NN Cannery History Project Articles, Essays & History

Walking with Winter

by

Katherine Johnson Ringsmuth

On the north side of the Naknek River, during the first snowstorm of the season, I walk with winter along a stony beach, struggling to hold on to the edge of the world. Bristol Bay exhales winds that heave across the mudflats, blasting Alaska's blunt western coastline. It is here, where land meets sea, that such volatile and unpredictable weather patterns form. Pulling my cap tight over my ears, I turn against the October winds, and notice my footprints filling with tiny flakes of snow.

Each summer, before the king salmon hit subsistence nets, I come to Bristol Bay.  When the last red salmon escape commercial nets and return home to spawn, I also return from where I came.  This year is different, though. Along with biologists, oceanographers, NOAA scientists and other fishery experts, I've come to Bristol Bay to attend the 1998 Fall Fisheries Conference. I've since graduated from salmon slimer to fisheries historian, and now I tell fish stories for a living.  In the hours before I'm scheduled to speak, I spend them mute on this beach, staring into the storm, watching winter come home to Bristol Bay.

The scientists gathered for the Fall Fisheries Conference watch weather too. In 1997, the famed Bristol Bay Reds disappeared somewhere between Port Moller and Egegik.  That summer, ocean temperatures reached the warmest on record, while a phytoplankton bloom the size of Kansas appeared in the Bering Sea. The fishing season was deemed a disaster, but the salmon mystery remained-- "What happened to the missing reds?"  

Everyone had a theory.  Fishermen pointed fingers at high seas factory trawlers, others blamed beluga whales.  Late night loungers with too much time and liquor suspected space aliens. But when oceanographers discovered a major oscillation shift in the Pacific, fish biologists developed their own theory. They found that historic fish catches fluctuated simultaneously with the changing climate.  In other words, the culprit causing Alaska's salmon runs to decline just might be bad weather.

I am no expert on Alaskan weather, but I am no stranger to it either.  In Fairbanks where I attended graduate school, just when sandhill cranes leave Creamers Field, frigid temperatures begin to seize the Tanana Flats.  Each day, as the sun's rays strain to reach beyond the Alaskan Range, winter drains the Interior of motion, bringing it to a near halt.  Rivers freeze, forests crystallize, and people stay indoors.  Not even wind can bluster up the energy to penetrate Fairbanks's brutal cold.  

But here on the Alaska Peninsula, it seems that winter weather is alive, like a shark that never stops moving. Bristol Bay's prevailing southwest winds continuously attack the advancing boreal forests, which extends across North America, eastward to Nova Scotia. The williwahs stunt and disfigure renegade spruce that try to occupy the tundra and the barren Aleutian Chain.  And despite my thick gloves and insulated boots, splinters of ice bit my raw fingers and toes.

Bristol Bay weather has other faces too.  It can be a primadonna, forcing anyone who goes outside to pay attention to it.  The weather never lets you forget you live in Alaska.  The weather can also be a trickster that transforms a calm lake into a cankerous slur of waves.  And it is an enigma, for even during the worst of storms, a thin, blue atmospheric light lovingly caresses this northern landscape, bringing clarity and warmth to a complex and harsh environment. I close my eyes, and imprinted on the inside of my eyelids, still burning, is the empty northern sky.

I open them to see a raven investigating me as I trespass on what surely he thinks is his beach. I eyeball him respectfully--I don't want to challenge the Trickster, thief of the sun. Many Alaska legends say Raven is also the Creator, a fickle Creator, however, one who is as unpredictable as nature and the season he controls. Raven soars on top of thermals, surfing on the sky currents. Like the weather, raven always moves, always looks, always gazes out across his world, watching for some mischief to get into or something to eat.  Plunging and tumbling, he seems amused by this wild weather.  I wonder if Raven is making the snow fall harder now. In the beginning, Raven was as white as the snow, but when he stole freshwater from Ganook he got stuck in a smoke-hole that turned his feathers black. As it turns out, we benefited by Raven's greed.  For when he flew out of the smoke-hole, Raven spit drops of water to the earth that became rivers and streams. 

Watching snowfall blanket the beach I realize I have not escaped Raven's trickery.  Before, my footprints carried winter behind me, now winter strides ahead. With each step my wet boots expose the dark beach rocks. Like Raven's transformation in the smoke-hole, my footsteps changed from white to black. Instead of winter, now each footstep contains hopes of spring. I can hear ka ka ka, which I think sounds like ha ha ha, as Raven flies away, into the white sky and over the river he created.  Now I am cold and alone.

Maybe it's my loneliness seeking the familiar, but the vacancy of winter makes me aware of what is no longer here. The same way an artist can see his painting on a white canvas, or a writer can visualize his story from a blank page, I can see a floating city emerge from Bristol Bay's empty waters.  I see drift boats pulling nets, tenders full of fish, processors pressed against the horizon, helicopters and float planes buzzing overhead.  My minds eye sees a flurry of activity surrounding the setnet cabins that line the sloping bluffs behind me--fishermen mend nets, kids ride three-wheelers, dogs are barking, skiffs skip through whitecaps just offshore.  I hear the sound of pulsating machines rising from canneries alive with production. A gentle breeze kisses tundra flowers.  I see old friends in yellow raingear flicking salmon eyeballs across slime lines.  I see an ageless fisherman who drowned in the waters that front me.  I see the glorious midnight sun fan its golden rays across the sky, turning the world into a silhouette.  Then, Bristol Bay sighs deeply and the cold seeps through me. I am reminded that winter yields nothing easily, and the beach is empty again. 

Still, there is something wonderful about walking with winter.  Winter makes us aware of what we desire most: the warm sun, fish in our nets, good health to our family and friends. The turning seasons give us a glimpse into the past, and probably into the future.  Just from where I stand now, I can see the path of ancient glaciers.  I know Bristol Bay was once a land bridge, and in the distance rises Katolinat Mountain, where I once found seashells imbedded on its crest. I walk in winter to remind myself that nothing lasts forever.

The Yupik people who inhabited this beachhead understood that Bristol Bay is finite. They painted images on drums and drew designs on mudflats, only to watch their creations disappear with the beat or the rising tide. The shaman made elaborate goggled eyed and toothy grinning masks to honor animal spirits sacrificed to the hunt. When the ceremony ended, the masks were discarded into the tundra or burned.  The artwork the Yupik created was never meant to survive—an admission possibly, to the limits of Bristol Bay.

Perhaps I need to be more like the Raven and learn to enjoy and embrace winter.  Winter was a time to slow down and celebrate for the Yupik. On the fringe between weather and landscape, native peoples adapted behaviors to fit their environment. Because salmon was their main food source, summer was the time to fish.  But when daylight grew shorter, and the salmon lay red and dying, the Yupik spent winter thanking the salmon for their sacrifice.  For giving respect, they knew the fish would continue to feed them.

Perhaps the ancient humans lacked the ecologic insight to comprehend that salmon feed the land too, or perhaps they did, but we know it now. In the wake of the Ice Age, salmon populations probed the meltwater rivers.  Migrating from rich ocean pastures, salmon brought nutrients to the starved soils.  Trees and plants grew, streams stabilized, bears, eagles, wolves, lynx, even Raven thrived.  Weather and salmon changed the world.  This winter, scientists gather in Naknek to discuss strategies to save salmon, not celebrate them.  But one day the weather will change, glaciers will advance, and it will be the salmon that saves us.

With numbing toes, I reach the end of my journey, but winter's journey is just beginning. The snow clouds have engulfed the alluvial plain and move up the Naknek River towards the mountains. Taking a last look at the beach, I notice the tide lapping at the rocks. A lather of icy sea foam has washed my footprints away. In winter I see clearly; it is only in summer when I see illusions: inexhaustible natural resources, endless tundra, youthful fishermen, the arctic sunlight. My own time here exists for only a limited time.  Even the tides and salmon remain here temporarily, moving back and forth in between the land and sea.

Downriver

The Role of the Diamond NN Cannery in Interpreting the History of the Naknek River Fishery

By Katherine J. Ringsmuth, PhD

Upriver:

Located in the heart of Katmai National Park and Preserve (Katmai NPP) is the 1.5-mile Brooks River, a tributary of the Naknek River Drainage on the Upper Alaska Peninsula in southwest Alaska. Each summer, a stream of visitors from near and far flock to the river’s viewing platforms to witness one of nature’s most extraordinary scenes: The world’s largest concentration of Alaska brown bear catching with powerful jaws and claws the world’s largest run of sockeye salmon. The salmon, with primal, undaunted instinct, leap the six-foot cascading Brooks falls, often sailing past the furry fishermen, on a mission to complete a four-year, oceanic journey that carries needed nutrients to the inland region and spawns the next generation of Naknek River sockeye salmon.

Those who come to observe this renown, spectacular setting, describe it as a visitor’s paradise—an isolated, natural wonder where humans take a back seat (Birkedal, 1993). But what most visitors to Katmai’s wild river do not realize is that those salmon, soaring over the Brooks falls and evading the clutches of the Brooks bears, are part of an escapement—or the predetermined number of fish allowed by Alaska state fisheries biologists to return to their natal streams, which directly links the Brooks river experience to the red salmon commercial fishery, down the Naknek River, in Bristol Bay. Unlike the Brooks bears, Bristol Bay gillnet fishermen must sit idle with dry nets, waiting restlessly until fish counts reach estimated goals upriver.

Historic evidence of the commercial salmon fishery abounds at Brooks, in the form of the defunct fish ladder, the old Bureau of Commercial Fisheries research laboratory and remnants of a weir that biologists once used to count sockeye salmon migrating to Brooks Lake. The drive to better understand the largest, most valuable and most sustainable sockeye salmon fishery in the world led biologists to ask questions about the Naknek River’s prehistoric run sizes, sparking decades-long archeological investigations that culminated in the designation of the Brooks River Archeological District and National Historic Landmark (Ringsmuth, 2013).

More than a foil to Brooks bears, the salmon serve as a cultural, historical, and physical conduit that courses through the entire 35-mile Naknek River, from its headwaters to its outlet into Bristol Bay. The escapement moves beyond the boundaries of the park, and places Katmai’s fish story in a much larger historic context of the canned salmon industry and ties the natural drama of the Brooks River to the global story taking place downriver.

Downriver:

The 130-year-old Diamond NN Cannery is situated downriver, on the south bank near the mouth of the Naknek River, one of five major pristine rivers— Kvichak, Nushagak, Ugashik, Egegik and Naknek—that comprise Bristol Bay, the eastern-most arm of the Bering Sea. The NN Cannery was part of the broader pattern of commercialized Pacific salmon packing that, before 1937, was the third largest extractive industry in the West, with greater value than gold and copper mining in Alaska (Friday 1994, Gregory, et. al 1939). The cannery was built by the Del Monte subsidiary, the Alaska Packers Association (APA), which, not only was a corporate juggernaut that dominated Alaska’s fishing industry, but was part of a technological, commercial, and global system that revolutionized the way the world ate (Parkin, 2006).

The packing and preparing of salmon for commercial sale transformed the Bristol Bay region. “Of all the agents of change,” writes ethnographer James Vanstone, “none had a greater or more lasting effect…than the commercial fishing industry” (Vanstone, 1967). Anthropologist Alan Boraas agrees, noting that salmon canneries, like APA’s Diamond NN Cannery, “represented the Industrial Revolution of the North” (Boraas, 1996).

From its establishment as a four-building saltery, to its expansion into a globally reaching, 51-building industrial complex, the NN Cannery was one of the largest, longest running canneries in Alaska. Built in 1890 and processing salmon almost continuously until 2001, it remains one of the best examples of an intact, twentieth century, Bristol Bay salmon cannery, and constitutes one of the most significant remnants of the canned salmon industry on the West Coast.

Unlike many other Bristol Bay canneries, the NN complex never experienced fire, nor was it ever repurposed for anything other than canning salmon. Contained in its century-old buildings are stories that underpin the historical manifestations of capitalism, incorporation, industrialization, immigration, world wars, global pandemics, statehood, resource management, unionization, segregation and equal rights. Importantly, the cannery employed hundreds of residents and thousands of transient workers who produced more canned salmon than any cannery in Alaska. Over time, these cannery workers developed unique identities and stories, which today remain little known or understood.

For 120 seasons, people from around the world journeyed to South Naknek to can salmon. Before 1952, APA employed mostly immigrants from Europe to gillnet salmon in double-ender sailboats. These men were from the fishing nations of Italy, Croatia, Norway and Sweden. Besides fishing, skilled immigrants built and maintained both the cannery complex and the salmon boats. To process the salmon, the cannery hired Asian crews—first from China, then from Japan, and later, the Philippines—whose distinct cultures and traditions shaped the cannery’s labor landscape and directly linked the Alaskan cannery to the broader Pacific World.

In addition to Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino crews, historically lesser-known Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and Hawaiians also labored at the NN Cannery, representing, in the case of Mexican workers, the largest ethnic group to labor at the cannery before WWII. Erased from historical memory, graffiti etchings on the old bunkhouse walls are some of the scant enduring traces that these people left behind. Indigenous Alaskans also worked at the cannery. Katmai Sugpiaq migrated downriver to South Naknek after the Novarupta volcano destroyed the Savonoski village in 1912 (Dumond 2010). The Spanish Flu pandemic of 1919 drove surviving Native residents to seek cannery work. Despite traditional lifeways lost to cannery work, Native residents became major contributors to and caretakers of the operation (APA 1923). Moreover, because the cannery property has never been archeologically investigated, the grounds have the potential to continue the Brooks River archeological story and offer a more complete interpretation of the Naknek River’s cultural past.

The Alaska Packers Association recognized the contributions of its diverse cannery crew. In a 1928 draft report on Alaska’s Salmon Industry, APA President A.K. Tichenor attributed APA’s success to the skilled and dependable cannery people:

The company sends to Alaska each year over 4,000 men and employs in addition, a large number of Eskimos, Indians and other residents of Alaska. 1,000 are Superintendents, Physicians, Bookkeepers, Mechanics, Beachmen, etc. About 1,000 are Fishermen, and the balance consists of other cannery employees. Many nationalities are represented amongst these men, but the Fishermen are usually composed of Italians and Scandinavians. These races [men from fishing nations] seem fitted for this particular branch of the industry.

The more salient features of the Alaska salmon industry are the amount of effort that must be expended in assembling the outfit of material and personnel, their transportation to the fishing grounds, the making of cans, cases, etc. the driving of traps and preparation of fishing gear, upon arrival. The repair of wharves and buildings carried away or damaged by ice and snow during the long winters—so that when the “run” starts the plant may be ready in every particular way.

Owing to the shortness of the canning season, which lasts only about four weeks in Bristol Bay, and the short time which we have for the preparation of the pack, the loading and shipment of salmon in the transporting vessels, before winter sets in, it is essential that the outfit be completed in every respect and that the personnel be composed of men who are dependable and willing workers (Tichenor 1928).

Despite their knowledge of the operation, machines, and the salmon, cannery workers have existed in the shadows, eclipsed by romantic stories of fishermen—the so-called ‘Iron Men of Bristol Bay’—and marginalized, exotified or ignored by writers, curators, even park rangers in the historical narratives of Alaska’s most important salmon fishery. To fully understand the significance of the canned salmon industry and its expansion throughout the West, Alaska and Bristol Bay, historian Donald Worster writes that consideration must be given to “the ethnic histories of the residents, migrants, and immigrants involved in the extraction of the region’s great natural wealth” (Worster, 1992). Whether they came from China, Mexico, the Philippines or simply upriver, the NN Cannery people found dignity through their laborious interactions and forged a deep connection to the surrounding environment. Their diverse traditions left a mark on Naknek history and culture. Their work mattered. 

Without a doubt, canneries were and continue to be natural resource extractors—they used technical and organizational skills, engineering knowledge, and energy to transform natural resources—sockeye salmon—into a commodity for world markets. But canneries like APA’s Diamond NN Cannery are also important sites of maritime and labor history that retain the overlooked stories of America’s past. When the current owner, Trident Seafoods, closed the NN Cannery in 2015, it opened a rare window for historians to share the collective stories of these “dependable and willing workers.”

The following year, the grassroots organization, the NN Cannery History Project, formed to bring awareness of the history contained in the industrial landscape. Because the NN Cannery has the ability to inform the public about the importance of the salmon, the industry, and its diverse participants, the NN Cannery History Project, with the support of the National Park Service and the Alaska State Historic Preservation Office, is nominating the property as the NN Cannery Maritime Historic District to the National Register of Historic Places. Once designated, the NN Cannery will be the first historic salmon cannery from Bristol Bay to be listed and recognized for its role in interpreting the history of the Naknek River, the nation, and even the Pacific World.

Today, the cannery’s discarded machines parts, broken boardwalks, skeletal remains of bunkhouses, and graffiti etchings on the walls are the reminders of Bristol Bay’s forgotten workforce that provide a more comprehensive understanding of the natural, cultural and economic history the Naknek River. Like the salmon, cannery people connected the land-based operation to the Pacific waterscape and created an ethnically diverse, economically vital cannery culture. Just as the Brooks River platforms are sites of interpretation of the extraordinary natural history of Katmai, the NN Cannery can interpret the forgotten history of the canned salmon industry, a history built on the foundation of the pristine habitat and unparalleled sockeye salmon runs upriver.

References:

Alaska Packers Association. (1923) Service: The True Measurement of Any Institution Lies in the Service it Renders. APA Collection, Alaska State Archives, Juneau Alaska.

Baunach, Leo. “The International Fishermen and Allied Workers of America,” Working Waterfronts, University of Washington. http://depts.washington.edu/dock/IFAWA_pt1.shtml.

Birkedal, Ted. “Ancient Hunters in the Alaskan Wilderness: Human Predators and Their Role and Effect on Wildlife Population and the Implications for Resource Management,” in Proceedings of the 7th Conference on Research and Resource Management in Parks and Public Lands (Hancock, MI: The George Wright Society, 1993.

Boraas, Alan. “Turning Point Photo Exhibit,” Peninsula Clarion, November 21, 1996.

Chen, Ron. Remembering Slime Domingo and Gene Viernes: The Legacy of Filipino American Labor Activism. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012.

Dougherty, W.P., Mr. “Tashiro Goes to Kodiak.” In Alaska Advocate, Vol. 2,  49, December 7-13, 1978.

Dumond, Don E. 2010. Alaska Peninsula Communities Displaced by Volcanism in 1912. Alaska Journal of Anthropology vol. 8. no. 2.

Friday, Chris. Organizing Asian American Labor: The Pacific Coast Canned-Salmon Industry 1870-1942. Temple University Press, 1994. 

Gregory, Homer E. and Kathleen Barnes, North Pacific Fisheries with Special reference to Alaska. New York, 1939.

Moser, Jefferson F. (1902) Salmon Investigations of the Steamer Albatross in the Summer of 1900, Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, vol.21, 1901, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.

Murray, Joseph, 1895, “Report of Special Agent Murray on the Salmon Fisheries of Alaska,” in Seal and Salmon Fisheries and Natural Resources of Alaska, Vol. II, 1896, p.422.

Parkin, Katherine. Food Is Love: Advertising and Gender Roles in Modern America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.

Riggs, Jr. Thomas. Annual Report for the Fiscal Year ending June 30. 1919. Governor Territory of Alaska, Office of Governor, Juneau Sept 26, 1919.

Ringsmuth, Katherine. At the Heart of Katmai: An Administrative History of the Brooks River Area with Special Emphasis on Bear Management in Katmai National Park and Preserve. 1912-2006. Washington D.C.: US Department of Interior, 2013.

Tichenor, A.K. “Value of the Canned Salmon Industry,” draft, 1928. APA Collection, Center of Pacific Northwest Studies, Bellingham, WA.

Vanstone, James. Eskimos of the Nushagak River: An Ethnographic History. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1967.

Worster, Donald. Under Western Skies: Nature and History of the American West. Oxford University Press, 1992.

Crown Jewel of APA's Diamond Canneries

"The NN Cannery History Projects calls attention to the vital cannery workers, and tells the human story of the industry...I believe this project is ground-breaking and important."

Joan M. Antonson | State Historian/Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer

The <NN> Cannery is situated on the south-side of the Naknek River, one of the five major rivers that constitute the Bristol Bay salmon fishery—Alaska’s largest and most sustainable commercial fishery. Built originally in 1890 as a saltery by the Arctic Packing Company, the property was absorbed by the Alaska Packers Association (APA), and converted into a salmon cannery in 1895.

For over a century, APA’s <NN> Cannery served as the centerpiece of the Bristol Bay salmon fishery. Because the facility functioned almost continuously between 1895 and 2015, it has maintained architectural and cultural integrity, and remains one of the most historically significant remnants of the industry on the West Coast. APA dominated Alaska’s salmon market, accounting for 70% of the total salmon pack. As one expert put it, “Canneries transformed this entire area and represent the Industrial Revolution of the North.”

APA assigned the cannery the initials, NN, possibly for NakNek, and drew a diamond around the cannery abbreviations—hence, APA’s well-known trademark: “the diamond canneries.” The cannery functioned almost continually between 1895 and 2015. Most of the existing structures were built or upgraded in the 1940s, (making them at least 70 years or older). The complex’s design and function serves as an excellent representation of a typical salmon cannery, and reflects a broad range of historic contexts: corporate, technological, economic, social, cultural and environmental.

The work and ancillary activities that took places within the cannery’s 50-plus structures—several of which are recognized to be historically significant in their own right—affected local, state, national, even global activities and people. The <NN> Cannery employed hundreds of residents and thousands of transient workers who produced more canned salmon than any cannery in Alaska. Over time, these cannery people developed unique identities and stories, which today remain little known or understood. The NN Cannery History Project aims to shed light on the lives of the cannery people and why they matter today.