This weekend I've spent my spare time scanning Clyda Christensen's slides (all 400 of them) from Karluk in the 1950s. Karluk is a small village situated on the Southwest corner of Kodiak Island. Really an amazing collection of images. I used photoshop to stitch together two of Clyda's images from 1957 and realized it depicted the same view of the Karluk spit as another well-known image from the Albatross Collection in the National Archives taken around 1890.
Back in 1890 the Karluk spit was home to a number of canneries and the river was one of the top producers of salmon in the world. The canneries imported chinese labor, and Karluk River salmon was exported far and wide.
By the 1950's most of the canneries on the spit had been torn down or swept away in winter storms. Karluk was no longer the major commercial hub it had once been, and quite a few of the local Alutiiq had moved to the nearby village of Larsen Bay.
Around 1980 a major storm breached the spit and over the ensueing 20 years the river slowly eroded away the rest of the spit. The canneries of the Karluk spit are now all gone. The modern day village of Karluk is now situated about a mile inland on the south side of the Karluk lagoon.
I spent my first summer in Alaska (1985) as a field hand helping to excavate the prehistoric village at the base of the upriver end of the bluff on the right side of the photo (the little spit that sticks out with houses on it). Since 1985 the entire site has been demolished by the river. I can't wait to get back to Karluk and take another photo of the same view from the exact same spot as Clyda stood in 1957. I'll then have three photos spanning 120 years documenting how the spit has changed.
Patrick
2 comments:
Patrick,
I'm reading a good book right now that is set partly in Karluk in the 1890s during the early days of the canneries there. It's "The Trail Led North -- Mont Hawthorne's Story" by Martha Ferguson McKeown, (1948, The Macmillan Co.). Some very exciting passages from his time setting up and running a cannery for San Francisco Mayor Edward Pond in 1889.
So it's very nice to see some photos of around that time to get a better sense of the place.
I read the Karluk section of that book a few years ago! I love the part where they confiscate all the chinese booze. A bit hokey of a book, but it does contain some good details and a feel for the times. At the time, I wanted to incorporate some of the passages into an exhibit we did on the Alutiiq and Canneries. I wanted to emphasize the chinese laborer presense. But we never did - we will have to in the futrue!
Patrick
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