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Skol! This year's Little Norway Festival kicks off today with over fifty festivities to choose from including new events, entertainment, and around 70 street vendors. Petersburg -nicknamed "Alaska's Little Norway"- traces its Norwegian foundation back to the late 1800s. Petersburg's Little Norway Festival, first held back in 1958, coincides with May 17, Norway's Constitution Day. Although the festival has changed with the times, visitors can taste traditional Norwegian foods, watch traditional d... Full story
Petersburg High School's baseball team achieved a program first last weekend as they picked up their first ever winning series against Ketchikan. Facing a team they hadn't won a game against in a decade, the series also served as the Vikings' first winning series of the season, making the weekend's achievements an even sweeter success. "All in all it was a really good outing, doing to them what they do to us quite often. It was nice to win the doubleheader, it's hard to do," said head coach Jim...
Petersburg High School’s track team are off to the races this season as they prepare for their second meet in Juneau, with their first meet already under their belts. Many of the younger Viking athletes ran on a full track for the first time ever in Ketchikan on April 19 and 20, as the team competed in running, throwing, and jumping events across the two-day meet. “The athletes who have been around knew what to expect, but we have a fair amount of young athletes who haven’t really been around so they were a little bit nervous. Overall, I think...
Let’s keep Petersburg schools - and Alaska - great To the Editor: Through no one’s fault but my own, I got busy with work and forgot to run down and attend the #RedforEd march for education. So I wanted to thank the Pilot and KFSK for covering the event as well as local school board and statewide education issues. Public school is what we make it, and in the near decade I’ve lived here I’ve seen people pour their hearts into making our schools great. I don’t have kids in the district, but as a Borough taxpayer I believe strongly in funding o...
Petersburg's Viking Swim Club's small team made a big showing last weekend at the Alaska Swimming State Championships in Anchorage. In their last major event of the short course season, Petersburg's 13 swimmers competed against the best in the state, coming out of the weekend with championship titles in 12 separate events and winning the Highest Points Per Swimmer title as a team. "It's incredibly exciting to see our growth, to see our swimmers going toe to toe with the best in the state and...
Petersburg's Viking Swim Club competed against teams from eight Southeast communities at the Southeast Championships in Juneau last weekend. The 34 kids traveled up to swim in multiple events across two days where the VSC claimed second place overall for the second year in a row, showing great improvement and shrinking the gap towards their first-place competitors in Juneau's Glacier Swim Club. "Every year that we go we score a little bit more points than we did the year before, so I'm really ha...
The cruise ship summer season is just weeks away - and for Alaska's Little Norway, the harbor is expecting 104 stops from 12 vessels. The first cruise ship is scheduled to arrive in Petersburg on April 27; consistent cruise ship traffic can be expected from May 6 to Sept. 22, with as many as seven port-calls, or stops, in a given week. The cruise ships coming to Petersburg this year are about the same size as recent years - most with a capacity of about 40 to 100 passengers. However, the total...
Petersburg swimmers Tori Miller and Lexie Tow both competed in a pre-qualifying event in Federal Way Washington from March 21-24. The Viking Swim Club duo along with eight other Southeast swimmers raced against almost 1400 kids from nine different states, all aged from 10 and under to 18, with Miller and Tow both performing well in incredibly competitive events. "A lot of amazing swims took place there, and the Viking Swim Club and the kids should be proud," said Jason Miller, Tori's father....
Clausen Memorial Museum recently acquired 109 hardbound copies of various Petersburg newspapers dating as far back as early 1913. Sue Paulsen took possession of the historic papers when the library began creating a digital archive and has now donated them to the museum. Petersburg's first newspaper was issued on January 18, 1913. The Progressive, published by J.E. Rivard and H. Frederick Johnson, only ran for a year. On December 5, 1914, The Petersburg Weekly Report became the next weekly newspa...
The middle school wrestling season just officially wrapped up, although for the Mitkof Vikings it was over a couple weeks ago since none of our wrestlers were able to pay their way to state. That was especially disappointing for Drew Beavers, who placed 2nd at the regional meet in Ketchikan. Looking back at the season, Petersburg hosted the Stikine Invitational meet less than two weeks after winter break, and Viking wrestlers performed strong against the fifty or so visiting wrestlers. In the...
The Vikings finished their regular season off strong with two wins against Craig last weekend in Petersburg. Friday's game was a back and forth brawl with a dominant fourth quarter performance, but on Saturday the team was dominant all game long, giving the team some momentum as they head into the regional tournament this week. Although Friday's game had highs and lows, the Vikings started things off with a bang. "We had a good start to it. We had a 16-5 lead at the end of the first quarter and...
Emilie Mae Sperl, 47 Emilie Mae Sperl passed peacefully from this world on January 6, 2024. Emilie was born July 1, 1976 to Dennis and Dorothy (Bentley) Sperl in Petersburg, Alaska. She was the third of six adventurous children and her early years were spent with her family at their homestead at Green Rocks "across the bay." In the house her dad built they gardened, raised animals, fished and foraged. Emilie was very excited to be able to start school at Rae C Stedman Elementary. On most days,... Full story
In January The Petersburg Borough Assembly unanimously voted to award the construction contract for the Blind Slough Hydroelectric refurbishment project to McG/Dawson Joint Venture for an amount not to exceed $5,744,000. The Petersburg Borough Assembly unanimously approved an ordinance in its first reading that would rezone a lot located at 10 N. 12th Street for commercial use. The rezoning was requested by the Petersburg Indian Association ahead of their prospective purchase of the lot, which h...
Petersburg swimmers Tori and Bella Miller traveled down to the lower 48 earlier this month to compete against some of the best in the country at US Swimming Interval Medley Xtreme (IMX) in Mesa Arizona. Amongst a group of six Alaskan swimmers, the Miller duo competed against kids from Southwest, Pacific Northwest, and Midwest states, coming out of the competition with several impressive performances in various events. IMX is a yearly event that hosts young swimmers and helps them ease into a...
The Viking Swim Club made sure to give the home crowd a show at their annual November Rain meet in Petersburg last weekend. The local swimmers had impressive performances at the event with loads of high placements, strong rates of personal improvement, and successes in new categories. "[The team] was beyond excited and happy. Since this was a home meet, we had a great turnout... we had 48 of our swimmers compete this past weekend, and they did great," said VSC coach Scott Burt. November Rain is...
Derek Gibb, a 1999 PHS graduate, traveled last month back to his alma mater, Auburn University in Alabama, to be recognized along with his team for their NCAA title for swimming in 2003. He hadn't seen most of his teammates in 15 years, but the majority of them were there. There was a reception for the alumni, then a recognition ceremony on October 28th at the Auburn football game in front of 88,000 people. "It was cool to see everyone after so long . . . they're all successful with families."...
Local support makes VSC auction a huge success To the Editor: Viking Swim Club would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to our wonderful community for their overwhelming support of the Viking Swim Club Auction. The success of this event would not have been possible without the incredible generosity and dedication of our friends and neighbors. First and foremost, we want to thank the many donors who contributed items, services, and experiences to our auction. Their willingness to give back to the community is truly inspiring. The local and...
The air in town is crisp, leaves continue to fall and the mornings are turning frosty. Even with the bright sunshine seen in Petersburg this week, the season is certainly shifting. The transition of summer to winter brings more than a change in weather; seasonal industries shift, and the change prompts reflection. How did this summer go? Several of Petersburg's new tourism businesses look back on their 2023 season. VIKING TRAVEL James and Madeleine Valentine are the owners of Viking Travel, a...
The Viking Swim Club (VSC) annual dinner and auction takes place this Saturday, Oct. 28. Doors open at 6:00 pm upstairs at the Elks. The event is the youth swim program’s largest fundraiser, generating around 35% of the program’s budget through the evening’s raffle and auction. The effort helps pay the salaries of the coaches, supports swim meet travel costs, and helps keep membership dues affordable. VSC is not a school district activity. It’s a three season long activity for Petersburg kids. And this year’s auction is also honoring the 50th...
September 28, 1923 – Testifying in her action for divorce in Judge Hall’s court, Mrs. Otto Burkhardt branded her husband, Frederick Otto Burkhardt, the wealthy Alaska salmon packer, as an arsonist and testified that he purposely set the fires which destroyed the cannery at Chilkoot in 1919 and for which $290,000 insurance money was collected [$5,206,870 today]. Her testimony reads as follows: “I followed him down from the house to the cannery. He did not see me or know that I was there. I watched him go in and, from one end of the canne...
The sun is shining, the days are longer, and bands of people wearing identical jackets are wandering around main street. "Petersburg can expect an uptick in tourism for...this 2023 summer season," said James Valentine, the co-owner of Viking Travel and a cruise line agency representative. "Alaska in general just seems to be a really hot spot for cruise ship tourism and tourism in general." According to the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development, an estimated 2.5 million people...
