Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Story last updated at 2/26/2014 - 1:49 pm

By Pat Roppel | For the Capital City Weekly

So many small islands in Southeast Alaska were dedicated in the 1920s and early 1930s to blue fox farming. It was fashionable in that era to wear fox fur coats, stoles, cuffs and collars. Two small islands, protecting Zarembo Island's St. John Harbor, nurtured foxes for their furs.

St. John Harbor indents the northwest side of Zarembo Island, off Sumner Strait and almost opposite the southern entrance to Wrangell Narrows. Today it is a favorite harbor for fishermen, fish tenders, vessels involved with nearby logging, and visiting yachts waiting for high tide to go through the narrows to Petersburg.

A number of years ago, my husband Frank and I, traveling aboard the Twinkle, decided to see if any remains could be found about 70 years after the farms were abandoned. Northerly Island - as the name implies - is an island that is at the northern mouth of the harbor. Officers on the gunboat USS Adams named it in 1885. Southerly Island is on the southwest entry. It too was named by the unimaginative officers of the Adams.

In the early 1920s, farming foxes on an island (where the animals could not swim away) became popular. W. W. McLaughlin, formerly in charge of the Petersburg Signal Corps office, decided Northerly Island suited his purposes. In 1921, he leased the island from the federal government and spent the next year building a dock and float to facilitate loading and unloading supplies.

We found where the dock had been located. The pilings were no longer visible, but we found a sturdy rock wall alongside a flat, rocked platform leading into the water. The location surprised us.

Why had he chosen this site? We knew from experience that southeast winds hit the island. Years before, on a sunny December trip, we tied to the face of the U.S. Forest Service dock on the westerly side of the bay. In the night, a strong southeaster blew up, slamming the Twinkle against the dock. The boat survived the night and in the morning we began, (after looking out at mountainous waves in Sumner Strait), a search for a protected anchorage.

The fox farm dock was on the southeasterly side, and it was uncomfortably rough there. We anchored on the westerly side of Northerly Island and still encountered wind-whipped water. With a smaller boat or skiff, the fox farmer had more choices than we did.

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The islands with a Furry history