The Nolan Center has a new entryway exhibit showcasing handmade pots made from rare, local clay deposits discovered within the Tongass National Forest. KSTKs Leilani Combs reports that an art teacher used the found material to share with her students the ancient art pottery.

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Wrangell’s efforts to add to its downtown waterfront, develop the former 6-Mile Mill property for a possible shipyard and replace its leaky water diversion flume to the community reservoirs will receive a $43 million boost from the federal government.

The borough applied this past spring for a federal Economic Development Administration Industry Transformation Pathway Grant.

The official announcement is not expected until later this month, but Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan, who is in a tight reelection race, delivered the news last week.

Borough Manager Mason Villarma said the downtown waterfront project will likely start before the end of the year to add rock fill so that the property is ready for American Cruise Lines to install pilings and a floating dock in the spring for its ships to use next summer.

The waterfront work also will include extending the City Dock, but that will be separate from the immediate need to add fill for the new, smaller dock.

Design work on the large-scale redevelopment of the 6-Mile site is expected next year, with actual construction not until 2028, Villarma said.

Building a new flume to direct water into the reservoirs also needs final design and construction drawings before it can go to bid.

The federal grant would be combined with just over $10 million in borough funds to pay for the three projects.

The work at 6-Mile will include shoreline stabilization, utility extensions, roadways and power to the 42-acre site. The estimated cost totals $38.4 million, with $30.7 million from the federal grant and a borough match of $7.7 million, according to Wrangell’s grant application.

The plan is to prep the site while City Hall and JAG Marine Group, which operates shipyards in Ketchikan and Seward, go after state, federal and private funding to build a full-service shipbuilding and repair yard at the property.

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Wrangell’s tribal government, the Wrangell Cooperative Association, is taking the final steps to create a climate adaptation plan to inform Wrangell’s future. On Sept. 29, the WCA held its third and final public meeting for the plan.

The WCA’s Earth Branch has been working in partnership with Anchorage-based Two Bears Environmental Consulting to understand the changing environment and bolster community resilience.

Here is the tribe’s Earth Branch coordinator Kim Wickman.

The reality is things around us are changing, and that’s, I think, what people are starting to finally kind of connect to.

Two Bears, [web: founded by Dr. Ronni Wilcock in 2017, started the process with a listening session last October.

Jaimlyn Sypniewski is the spatial analyst and modeling lead for the company. She says that they always try to get the community’s input first, before diving into the data.

The way it starts is that we come in assuming that we have no idea what’s going on in the community. So one of the things I try very hard to do is not to Google or get any bias. They’re like, “Oh, I’m sure they’re having problems with this, that, and the other.

She says at community input sessions they heard concerns about future water availability, increasing storms, climate impacts on foraging plants like berries, and an increase in water lilies in ponds that seem to be blocking creek flows.

Sypniewski says that Two Bears’ process uses traditional ecological knowledge and anecdotal observations to structure the plan and inform the modelling. Then, if there’s a disconnect between the data and the observations, they can highlight those differences.]

Major findings in last month’s presentation included warming temperatures and increased precipitation. But not just any precipitation – it’s likely to include big rainburst events that can worsen potholes and create problems for flat-roofed buildings.

Wickman, with the tribe, says they’ll share the plan with the borough once it’s completed.

So we’re able to give this information to the city, then the city can use the information that we’ve passed on to them to help adapt their plans for how they’re planning to build roads or we can help link them with other information or grant sources.

Two Bears is allowing a month for any additional input from tribal members before providing their published report to the WCA.

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Voters on Tuesday elected incumbent John Yeager to remain on the borough assembly, with newcomer Reme Privett winning the other three-year assembly term on the municipal election ballot.

Jayme Howell easily defeated incumbent John DeRuyter for a three-year term on the school board.

And incumbent Antonio Silva retained his seat on the port commission, defeating challenger Mechel Meek.

The results will not be certified by the canvas board until Thursday afternoon, followed by a special assembly meeting that evening to adopt the results, but none of the races are close enough that the final count could change the results.

Of the 378 votes counted Tuesday evening, Yeager received 257, Privett received 244, with incumbent assembly member Phillip Mach at 133 and challenger LaDonna Botsford at 90 votes. The top two vote-getters win the seats.

Borough Clerk Kim Lane reported Tuesday evening that 54 early in-person and electronic votes, absentee and questioned ballots remained for the canvas board to decide and count on Thursday.

In the school board race, Howell received 241 votes to 83 for DeRuyter and 47 for Franki Gablehouse, who withdrew from the race after the ballots were printed.

In the port commission election, Silva outpolled Meek 291 to 77.

Mayor Patty Gilbert ran for reelection unopposed and received 341 votes.

Port Commissioner DJ McConachie also was unopposed in his reelection bid and received 357 votes.

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Golf tournaments are done for the year but the facilities at Muskeg Meadows will be open for a few more days.

“We’re planning to keep the pro shop and driving range open through Saturday, Oct. 10,” said Kristy Woodbury, of Muskeg Meadows.

After the shop and driving range lock up, “the course stays open all winter for golf and disc golf,” Woodbury said.

“Season pass holders can keep playing as usual, and anyone else is welcome to come out by paying green fees online or dropping cash in the orange lock box next to the pro shop door. We don’t offer free golf or disc golf during the off-season.”

The Muskeg Meadows board asks that winter users follow some rules.

“We pull the trash bins and portable toilets for the season, so we ask folks to pack out whatever they bring in. Dogs aren’t allowed on the course in the winter, same as the rest of the year, which surprises some people,” Woodbury said. “And snow machines, four-wheelers and side-by-sides need to stay off the course. … The damage can be devastating.”

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The Wrangell Wolves boys and girls cross-country running teams both took home second-place honors in the Division III state championship meet last weekend in Anchorage.

Wrangell senior and team captain Jackson Carney came in second in the boys race with a time of 17:57.6, a seasonal best.

Sophomore Jenna Meissner placed fourth in the girls race, with a time of 20:48.7, finishing one second behind Petersburg’s Arielle Tucker, who defeated Meissner for the first time in her running career.

“I had an off race,” Meissner said. “I felt pretty sick. I just got out there and tried to do what I could for our team. I think the cold kind of affected me, but other than that, it is what it is. I am going to come back next year and try to get up there.”

“Jenna is a class act and a champion at heart,” coach Mason Villarma said in a post-race interview after the Saturday event.

Overall, the Petersburg Vikings, which placed three runners in the top 10, won the girls team title with 12 points, followed by Wrangell with 23, Dillingham at 27 and Craig with 31.

In the boys race, Wrangell’s 20 points fell five points short of first-place winner Dillingham. The lowest score, which is a compilation of individual runners’ finishes, wins the team title.

“We were incredibly proud of both teams and how well they did at state,” Villarma said. “Several of the runners were battling sickness, and it was a crisp 32 degrees that morning — a little colder than our Southeast kids are used to. Even with that, they battled, and both teams walked away second in the state, which is an incredible accomplishment.”

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Wind and rain did not deter disc golfers from the final tournament of the season, nor has it discouraged them from planning for an expanded program next summer.

The Wrangell Disc Golf Club finished its fifth season with its first Fall Classic tournament Sept. 26-27.

Open to all ages and skill levels, the two-day event featured a best-ball doubles round Sept. 26, won by the father-and-son team of Dan and Jackson Powers, and a singles tournament on Sept. 27, won by Derek Ross.

Players were forced to contend with wet and windy conditions each day, making it hard to grip their plastic discs and equally hard to plant their feet for the throw as they aimed for the basket on each hole.

“Perfect. Conditions were wonderful,” Ross answered in a post-tournament interview.

Disc Golf Club president McManus said the club is already planning for the future and wants to grow the sport in Wrangell. “A league in the summer. That’s my goal,” he said.

And while disc golf and regular golf tournaments are done for the year, the facilities at Muskeg Meadows will be open for a few more days.

“We’re planning to keep the pro shop and driving range open through Saturday, Oct. 10,” said Kristy Woodbury, of Muskeg Meadows.

After the shop and driving range lock up, “the course stays open all winter for golf and disc golf,” Woodbury said.

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For the second year in a row, the Wrangell-Petersburg area has the lowest rental housing vacancy rate among 11 areas covered in the state’s annual survey.

The combined vacancy rate for single-family rental homes and apartments in the two communities in March 2026 was 1.1%.

That is far below the statewide median of 5.4%.

This year’s Wrangell-Petersburg vacancy rate was much tighter than the 3.4% combined rate for rentals in the two communities in the 2025 survey.

The rates were reported in the September issue of the Alaska Economic Trends magazine, produced by the Alaska Department of Labor research and analysis section.

“Every March, we survey thousands of landlords and property managers in selected areas of Alaska, in cooperation with the Alaska Housing Finance Corp.,” the report explained.

This year’s survey included 184 rental units in Wrangell and Petersburg, of which only two were vacant in March. The 2025 survey found six vacancies out of 178 surveyed units.

As tight as the rental market is in Wrangell and Petersburg, the average adjusted monthly rent in the two communities for a two-bedroom apartment— rent plus estimated utilities — was the lowest among the 11 areas covered in the state survey, at $1,288.

That is a 4.3% increase from last year.

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Wrangell’s municipal government is considering new codes of conduct and trespass laws on public property. The move comes after threats, including death threats, were allegedly made against several officials on borough-owned property.

While the situation is under investigation, Borough Manager Mason Villarma says they want to be able to respond to similar incidents in the future.

Here’s Villarma at a meeting earlier in the month.

Recently, there’s been a community member that made some threats against a … series of borough officials, and we didn’t have a whole lot of tools within our municipal code to act upon it.

The assembly had its first read of a consolidated “Code of Conduct and Trespass On Public Property” chapter at their meeting on September 22. They voted unanimously to move it forward to a second reading, public comment and potential adoption at their Oct. 13 meeting.

The standards of conduct within the code “identifies conduct that may result in removal, exclusion, restricted access, conditional access, or other protective action,” according to meeting materials.

Villarma explained to the assembly that it would allow employees to request that people who violate the code leave borough property. If the individual fails to do so, officials could request police remove them on the grounds of trespassing.

Depending on the extent of the threatening or harmful behavior, the borough may impose a probation period on the individual, barring them from returning to the property where the event occurred for a period the borough decides.

During the first read of the code ordinance, Assembly Member Dan Powers expressed concern over protecting residents’ constitutionally protected First Amendment right to express their opinion. But he ultimately supported considering a new code.

Here’s Villarma during an interview following the assembly meeting.

This has nothing to do with people’s freedom of expression or speech or representing their opinions. In fact, that’s all very much encouraged. But if there are serious threats, in this case death threats, made to particular members that serve the public, we need to be able to take measures that are appropriate for those circumstances.

Villarma pointed out that there had been a code of conduct on the books at one point, but it was removed for some reason before his tenure as manager. He assured the assembly that they fully intend to protect people’s rights, but also have a duty to protect their

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The Wrangell boys team took home first place in Division III at the Southeast cross-country championship meet in Juneau this past weekend, with the girls taking second place.

Continuing her winning season, Wrangell sophomore Jenna Meissner took first in the girls race, with a time of 20:32.2, finishing 21 seconds in front of Petersburg’s Arielle Tucker, running on the Treadwell Historic Mine Trail on Saturday.

In team scoring, Wrangell boys scored 11 points, outrunning Skagway with 21 points, and Craig at 29, followed by Petersburg, Kake, Hoonah, Klawock and Metlakatla.

In the girls race, Petersburg won the team scoring, with 11 points, with Wrangell in second at 19 and Craig at 26, followed by Haines, Skagway, Kake and Yakutat.

Teaming up with Meissner for the winning score, Wrangell senior Alana Harrison placed fifth and freshman Erica Jabusch finished 13th.

In the boys run, Craig senior Aulis Nelson took first, clocking in at 16:31.5. Wrangell senior and team captain Jackson Carney came in second, with a time of 17:59.5, a seasonal best.

Wrangell sophomore Ryder Ritchie also achieved a seasonal best, finishing fourth. Junior Carter Howell came in right behind his teammate, getting fifth. 

Next up for the Wrangell runners will be the state championships at Anchorage’s Bartlett High School Trails on Saturday, Oct. 3. The girls won state last year — the first time ever for Wrangell — with the boys taking second.

The top three teams and top 15 individual runners at Southeast qualify for the state championships.

“Both teams did really well. I am super proud of my whole team and what they accomplished at regionals,” Meissner said.

She is definitely looking forward to this weekend’s race. “I can’t wait to see what happens at state for us, especially because we have a couple of seniors who have contributed to the team in so many ways,” Meissner said. “We want them to leave their last season with state titles.”

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