A documentary on Wrangell and the people who live here is set to premiere on July 5 at the Nolan Center.

“Walk Gently on This Land” was created by three filmmakers and inspired by the unique stories the community has to tell.

Former Wrangell Sentinel reporter Sam Pausman and a couple of his filmmaking friends traveled to town last year to interview people, gather stories and shoot the video for their 20-minute documentary.

The trio narrowed down the scope of the film to covering four pillars of life in Wrangell: timber, fishing, Tlingit culture and education.

The film profiles the four sectors, featuring the Herman family who bought Canoe Lagoon Oysters in 2020 and moved up from Arizona to run it; sawmill operator Mike Allen Jr.; educator Barb Neyman; and cultural bearers and revivers Mike Hoyt and Esther Aaltseén Reese.

The premiere is set for 1 p.m. July 5 at the Nolan Center. Admission is free. A question-and-answer session with the filmmakers will follow the screening.

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    This year marks a time of transition for the annual Fourth of July logging show, with new leadership and a mix of old and new events.

And a new name.

Instead of the Chuck Oliver Logging Show, it will be known as the Wrangell Fourth of July Logging Show.

Adrienne McLaughlin, whose grandfather was Chuck Oliver, said trees add new rings which reflect growth and changing times while building around a central core.

“Grandpa Chuck’s spirit will always be a part of the story, but it’s time to enlarge the story,” McLaughlin said.

She will serve as this year’s emcee.

McLaughlin has pushed to have the games better reflect the critical role of women in logging camps. The long-standing rolling pin toss was not representative of all the work that women did in the camps, she said. So there will be a new event.

“We really work hard to keep the logging games as an expression of Wrangell history,” said Tom Roland, who served as co-chair with Randy Oliver since 2019 and took on sole leadership this year when Oliver stepped back.

The Wrangell Fourth of July Logging Show will begin at 1 p.m. on July 4 in front of the City Dock. 

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The borough assembly last week unanimously approved a 40-year property lease for a new marine freight terminal at the former 6-Mile Mill property.

Alaska Marine Lines plans to construct and operate a barge ramp and shipping yard as a permanent replacement for the aging borough-owned downtown barge ramp that previously handled the community’s cargo.

Ryan Dixon, media director for Lynden, the parent company of AML, said in an email on Monday: “We currently expect to have designs ready this fall so we can apply for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ permit.”

He added that the permit will likely take a year for approval.

“Once the design and cost estimates have been determined,” Dixon said, “we will be able to make a final decision on moving ahead with the project and what the timeline would look like.”

Under the terms of the 40-year lease, which will begin July 1, AML will pay a base rent of $1 annually. Borough officials noted that the shipping company assumes all financial responsibility for building, maintaining and operating the facility.

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The borough assembly has unanimously voted down a proposed land lease for a privately run data center. The assembly on June 9 went with the manager’s recommendation to retain the waterfront property for future maritime industry expansion.

Borough Manager Mason Villarma recommended rejecting the lease application from Greensparc, which was looking to build a 10,000-square-foot facility on borough-owned land at the 6-Mile Mill deepwater port site.

The project would have been the company’s second venture in Alaska, following a smaller data center installed in Cordova last year.

Public opposition to the data center in Wrangell focused on concerns over power consumption and environmental issues, with residents airing their complaints on social media and at an assembly meeting.

Villarma told assembly members last week that the 6-Mile site is one of the borough’s most valuable industrial waterfront assets. Because of its deepwater access, upland acreage and proximity to marine operations, the site is uniquely suited for maritime uses that cannot be easily located elsewhere in the community.

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An employee at the Tyee Lake hydroelectric power station was injured on June 11 and flown to Wrangell for medical care.

The Wrangell Volunteer Fire Department transported the worker to the hospital, arriving at the Wrangell Medical Center less than two hours after the initial call of the injury at the Tyee power station, about 45 air miles from Wrangell.

Neither the fire department nor the Southeast Alaska Power Agency, which operates the Tyee Lake facility, disclosed the nature or extent of the worker’s injury, or the worker’s name.

“The patient was reported to be in stable condition at the time care was transferred to hospital staff,” Wrangell Fire Chief Jordan Buness said in a statement on Monday, June 15.

“Our primary focus is our employee’s well-being, and we are heartened by their positive prognosis,” Robert Siedman, chief executive officer of the regional power agency, said in a statement on Tuesday, June 16.

“We are conducting a thorough review to determine the exact circumstances and identify any additional safety measures we can implement,” Siedman said.

The Ketchikan-based Southeast Alaska Power Agency operates the Tyee Lake hydro power project for Wrangell and Petersburg, and the Swan Lake hydro power station serving Ketchikan.

The Wrangell Volunteer Fire Department received the initial call at 9:39 a.m. on June 11, and used a member-owned aircraft to quickly fly emergency medical personnel to the work site. The aircraft and personnel were airborne 11 minutes after the call, Buness said.

Emergency personnel “conducted assessment and treatment, and prepared the patient for transport,” according to the fire chief’s statement, arriving back in Wrangell about an hour after they landed at the Tyee airstrip.

“No further information regarding the patient’s condition will be released out of respect for privacy,” Buness said.

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The Anan Wildlife Observatory bear cameras are online for a third summer, with the hard work of students participating in the Teaching Through Technology program.

Wrangell T3 students returned earlier this month from their third year of field work to set up the cameras to livestream the black and brown bears of Anan Creek. With support from the international nonprofit explore.org, which hosts the livestream, and the U.S. Forest Service Wrangell Ranger District, the T3 students designed and installed the camera systems that provide four different views of the creek.

The cams at Anan are the only student-run cameras of all of the sites hosted on explore.org, which shares a variety of wildlife livestreams. 

Around 390,000 viewers tuned to the Anan cams throughout the first season, but that number more than doubled in its second year with 890,000 total viewers. 

The livestream is available at friendsofanan.org.

Anan is among Wrangell’s top visitor attractions.

The first year, the students designed and installed the system from scratch, with two cameras. They then added two more cameras the second year to add more views of the bears. This year, the students focused on making things look more professional after cleaning up wire debris and other damage caused by winter storms.

There are four cameras streaming at Anan currently, with plans to add a fifth at the top of the waterfall in the future. 

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Wrangell Municipal Light & Power is advising residents that electricity will be more expensive during the annual maintenance shutdown of the Tyee Lake hydropower station and transmission line.

The work started yesterday (Thursday), and is expected to last about a week.

During the Tyee shutdown, the utility will burn diesel fuel to generate electricity.

Wrangell Municipal Light & Power Superintendent David McHolland said it will cost about $200,000 for diesel to run the generators during the shutdown.

The costs will be passed through to consumers on their monthly bill.

He said the extent of the cost will depend on how much power customers use during the week.

McHolland suggested residents do what they can to reduce demand for hot water and other appliances that run off electricity.

“Reducing what you can in those areas will help keep costs down,” he said.

“We want to burn as little diesel as possible,” McHolland said. “Fuel costs keep going up and we want to avoid using more than necessary.”

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It’s almost time to watch the bears enjoy their time feasting on salmon at Anan Creek.

The Anan Wildlife Observatory’s bear cameras will go live on Monday, June 15.

Over the past two weeks, Wrangell students worked with the statewide high school tech program T3 Alaska and the U.S. Forest Service to get the Anan bear livestream cameras up and running. 

According to the student team, the work included seasonal maintenance of broken equipment after a harsh winter; installation of a new junction box and wiring conduit; installation of a new microphone at the lower photo blind; and beginning the installation of an underwater salmon camera.

The livestream feeds and more information about Anan are available at the Friends of Anan website: friendsofanan.org

This is the third year of the livestream bear cams at Anan, which debuted in 2024 in a cooperative effort between the students, the Forest Service and international wildlife nonprofit explore.org.

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Though school is out for the summer, the student gardens at Evergreen Elementary are just getting started and need tending.

Fifth-grade teacher Holly Padilla acknowledged that the growing season doesn’t necessarily fit the school calendar.

She says, “We can get started in the spring with our classes, and they do the harvest in the fall, but there’s a long summer stretch without much student participation. I’d love to find a couple of community champions.”

The gardens have a long history at the school, starting in the late 1990s as the Evergreen Agricultural Testing Site, or EATS, relying on community support and business donations. Over the years, primary oversight has passed to the greenest thumbs among teachers and staff.

Each class will get a particular part of the harvest to use in making a dish for an open house in the fall. Current plantings include strawberries, squash, tomatoes, zucchini, melons, green beans, peppers, basil, beets, potatoes, romaine lettuce, chives, garlic, rhubarb, radishes, carrots and celery.

There is also a range of flowers.

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The Wrangell Museum is close to launching a new website that will provide access to an online catalog of the thousands of items in its collection, particularly items in storage and not on public display.

The new feature will be rolled out in the next month or so, according to Nolan Center Director Jeanie Arnold.

The new system — named CatalogIt — will replace the antiquated platform previously used, making it easier to search the artifacts and photos.

Much of the collection is made up of photographs, papers and other delicate items stored in drawers for their protection, so having a simple way of accessing them digitally without fear of damaging or skipping over them is important.

Once the website is up, anyone will be able to access CatalogIt to view the museum’s collection from anywhere. 

Ronan Rooney, who has brought Wrangell’s history to the masses since 2020 with his podcast and blog “Wrangell History Unlocked,” praised the move to a new online catalog.

“It’s just such a landmark step forward for the museum to have this type of information,” he said. “I think it’s going to really open people’s minds to a lot of Wrangell history and Alaska history, too.”

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