Union Bay is located on the lower Cleveland Peninsula at the southern entrance to Ernest Sound, between Lemesurier Point to the west and Union Point to the east, about 3 miles (4.8 km) northeast of Meyers Chuck and 34 miles (55 km) northwest of Ketchikan, Alaska. The bay is the site of a historical salmon cannery at the mouth of Cannery Creek. The bay was named Union Bay by fishermen, and the name was first reported in 1904 by Harry C. Fassett on the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries research vessel, Albatross. The Cleveland Peninsula is about 50 miles (80 km) long and 10 to 15 miles (16-24 km) wide, subdivided into distinct upper and lower regions. The lower peninsula separates Behm Canal from Ernest Sound, while the upper peninsula separates Behm Canal from Bradfield Canal and is largely contiguous with the Boundary Ranges of the Coast Mountains. Cannery Creek drains a watershed on the Cleveland Peninsula and flows generally west for about 5 miles (8 km) from a deglaciated cirque at an elevation of 2,000 feet (610 m) to sea level. The granitic intrusions forming the Boundary Ranges are remnants of the Late Cretaceous Coast Range Arc, a volcanic arc system. Southeast Alaska comprises several accreted terranes—landmasses that originated elsewhere, were transported by plate tectonics, and joined previously accreted terranes or the western margin of proto-North America, roughly in their current locations. The lower Cleveland Peninsula mainly consists of rocks from the Gravina Sequence, formed from the Middle Jurrasic to the Late Cretaceous. This sequence includes graywacke, argillite, and conglomerate. Union Bay and Cannery Creek are underlain by intruded volcanic rocks such as dunite, gabbro, and diorite.

During the late Pleistocene, a continental ice sheet covered Southeast Alaska, reaching thicknesses of up to 3,280 feet (1,000 m) and extending over the continental shelf in the Gulf of Alaska. Cosmogenic nuclide dating indicates that the fjords and straits were deglaciated about 14,900 years ago. Small remnant ice caps may have persisted in high-elevation areas until the early Holocene. The earliest evidence of human occupation in Southeast Alaska dates to the early to mid-Holocene, often found at elevations of 52 to 72 feet (16 to 22 m) above sea level. After the Last Glacial Maximum, sea levels rose rapidly due to melting glaciers, but the land, previously depressed under the ice’s weight, gradually rebounded to its current position. Between 900 and 1400 AD, ancestral Tlingit people migrated northward from the Pacific coast between the Nass and Skeena Rivers. Eventually, 17 tribally distinct groups, known as kwaans, occupied most of Southeast Alaska. The Tlingit used pictographs to record historical events and mark clan territories. A notable pictograph is located on a steep overhanging rock wall in Emerald Bay, on the west coast of the Cleveland Peninsula, about 12 miles (19 km) northeast of Union Bay. This pictograph depicts a large face representing a shark, featuring two large eyes and crescent-shaped lines on both sides symbolizing gills. This motif seems to be a clan crest, possibly marking territory. In 1741, Russian navigator Aleksei Chirikov was the first European to visit Southeast Alaska. In 1774, Spaniard Juan José Pérez Hernández sighted the south coast of Dall Island. The following year, Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra entered Bucareli Bay off Prince of Wales Island. In 1792, Jacinto Caamaño sighted Revillagigedo Island and the Gravina Islands, discovering Clarence Strait. Captain George Vancouver conducted an extensive survey of the Alexander Archipelago in 1793 and 1794. He circumnavigated Revillagigedo and Admiralty Islands, charting Kuiu Island, the east sides of Baranof and Chichagof Islands, and Etolin, Wrangell, Zarembo, Mitkof, and Kupreanof Islands. Within a decade, the archipelago became a hub for the maritime fur trade controlled by the Russian-American Company. In 1867, the Alaska Purchase transferred the territory from Russia to the United States.

In 1916, a salmon cannery was established at the mouth of Cannery Creek in Union Bay by the Union Bay Fisheries Company. G.W. Hume took over the facility in 1923 and sold it the following year to The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, which operated it through its subsidiary, the Nakat Packing Company, in 1925. A floating clam cannery and a herring reduction plant were also present during this time at Meyers Chuck, a small community on the west side of Lemesurier Point. A post office, store, machine shop, barbershop, bakery, and bar developed there to support residents. By 1939, 107 people lived year-round in Meyers Chuck. When fish runs began to decline in the 1940s, many residents left to join the armed forces or work in wartime production jobs in the Lower 48. The Union Bay Cannery burned down in 1947 and was never rebuilt, but Meyers Chuck persists as a community and was withdrawn from the Tongass National Forest in the 1960s. The Union Bay Cannery is linked to a pivotal moment in modern Chinese history and is reputedly taught in Chinese colleges and documented in a film. Li Gongpu was a prominent Chinese poet and scholar who traveled to the United States in 1922 to study fine arts and literature. In 1928, he documented life in Alaskan canneries for Chinese workers, choosing Union Bay for his observations. His accounts are likely the only first-hand Chinese descriptions of cannery work in Alaska before World War II and certainly the most sophisticated. Li noted the beauty of the cannery’s location and detailed the ethnic diversity of workers from China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Mexico, Italy, Switzerland, and undocumented regions. He objectively observed the biases of the time, noting interactions among workers and how social status was influenced by global perceptions of their countries. Li later returned to China, where his outspoken activism led to his assassination by the Kuomintang secret service in 1946. Read more here and here. Explore more of Union Bay and Ernest Sound here: