Icy Strait Point is a restored salmon cannery on Cannery Point, located on the south shore of Icy Strait and at the eastern mouth of Port Frederick—a deep embayment on the northeast coast of Chichagof Island, about 22 miles (35 km) south-southeast of Gustavus and 1.6 miles (2.6 km) north-northwest of Hoonah, Alaska. Icy Strait is a water passage roughly 50 miles (80 km) long at the north end of Chichagof Island, between Chatham Strait to the east and Cross Sound to the west. Port Frederick is a fjord on the north end of Chichagof Island that extends 19 miles (30 km) south from Icy Strait. The fjord was named in 1794 by Captain George Vancouver after Adolphus Frederick, the son of King George III of England. In 1869, Commander Richard W. Meade, aboard the USS Saginaw, recorded the Tlingit name for the bay as ‘Komtok Hon.’ The Huna Tlingit have lived in Cross Sound, Glacier Bay, and along Icy Strait for thousands of years and regard Glacier Bay as their sacred homeland. During the peak of the Little Ice Age—a period from the early 14th century to the late 18th century—glacial advance forced the Huna to relocate from Glacier Bay to Port Frederick. In 1794, Lieutenant Joseph Whidbey explored Icy Strait during Captain Vancouver’s expedition and reported that a wall of ice 2 miles (3.2 km) wide blocked his progress along the north coast at what is now the mouth of Glacier Bay. Vancouver claimed the land for Britain in conflict with an earlier Russian claim, a dispute resolved by the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1825. In 1867, the Alaska Purchase transferred the territory from Russia to the United States. In 1901, a post office established at the Huna village in Port Frederick gave the village its present name, Hoonah. The Huna Tlingit call themselves Xúna Kaawu, meaning ‘people of shelter from the north wind.’ The name was transcribed as ‘Hoonah’ by the first postmaster and has persisted.

The Tlingit maintained private property rights over salmon streams, enabling them to exploit this vital resource with little competition. After Alaska’s 1867 purchase from Russia, industrial‐scale fishing quickly reduced salmon populations. By 1900, the fishery had become Alaska’s economic backbone until World War II. As canneries proliferated, entrepreneurs turned to stationary fish traps instead of boat fishing. A trap consisted of pilings driven into the seabed with netting strung between them to stop fish. The fish swam until forced through a narrow funnel into an enclosure. The catch was periodically scooped and dumped into barges, or scows. Traps required fewer men than purse seine boats and preserved fish in excellent condition, though this sometimes led to piracy. Their fixed locations simplified regulation, but traps often caught non‐target species that were discarded. In 1878—11 years after the Alaska Purchase—the first canneries were built at Klawock and Sitka with little federal oversight. In 1890, the Bartlett Bay Packing Company established the first cannery in southeast Alaska’s Icy Strait District on the east shore of Glacier Bay. By 1900, the Western Fisheries Company had built a cannery in Dundas Bay, which operated under various owners until 1931. Two years later, the Tlinket Packing Company built one at Icy Strait’s head in Funter Bay on Admiralty Island, while the Astoria Puget Sound Company set up a facility in Excursion Inlet on the north shore. In 1911, the Hawk Inlet Fish Company built a cannery on Chatham Strait, and in 1912 the Hoonah Packing Company constructed a modern plant at Cannery Point. By 1914, 175 fish traps operated in Southeast Alaska and 37 in Icy Strait. Hoonah Packing expanded from four traps in 1912 to 12 by 1915. In 1917, it produced 152,505 cases—with 48 one‐pound cans each, about 65 pounds of salmon per case—for a total exceeding 15 million fish. In 1922, its final year, the company used 24 traps.

The Hoonah Packing Company cannery closed in 1923 and remained closed until 1934, when the Icy Straits Salmon Company purchased it. Meanwhile, a thriving Hoonah purse‐seine fleet supplied the surviving Excursion Inlet cannery and a new Pelican plant. Hoonah seine fishermen honed their skills in the passes of the Inian Islands linking Icy Strait and Cross Sound 20 miles west of Hoonah. The fishery, targeting pink and chum salmon, faced challenges from tides over 20 feet and currents over 8 knots—beyond the reach of older boats. In 1934, new owners installed modern canning machinery and relied on independent fishermen rather than operating fish traps. Regulations required a minimum 1.5-mile spacing between traps in Icy Strait and Cross Sound, limiting new installations. A fleet of about 20 seine boats supplied the cannery until 1953, when a collapsed salmon run prompted President Dwight Eisenhower to declare a disaster. In the 1950s, the Hoonah fleet stabilized at 12 to 14 boats supplying Pelican, opened in 1941. When Alaska became a state in 1959, fish traps were outlawed, forcing Pelican to close in 1960 and leaving only the Excursion Bay cannery in operation. During the 1960s, salmon handling remained poor. Fish were transported in boat holds or scows without ice, and a tool called a pew damaged fish by impaling the body. With traps banned, the number of seine boats grew dramatically. By 1963 about 200 boats fished the Inian Islands; by 1964 an additional 60 to 90 joined, eventually totaling around 400. The large Hoonah fleet intercepted salmon headed for major rivers like the Taku and Stikine, causing inland shortages. The Icy Strait purse‐seine fishery closed in 1974; by 2009 only two boats remained. In 1996, the Huna Totem Corporation restored the cannery as a museum. See a short video of the fishery here. Read more here and here. Explore more of Icy Strait Point and Port Frederick here: