(Drawn by Capt Lisiansky, engraved by I. Clark,via Wikicommons)
Southeast Alaska: Archaeologists Identify Famed Fort Where Indigenous Tlingits Fought Russian Forces By MEGAN GANNON - For thousands of years, the Tlingit people made their home in the islands of Southeast Alaska among other indigenous peoples, including the Haida, but at the turn of the 19th century, they came into contact with a group that would threaten their relationship with the land: Russian traders seeking to establish a footprint on the North American continent.
The colonists had been expanding into Alaska for decades, first exploiting Aleut peoples as they chased access to sea otters and fur seals that would turn profits in the lucrative fur trade. The Russian American Company, a trading monopoly granted a charter by Russian tsar Paul I just as British monarchs had done on the continent’s east coast in the 17th century, arrived in Tlingit territor
By DAVE KIFFER - With future ferry service up in the air and the price of both barge shipping and air travel on the rise, you could certainly forgive Ketchikan residents for wistfully wondering how life would be different in Southern Southeast if a road connected Ketchikan to the rest of the continent.
To be sure, even if there was a road it would be at least a 1,500-mile trip to drive from Ketchikan to Seattle but that s the not the point. You could do it, even if it took several days.
It was during the expansion of the canned salmon industry in the 1920s and early 1930s, that the federal government began considering connecting Alaska to the rest of the country. Thomas MacDonald, who would run the Bureau of Public Roads from 1919 to 1953, first proposed a coastal highway between Seattle and Southeast Alaska in 1925.
U.S. Congress 2019-2020: Bills Introduced (Over 5,000 in the House and over 3,000 in the Senate)
Ketchikan 2020 Year in Review:COVID cancels entire cruise ship season; International pandemic affects all residents, even those that remained healthy By DAVE KIFFER - Like the rest of the world, the biggest news story in Ketchikan was the quarantine caused by the Corona Virus or COVID 19. Most of Ketchikan was shut down from mid-March through the end of April harkening back to the month- long closure of the Ketchikan economy and social world for a month during the Great Flu Pandemic of 1918.
By the end of the year, the COVID 19 virus had infected more than 250 residents and local visitors. One Saxman resident, Julie Wasulli, 56, was medivaced to Bellingham in November and died on December 11.
U.S. Congress 2019-2020: Bills Introduced (Over 5,000 in the House and over 3,000 in the Senate)
Ketchikan: First COVID-19 Vaccines Being Administered in Ketchikan - PeaceHealth Ketchikan Medical Center began administering doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to frontline employees and medical staff Tuesday. Family medicine physician Charlie Jose, MD, and emergency room nurse Amanda Schlecht, RN, were the first two to receive the vaccine. Dr. Jose and Amanda Schlecht have been on the frontlines of patient care throughout the pandemic. Both were eager to receive the vaccine and look forward to the greater community getting immunized when supplies increase.
PeaceHealth will continue to vaccinate frontline staff over the coming weeks and will continue to work with the Emergency Operations Center and local public health to support community distribution of vaccine once it becomes broadly available.
COVID-19 Vaccination Record Card Photo courtesy CDC
Mayor Dial is requesting the Assembly to support his proposed resolution which calls on merchants and service providers to refrain from discriminating against any individual by denying that person access to goods or services based upon their COVID-19 vaccination status or failure to provide that information.
According to the CDC, individuals should receive a wallet-sized vaccination card or printout that tells the specific COVID-19 vaccine they received, the date they received it, and where they received it. The CDC is not recommending or requiring that vaccination cards be presented publicly on demand for access to services.