PACIFIC SALMON FISHERIES. 55 
It will doubtless surprise most readers when it is stated that the 
river which has yielded so many countless thousands of salmon is 
only 164 miles in length. The river has its source in two lakes; the 
larger of these is about 8 miles long and the smaller 3 miles long. 
The mouth of the river is about 2 miles above the canneries, and 
spreads out here into a lagoon. This lagoon has at the head a width 
of about 300 yards, and gradually widens until it is nearly half a mile 
across as it approaches the spit. The lagoon has a general east and 
west direction, is about 2 miles in length, and, except for the shingle 
spit which is thrown across its mouth by the action of the sea, its 
shores are bluff, rising from about 50 to 100 feet. The spit is three- 
fourths of a mile long with an average width of about 200 feet. 
The outlet of the lagoon is only 90 feet wide at its mouth. The 
western side of the mouth of the lagoon is Karluk Head, a precipitous 
mountain mass about 1,600 feet high. 
The outer side of the spit is where the fishing is carried on. Haul 
seines are used exclusively. As bowlders used to’ be common here 
it was necessary to remove a number of them in the early days when 
a seine shore was to be prepared. The red salmon run here is an 
-exceptionally long one, the season extending from about the middle 
of June to about the middle of September. The other species of 
salmon also run here; sometimes humpbacks appear in large numbers. 
As the beach is open to Shelikof Strait, in which storms are frequent, 
seining is often interrupted. 
As early as 1867 the salting of salmon was carried on at Karluk. 
In 1870 the Alaska Fur Trading Co. and the Alaska Commercial 
Co. began to salt salmon and continued this on a gradually expanding 
scale. ) 
In 1882 Smith & Hirsch, who had been engaged in salting on 
Karluk Spit, built the first cannery on Kodiak Island. After opera- 
ting it until 1884 it was organized under the title of the Karluk 
Packing Co., and packed under that name every year until 1911, 
when canning operations were transferred to the new cannery in 
Larsen Bay. In 1893 it jomed the Alaska Packers Association. 
The Kodiak Packing Co. in 1888 built a cannery on the eastern 
side of the spit and operated it in 1888, 1889, 1890, 1891, and 1893. 
It jomed the Alaska Packers Association in 1893, but has not been 
operated since that season. 
The Hume Packing Co. built a cannery on the spit about 400 yards 
westward of Kodiak cannery in 1889. In 1892 it was consolidated 
‘with the Aleutian Islands Fishing & Mining Co., which had built a 
cannery about 100 yards westward of the Hume cannery in 1888. 
In 1893 the consolidation became a member of the Alaska Packers 
Association. This plant was not operated in 1900. 
