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Sons of Norway Hall was warm with cheer on Wednesday, Dec. 11, seafood's tastiest night of the year in Petersburg - the annual pickled herring contest. For fifty flavorful years, Petersburg's finest fish smokers and picklers have come together on a December evening to submit their specialties for judgement by the year's designated taste testers. Winners claim possession of the trophies and bragging rights for the year. But it could be said that the real winners are the scores of food lovers who...
WRANGELL - It was 1869 and smoke filled the winter air. Cannon balls ripped through Tlingit homes while U.S. Army shells shrieked across the sky. The same type of artillery used against the Confederates just four years prior was now turned on the Tlingit people of Wrangell, in their homeland which they called Ḵaachx̱aana.áakʼw. One hundred and fifty-five years later, the U.S. Army is apologizing. The apology is scheduled to take place in Wrangell on Jan. 11, 2025. Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Army...
A dead sea lion filled the back of Brandon Ware's pickup, hanging off the tailgate. Ware was wrestling with fat and fur, slowly skinning the animal. "All I have to do is gently run my knife through it," he said. "It separates the fat from the body and pulls the skin down a little bit more, just like peeling a banana." The massive animal had been terrorizing people and pets in Petersburg's South Harbor. It was killed on Saturday, but not by law enforcement. Instead, they collaborated with Ware,...
U.S. Forest Service Law Enforcement Officer Joey Boggs is back home in Petersburg this week after escorting the now-famous 80-foot Sitka spruce - known as "The People's Tree" - from Zarembo Island to the front lawn of the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C. On Zarembo, Petersburg's Rock-N-Road Construction - Sig Burrell and his crew including Jimmy Martinsen, Clayton Martinsen, Ethan File and Tore Lenz - were the ones who harvested the tree. It was the peak of their summer construction season, and...
This is the final week of operations for Papa Bear's Pizza - downtown Petersburg's iconic pizza shop which has been family operated for the past twenty-two years. The business and the building have been purchased by Tom Westoff, owner and operator of Coastal Cold Storage - a custom seafood processor and popular breakfast and lunch restaurant which moved out of their former location on main street this fall. Coastal's restaurant is reshaping itself into Coastal Bear, with Peter Brantuas set to...
The Petersburg Borough will enter negotiations with a local developer who wants to buy seven borough-owned lots between Severson Subdivision and Skylark Way. Skylark Park LLC wants to develop the land into a major subdivision with roads and utilities that could provide cheaper housing options in Petersburg. In 2023, a survey found that the town needs over 300 more housing units in the next decade. Borough Manager Steve Giesbrecht told the Petersburg Borough Assembly at a meeting Dec. 2 that...
A volunteer DJ at Petersburg's public radio station accidentally discharged a handgun during his music show on Friday, December 6. No one was hurt. Police responded and determined that the man was not a threat to the community. KFSK's Hannah Flor was at the station but didn't see the incident. It was Friday afternoon when KFSK's General Manager Tom Abbott heard a gunshot just outside his office. "I heard it, and it startled me. I looked and the volunteer was standing there, and he had a gun,"...
Alaska Airlines has received a federal subsidy since 1976 to provide Wrangell and Petersburg with twice-daily jet service, and community leaders in each community are rounding up support to urge the government to issue a new contract after the current agreement expires in 2025. “I want to ensure it stays around,” Wrangell Mayor Patty Gilbert said of her petition drive to show community support for Alaska Airlines under the U.S. Department of Transportation Essential Air Service program. Sixty-five communities in Alaska —including 10 more in So...
On Monday the Petersburg Borough Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution opposing a proposal coming before the Board of Fish two months from now which seeks to reduce the production of hatchery chum and hatchery pink salmon in Southeast Alaska by 25 percent. Max Worhatch, a Petersburg commercial salmon fisherman, addressed the assembly at the start of Monday’s meeting “to voice the commercial fishing industry’s support of a resolution to oppose the Board of Fish Proposal 156.” “Hatchery production has long been an important element of the vi...
Petersburg's student-run nonprofit movie theater, the Northern Nights Theater, has run out of reserves and will have to make some changes starting in January. The last few years have been very challenging and expensive for the organization. Sitting unused through the early stages of the pandemic led to major malfunctions with the movie projector, Theater Manager Cyndy Fry told the Pilot. "We basically had to buy the whole computer guts of the system, [and then] because of that change we had to...
Mitkof Highway was closed to through traffic for around eight hours on Sunday, Dec. 1, after a power pole snapped under the weight of snow and ice on the line – leaving power lines on the ground crossing the highway. The pole failure occurred around 2:30 p.m. just past 9-mile and caused an 11 hour 10 minute power outage for the entire circuit from the Scow Bay substation out to Blind Slough. Winds reached 35 mph with sideways rain as the crew from Petersburg Municipal Power and Light worked i...
After 11 straight years with more residents leaving Alaska than arriving, the state for the first time projects a long-term population decline, according to a report released Monday from the state’s demographer. And as Alaskans keep getting older, the number of deaths will rise while births keep falling, adding to the population decline looking out to 2050, according to David Howell, state demographer, writing in the state’s latest Alaska Economic Trends magazine. The projections, if they hold, could have important consequences, he said in an...
A Petersburg borough sanding truck slid into another vehicle on an icy hill and then rolled into the muskeg on December 1. The truck was going up a hill to the local dump at around 4:30 p.m. Dave Berg is a spokesperson for the Petersburg Volunteer Fire Department. He said the sand that the truck had just put down was no match for the steep, slick road. "He was heading up the hill," he said. "There was another vehicle following him, and the sander stopped, [it] basically was not getting any...
During the 1940s and 1950s, Petersburg's ski hill was the place to be on a winter's day, and the new exhibit at Clausen Memorial Museum opening on Sunday, Dec. 8 shows why. "The ski hill was a really big part of Petersburg between the years of 1939 and 1959," Clausen Museum curator Anne Lee told the Pilot. "It was up where the rock quarry is now, behind the airport ... they had a ski jump, and ski competitions, the ski hill, cross country races, downhill events, and they eventually had a tow...
WRANGELL — Tidal Network is operating in its test mode, with about a dozen Wrangell households trying out the new wireless internet service provided by the Central Council Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska. Wrangell is the first location in Southeast to get the new service, which is funded by a federal grant for construction and later will be expanded across the region. During the testing phase, technicians will be “breaking it to fix it,” looking to maximize the signals’ range and finding the best system for managing the fiber optic a...
Staff at Petersburg Medical Center sprung into action earlier this month when a sudden leak erupted from part of the building's hydronic heating system, spewing dozens of gallons of mixed water in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) room behind the nurse's station on the hospital's second floor. Maintenance staff were able to patch the leak with plumbing parts, but have not been able to find a replacement for the actual piece that was leaking yet. There was not a patient in that particular room at the... Full story
Alaska Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom said Monday that she intends to recount a narrowly defeated ballot initiative to repeal ranked choice voting and open primaries. After a final ballot count last week, Ballot Measure 2 was defeated 49.9% to 50.1%. The repeal effort failed by 664 votes. “Alaska law ensures the integrity of our elections, and with results as close as these, a recount will be conducted as outlined by statute,” Dahlstrom said in a prepared statement. Under Alaska law, the state will pay for a recount in races where the margin is les...
Chris Herren, a former NBA player and renowned addiction recovery speaker is flying in on Wednesday, Dec. 5 to speak with Mitkof Middle School and Petersburg High School students and share his eye-opening journey from success to addiction to recovery. Once a high school basketball star recruited to play in college and then two seasons in the NBA, Herren's promising career was derailed by addiction. His story has been documented in the memoir, "Basketball Junkie" and in "Unguarded," an...
Advisory committees are making recommendations to the state Board of Fish for hundreds of proposals to change certain fishing regulations - a process that happens once every three years for the region. Proposals were submitted by members of the public, organizations, advisory committees and ADFG staff earlier this year. The Petersburg Advisory Committee for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) coordinated with Crystal Lake Hatchery operators Southern Southeast Regional Aquaculture...
Before a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision removed the legal barrier to apply local sales taxes to online purchases, states and municipalities were blocked from collecting sales taxes from sellers that did not have a physical presence in the tax jurisdiction. Most online merchants declined to collect sales taxes on goods shipped into states and cities with a local tax. Residents of Petersburg could purchase tax-free orders from Walmart, Eddie Bauer and other vendors online. After the ruling, to...
Joey Chang says he was getting ready to depart the Hubbard state ferry after it docked in Kake on Saturday when suddenly the ship was no longer at the dock. "We are getting ready to get into the vehicle and we saw the opening of the ramp, and suddenly the whole ferry was moving away from the dock, and everybody got shocked and pretty much everyone froze up," he said. "The north wind was blowing so hard it pushed the ferry away from the dock." "And then I was looking at the rope, because the...
Alaska’s open primary and ranked choice voting system survived, while Republican U.S. House candidate Nick Begich defeated Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola, according to the unofficial results released on Wednesday. The Alaska Division of Elections completed the ranked choice tabulations for all nine races in which no candidate received more than 50% of first-preference ballots. The division is targeting Nov. 30 as the date by which it will certify the results. There will be another tabulation completed then. Until that is completed, the results ar... Full story
The members of the Petersburg Volunteer Fire Department elected Dan Bird this month to replace Jim Stolpe as fire chief. Stolpe served two three-year terms as chief, and he intends to continue his volunteering career with PVFD for as long as he is able - though he plans to let his EMT certification expire in the coming year and will slow down a little when it comes to rushing into burning buildings. "After 45 years of doing it, I figure it's time for that younger generation to pick that ball up...
Earlier this month, the Petersburg Borough Assembly passed an ordinance updating the sales tax chapter of municipal code to clarify exemptions and rules for businesses, modernize definitions and organize information for better transparency - borough officials emphasized that the ordinance does not introduce new taxes or exemptions, nor does it change how sales tax is applied locally. The amendment highlights existing information about sales tax into clear new sections and adds definitions that w...
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