial fishing industry began to develop in Bristol Bay and by 1937, commercial salmon packing was the third-largest extractive industry in the American West, with a greater value in Alaska than gold or copper mining. From its establishment as a four-building saltery in 1890, Diamond NN expanded into an industrial complex with 51 buildings on 46 acres under Alaska Packer’s Association which operated the facility until 1982, when it was sold to the Midwest conglomerate ConAgra. In 1987, ConAgra merged with Trident Seafoods to operate its salmon canneries. Then, in 1995, Trident bought itself back from ConAgra, becoming the largest seafood company in the United States. In 2001, the 110-year-old Diamond NN cannery produced it’s last canned salmon pack. Trident kept the facility open as a fisherman’s camp, which provided boat storage and logistical support for its vast operation. In 2016, the cannery permanently closed to fishermen. In 2023, Trident announced that the company was divesting from several operations in Alaska and in 2024 the Diamond NN Cannery was listed for $1M. Read more here and here. Explore more of Diamond NN Cannery and South Naknek here:
