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Hunters, recreational users and people who just want to enjoy the quiet and lake view should be able to reserve the new U.S. Forest Service cabin at Little Lakes, near the Long Lake trailhead in the middle of Wrangell Island, by this fall. Construction started in May - a little later than planned, due to heavy snow at the site - and the Forest Service is looking forward to completion by the end of September, Tory Houser, Wrangell District ranger, said last week. The Áax'w Sáani Cabin - Tlingit f...
Saturday morning, bike racers began peddling the 24 mile course in Petersburg's first annual "Trekkin' Through the Tongass" bike race. 10 total participants raced through the Forest Service roads, five solo riders and one team. Petersburg Parks and Rec, Emergency Medical Services, Forest Service personnel, and friends and family of the racers came together to make the event a morning well spent. "I just couldn't be happier as an organizer. And then I was really pleased," Scott Burt, who...
Alaska U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski announced last week that her bill allowing five Alaska Native communities in Southeast Alaska to receive land entitlements passed out of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The legislation, called the Alaska Native Landless Equity Act, would allow Haines, Ketchikan, Wrangell, Petersburg, and Tenakee to form Alaska Native corporations and receive 23,040 acres each — or one township — of federal land. Those communities were excluded from the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, or ANCSA, when it... Full story
Petersburg Parks and Rec will host an approximate 24-mile bike race on Saturday, July 25. The race will both begin and end at Blind Slough, at 9 a.m., with check-in beginning at 8 a.m. Racers can either register as a relay team (up to 5 members) and split the race up, or register individually and do the entire race solo. "There's some areas with significant elevation gain, but if you break it up on a team, it makes it more doable or palatable," said Scott Burt, a Parks and Rec employee who...
Hello Market Friends To the Editor: We are thrilled to announce Bekah Gumz as the Market Manager of summer 2026! Bekah spearheaded The Market as the manager in 2024 and has participated as a vendor. She brings her interest in the arts and community to the role and we look forward to a wonderful season with her at the helm. Season details and Vendor Applications will be confirmed and available ASAP! This has been a particularly tough set up year for The Market Board and we appreciate your patience as we navigate the unpaid work of creating a...
Susan Wanberg, 77, passed away peacefully on May 3, 2026 with her family by her side. Susan was born on November 3, 1948, in Petersburg, Alaska, to Thomas Wanberg and Genevieve (Murray) Wanberg. She was the middle of three siblings, with an older brother, Daniel "Danny" Wanberg, and a younger sister, Laurie Dunham. Susan spent her childhood in Petersburg and graduated from Petersburg High School. She received a scholarship to attend beauty school in Eugene, Oregon, before moving to Juneau,... Full story
Walk downtown Petersburg during Little Norway Festival and you'll find artwork just about everywhere you look. It's in the galleries and on the walls of pop-up shows. It's on the parade floats. And it's in the storefronts of Petersburg-Wrangell Insurance, IGA, First Bank and Wells Fargo - where the students of Rae C. Stedman Elementary School have their work on display for anyone passing by. "[The festival] is quite a concentrated experience of visual creativity," said Firelight Gallery owner Ma...
This wolf swimming across Duncan Canal was seen last weekend by a passing vessel. The sea wolves of Alexander Archipelago are a distinct, smaller subspecies of gray wolves that have adapted to a coastal, marine-based lifestyle in the Tongass National Forest....
Petersburg juniors and seniors will get a crash course in adult financial life Friday morning when Tongass Federal Credit Union hosts its biennial Get Real Financial Reality Fair at the Parks and Recreation gym. The fair works like a high-stakes simulation game. Each student arrives at a registration table, picks a career and receives a corresponding income, then works their way around a circuit of staffed tables — buying a home, choosing transportation, selecting health insurance, setting up a phone plan and managing daily expenses — all while...
The U.S. Forest Service is bringing its Tongass National Forest Plan revision process to Petersburg this week, with an in-person community workshop scheduled for 5-7 p.m. Thursday, April 23, in the Borough Assembly Chambers. The event is part of a series of workshops running across 19 Southeast Alaska communities through early May — a rare opportunity for the public to provide direct input before the agency completes a draft plan. Revision coordinator Erin Mathews described it as “a bonus” engagement round not typically built into the feder...
Stephanie Pfundt has spent the better part of a decade building a career in classical music far from Petersburg - graduate school in Boston, performing across the East Coast, a produced opera in Massachusetts, a growing network of colleagues at some of the country's top music institutions. And now the award-winning Petersburg-born soprano is bringing a long-dreamed-of project to life and bringing chamber music home to Alaska. "This has been a project I've dreamt of for six years," Pfundt said....
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Begich visited Petersburg last week, holding a community meet and greet and sitting down afterward with the Pilot and the KFSK radio station. Begich, a former state senator from Anchorage, is running for governor on a platform centered on education funding, affordable energy, fiscal accountability, and a governing style he says is defined by dialogue rather than division. The meet and greet drew a roomful of Petersburg residents and discussion touched on...
A federal judge in Alaska has rejected a lawsuit that sought to reinstate a management plan that would allow heavier logging in the world’s largest temperate old-growth rainforest. The result leaves an Obama-era management plan in place, but it could be short-lived: The administration of President Donald Trump is already at work on a new plan that could allow more logging in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. In an order published Friday, Judge Sharon Gleason dismissed the lawsuit filed by Viking Lumber, Alcan Timber and the Alaska Forest Ass... Full story
U.S. Forest Service leadership is in flux as the agency takes sweeping actions in managing the 17-million-acre Tongass National Forest and making regulatory and administrative changes at all levels, Alaska-based officials reported last week. At the beginning of a four-day federal subsistence Regional Advisory Council meeting in Juneau on March 10, Tongass Supervisor Monique Nelson spoke about shifts in the agency since President Donald Trump took office in January 2025. Nelson said staffing on the Tongass is down 30% from this time last year....
I’ve spent years working alongside fishermen in coastal communities throughout the Tongass National Forest — and one thing has never changed: the people who depend on this forest for their livelihoods are the ones who understand it the best. That’s why I’m urging every Petersburg resident to submit comments on the Tongass National Forest Land Management Plan Revision before the deadline Friday night. The Forest Service has opened a 30-day public comment period on its notice of intent to revise the Tongass Land and Resource Management Plan in...
The U.S. Forest Service announced in the Federal Register Wednesday, Feb 18, that it is preparing to update the Tongass National Forest Land and Resource Management Plan to align with executive orders that President Trump issued when he took office last year. Also on Feb. 18, the Forest Service opened a 30-day public comment period on the planned update. The current Tongass plan has been in place since 1979, and the last major revision of the management plan for the 16.7-million acre national forest was in 1997. Amendments to the plan in 2016...
February 26, 1926 – There will not be an issue of the Herald next week, nor can we say at this writing whether or not there will be another issue. Henry Phillips, who has had charge of the mechanical end of this office is leaving for Skagway where he will dismantle the Skagway Daily Alaskan plant and ship it here. The Daily Alaskan, which was purchased by the Alaskan Native Brotherhood, will be set up and operated here in March giving news and job service to the local and outside business. Mr. Sidney Charles has assigned his interest in the H...
Young growth Sitka spruce from Mitkof Island, milled at Alaska Timber and Truss and shipped via the Alaska Marine Highway, now forms the timber-frame structure of an outdoor learning shelter at Pacific High School in Sitka. The impressive posts and beams of the pavilion showcase what Southeast Alaska's 50 to 60-year-old second-growth trees can produce. The structure will serve as an outdoor classroom for the alternative high school's garden-based education program. Andrew Thoms, executive...
Alaska Timber and Truss is expanding its operation at Falls Creek with a 71-acre land purchase from the Mental Health Land Trust. Brett Martin, who owns the mill with partner Mike Duman, said the acquisition will provide crucial space for sorting logs and expanding milling operations as demand increases for locally sourced lumber across the state. "We really needed somehow to be able to expand our mill operation," Martin told the Pilot last week. "When we purchased the mill, the sort yard...
Wrangell borough assembly took a step toward attracting private investment in building and operating a shipyard at the 6-Mile mill property, which the borough purchased for $2.5 million more than three years ago. During its Dec. 16 meeting, the assembly voted to approve a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Seattle-based JAG Marine Group. The agreement sets the stage for a long-term public-private partnership at the 6-Mile property, which Wrangell officials want to develop as a deepwater port. If JAG, which runs shipyards in Ketchikan and...
European green crabs, a particularly invasive species known for aggressively displacing native species and damaging important vegetation, have been found on Etolin Island just southwest of Wrangell. A monitoring effort that spans much of Southeast is working to identify and possibly mitigate their continued spread northward. The crabs were first found in Metlakatla in the summer of 2022. Since then, they've been found increasingly farther north, with Etolin Island the northernmost confirmed...
A tug and heavily laden Alaska Marine Lines barge drew notice on Monday as it transited back and forth for hours in the waters between Mountain Point and the entrances to George and Carroll inlets. Some observers noted that stacks of containers amidship on the starboard side of the Pacific Trader barge had shifted substantially and toppled over. An Alaska Marine Line statement response to a Daily News inquiry said that "weather-related issues caused containers stacked on this barge to shift on...
On the Three Lakes trail system south of Petersburg, hikers can follow miles of mostly boardwalk pathways around lakes and trees that lead deep into the Tongass National Forest on Mitkof Island. Some sections of the trail system got upgraded this summer, with help from seasonal workers contracted by the U.S. Forest Service. Recreation Specialist Tyler Shaw said some of the wooden boards that make up the Three Lakes trail system were installed in the 90s. That style of trail is called...
Petersburg's Rainforest Festival is back, after several years with dispersed year-round programming but without the customary fall festival. Taking place mostly on the weekend after Labor Day, September 3-7, the festival will once again offer an immersive celebration of local ecology, art, science, and locally harvested food. "We're really excited to have it back," says Sunny Rice, one of the festival's organizers. "While the dispersed events were lovely, it left us kind of without a Rainforest...
