THE SALMON AND SALMON FISHERIES OF ALASKA. ' 
G1 
SOUTHEAST ALASKA DISTRICT. 
EXTENT AND IMPORTANCE OF THE REGION, 
Tliis district extends from the southern boundary of Alaska to Cape Spencer. The 
trend of tlie mainland from the entrance to Portland Canal to the head of Lynn Canal 
is in a general northwest and southeast direction. The strip of territory west of the 
boundary line between Alaska and British Columbia is about 30 miles wide, and 
consists of irregular, mountain masses often rising precipitously from the sea to an 
elevation of several thousand feet, and sometimes (as a point farther from the coast is 
reached) attaining an altitude of 0,000 to 10,000 feet. This rugged condition is broken 
on every hand by deep valleys or gorges through which the glaciers debouch and from 
which nearly all the streams on the mainland derive their sources. Fringing the 
mainland are numerous islands, large and small, close to the coast line, conforming 
to its irregularities, and seiiarated from it and from each other by deep straits and 
channels. These islands, about 1,100 in number, extend 1‘rom the coast an average 
distance of about 75 miles, and along the general contour for about 250 miles. As a 
rule they are mountainous and heavily wooded with spruce, hemlock, and cedar, 
forming an almost impenetrable growth. Some are very large, indented with deep 
bays and sounds, and theyin turn are fringed witli smaller islands. 
Throughout this region numerous streams and streamlets on the islands and the 
mainland contain one or more species of salmon, but none alone can furnish suflicient 
salmon to supply a single cannery, and in only a few streams does the redfish, the 
principal salmon sought, exist in numbers suflicient for commercial i)urposes. As a 
result, each cannery is supiilied from many streams, some of them, perhaps, GO to 80 
miles from the establishment. Encroachment of one cannery upon the streams 
claimed by another frequently occurs, and bad feeling, threats of violence, etc., 
occasionally result. 
The largest salmon rivers in southeast Alaska are the Unuk, Stikine, Taku, and 
Chilkat, to which further reference will be made. These rivmrs take their source 
in the interior and drain considerable areas. The other rivers are usually small 
streams, and the greater number are simply outlets to a lake or system of lakes. 
These outlets are in some cases only half a mile in length, generally from 2 to 5 miles, 
and exceptionally 8 to 10 miles. 
By reference to Chart A it will be seen that a line drawn through Sumner 
Straits and extending to the Stikine River forms a natural tishery division for 
southeast Alaska. South of this line are seven canneries, with an output in 1807 
of 220,341 cases, and all the streams from which their supply is olitained except 
two small streams that furnish less than 5,000 redfish to the cannery at Wrangell. 
The division north of this line, though comiirising a larger territorial area and coast 
line, has but two canneries, with an output of 51,520 cases in 1897, and if the Chilkat 
and Chilkoot rivers are excepted, there would not be suflicient redfish taken in all the 
streams of the upper division to pack 20,000 cases. 
Since 1878 the district has packed 23.2 per cent of the total Alaska pack. In 
1897 its percentage was 29.9, 
