PO BOX 391
CORDOVA, ALASKA
907.424.6665
EARLY HISTORY
In July 1741, Vitus Bering, commanding the vessel St. Peter, made the first recorded Russian landing in Alaska when he landed on Kayak Island just east of Prince William Sound. Thirty seven years later, Captain James Cook entered Prince William Sound commanding the English vessel Resolution while on a voyage seeking the Northwest Passage. During that brief visit, Cook gave the Sound and many of its geographic features their present names.
In 1785, a party of 52 Russians, 11 Aleuts, and 110 Koniags set out in skin boats from the Russian outpost at Kodiak for Prince William Sound. They established a small post at Nuchek and began a profitable trade with the Chugach.
The United States purchase of Russian America in 1867 opened Alaska to American traders and military expeditions. The Alaska Commercial Company acquired the holdings of the Russian American Company, including the trading post at Nuchek.
The development of fisheries and the gold rush led to the establishment of new Euro-American settlements in the Sound and the decline of Nuchek. A Captain Sands, working for the Pacific Packing Company which was financed by a subsidiary of the Alaska Commerical Company, constructed the first cannery in the Sound in 1887 at Odiak. Located near the present site of Cordova, this cannery was known as the Odiak Cannery. In 1888, Captina OJ Humprhey of the Pacific Steam Whaling Company of San Francisco built a competing ccannery at Odiak. As commercial fishing exploited the abundant salmon runs in the area, Odiak became a thriving town of 200 people in the 1890s.
The regular arrival of steam ships at the canneries at Orca and Odiak in the 1890s increased the pace of economic development in Prince William Sound. The canneries served as informal stagin areas for fur farmers and prospectors. IN 1900 two prospectors stumbled across a copper deposit on the upper reaches of Bonanza Ridge. This discovery turned out to be the highest grade commercial copper deposit ever found, and the single most valuable mineral deposit discovered in Alaska.
Entrepenuer and mining engineer Stephen Birch purchased the Bonanza Ridge claims and with financial backing from JP Morgan and Dnaiel Guggenheim, formed the “Alaska Syndicate” to extract, process, and sell the copper ore. To get the ore out of the remote interior of Alaska, the Syndicatehad to build a railroad from a mill site at the base of the Ridge down the Chinita and Copper River valleys to tidewater at Prince William Sound. Michael J. Heney who had built the White Pass and Yukon Railway from Skagway to the Klondike chose a site on Orca Inlet, near the idle Alaska Packers Association Cannery and the Native Village of Eyak as the start of his route.Heney purchased the Odiak cannery buildings from the Pacific Packing Company in 1905 and used them for his headquarters. With backing from London financial interested, construction of the rtailraod began in 1905. Heney ultimately beat out the other two competitors, although he died before his crews completed the 196 mile route to Kennecott. The Laska Syndicate purchased the survey rights to his route through Abercrombie Canyon in 1907, moved their headquarters of the idle cannery at Odiak Slough and hired Heney as the contractor to build the railroad.
