World War II Aleut Relocation Camps in Southeast Alaska - Chapter 4: Killisnoo Herring Plant, pt. 2

Figures 117-119. Top: Buildings on the Aubertine property. Middle: The central portion of Killisnoo contains Whaler’s Cove Lodge. Bottom: In 2008 the northwest portion of Killisnoo was covered in second growth timber.

Current Condition

The site of historic Killisnoo is now primarily split between the Whaler’s Cove Lodge and the Aubertine Trust (Figures 117-119). The lodge property extends from the midpoint of the beach fronting Killisnoo Harbor (Figure 118) northwest almost to the point guarding the harbor (Figure 119), where a new cabin has been built on Lot 1N of the Jacobson subdivision. Abutting the lodge property and extending southeast to the opposite point are the home and associated buildings of Tom and Chris Aubertine (Figure 117). Subdivision lots in the interior of the island were not investigated. Evidence of old Killisnoo among the modern developments consists of features on land, features and artifacts in the intertidal zone, archaeological deposits, and artifacts collected for display by the lodge-owners. There are no buildings or even building ruins from old Killisnoo. The old Killisnoo cemetery immediately south of the former industrial area is a separate but related site component (Figure 120).

Richard Powers

[In 1969 at Killisnoo] there were several buildings. The cabin that the caretaker had lived in was still standing. It was a small two-story building that sat back on the property roughly…between our shop and the pond….I’d say it was maybe 20’x30’ on the lower floor and 20’x20’ on the upper floor. There was the store, which was I think probably more of a kitchen and food service area because the one whole end of it had an old stove and cooking facilities and stuff in it. It was still standing, but it said STORE on the front of it….That was a fairly large building, located roughly where Aubertine’s cabin is, behind that just a little bit – probably in front of our shop more. There were a number of old steam donkey engines. Most of them are still there. Couple of them we drug over on the beach a little ways from where they were.

There was still part of the carpentry shop there. The old marine ways where they had a shipyard where they rebuilt ships was still pretty much in place….There’s still remnants of the donkey that they used, the double-drum winch that they used to pull the ships out….The barrel factory, or the cooperage, was still pretty much intact. And a lot of the stuff, the bungs for the barrels, hundreds of galvanized rings [hoops] for the barrels, and the tools, and all that stuff was still just laying there when I first saw it….We found out where the Russian Orthodox church was and where the school was. You could see by the artifacts. Those were two major parts of the community. They set up on the hill above where some of our housing is….There’s an old sewing machine and some desks that are grown into some of the trees by the schoolhouse [site].

Figure 120. A sketch map of Killisnoo in 2008 was compiled from a 1977 survey for the Aubertine property, an aerial photograph, and field notes and photographs.

Modern buildings overlying the historic site of Killisnoo belong to Whaler’s Cove Lodge and the Aubertine Trust. Owner Tom Aubertine was a willing onsite guide (Figure 116), pointing out historic Killisnoo features on his property and the adjacent cemetery. Historic features on the Aubertine parcel were recorded, but buildings in use were not closely inspected. Five buildings are strung out more or less equidistantly along the harbor side of the Aubertine property, consisting of two boathouses and three dwellings. The most easterly building is a small boathouse, not far from where the herring plant’s boathouse was plotted in1891 (Figures 106-107). Next to it is a much larger boathouse (Figure 120); both buildings are sided and roofed in metal. Closer to the lodge are three dwellings in a row: a log cabin, flanked to the northwest by two frame cabins.

The lodge grounds were inspected, as was the second-growth forest along the shore further northwest. Owner Richard Powers authorized access to the lodge property and discussed the building history. Whereas Killisnoo’s three historic use zones along the shore from southeast to northwest were industrial, commercial, and then residential, in 2008 those zones roughly correspond to the Aubertine Trust property, the Whaler’s Cove Lodge facilities, and the second growth forest.

Figures 121-124. Top: The largest building at Whaler’s Cove Lodge is the lodge. A shed where clients check out boots for their stay. Bottom: Guest accommodations at the lodge include this two-story building with several rooms. Several small wood frame buildings serve the lodge.

Whaler’s Cove Lodge includes buildings of log, frame, and metal construction, with few unifying architectural themes, reflecting its gradual development as a seasonal fishing resort (Figures 121-125). The largest and most central building is the lodge (Figure 121), with a cafeteria, lounge, kitchen, gift shop, and other spaces. A power house and a shop – two large utility sheds (Figure 122) – are located inland. Other utility sheds, cabins, and two larger residential units are of frame construction (Figures 123-125). All the buildings are built on land above the high tide mark (Figure 126). A floating dock leads to a floating small boat facility, but it is seasonally operated and the floats are stowed on shore for winter.

Richard Powers

They [Killisnoo] had a little farm there – some stock. Chickens, and horses….They had cattle, some cows for milk. Chickens and ducks….They had to have them all penned in…. Right in above our pond was where they had the stock at. We found some of the old woven wire, fencing, there.... They had a pretty good water collection system. They dug kind of a Y of trenches up on that end of the island, so that anything that flowed towards the island flowed into these trenches and into a collection pond – a reservoir….We’ve dug out the same ditches – collection trenches. And we’ve enlarged the reservoir, so we store a lot more water than they had, but that was one of the main sources. They had another source of water over on the Admiralty side and they had a water barge that they’d fill and bring across as often as it filled….

Figures 125-126. Left: One of the lodge’s employee quarters is a one-story wood-frame cabin with a hipped roof.  Right: The Whaler’s Cove Lodge buildings (here viewed to the southeast) are all built on gently sloped land above the intertidal zone.

The boundary of historic Killisnoo (SIT-014) has not been formally defined by archaeological survey, nor was the brief 2008 investigation sufficient to do so. Observations made the length of the shoreline facing Killisnoo Harbor (Figures 117-119) indicate that historic archaeological deposits potentially exist from one end to the other, though recent development has disturbed some areas.

Features on Land

A dense second-growth spruce-hemlock forest covered much of Killisnoo in 2008, reflecting the late 1800s clearing there (Figures 104-105); by the early 1940s the forest was already encroaching upon the facility (Figures 110, 112). Amid the modern forest are patches of bushes and shrubs marking past disturbance footprints (Figure 118), but their meaning is not obvious. Less ambiguous features observed on land were the ruin of a marine ways, the lodge’s current reservoir, and large and/or stationary artifacts.

Figure 127.  The remains of a marine ways including a few rails salvaged from a coal mine at Kanalku Bay postdate World War II. The boat cradle and railcars at right are from a mine in Idaho.

A linear clearing perpendicular to shore on the Aubertine property represents a marine ways – a track used to haul boats out of the water for storage and repair (Figure 127). The clearing is about 20’ wide and extends from the shore about 60’-80’ into the forest fringe (Figure 120). A gravel track about 8’ wide runs through the center of the alignment. Along the grade to the southeast are the remains of two large plank and plywood cradles mounted on steel railcar chassis. The cradles where they contact the boat hull are upholstered in carpet. Several lengths of regular-gauge rail protrude from beneath the two railcars, and several notched logs are associated with the collection. The condition of the clearing, gravel track, and plywood-and-carpet cradles suggested manufacture and operation decades ago. Owners Aubertine and Powers stated that the system included 4-5 rails salvaged from the Kanalku coal mine on Admiralty Island combined with rails and cars from a mine in Idaho, installed at Killisnoo long after World War II by Carl A. Jacobson, Jr., and Powers himself. The track and gear have not been used since the early 1990s.

Richard Powers

There was another fire that burned most of the facilities of the old plant – 1952....But that was about the time Jacobson purchased the property, or just before then. The Jacobsons took care of the caretaker – the old man that watched the property for about twenty years, without being paid for it. He’d acquired the property...for back wages…. When he decided to sell he asked them if they wanted to buy it.

We met Carl A. Jacobson….[In the early 1970s] we bought a little sawmill, a little mobile dimension sawmill, and set it up on the beach and started cutting beachcombed logs….1983 was our first year [operating Whaler’s Cove Lodge]. I bought Jake [Jacobson] out. We own basically about half of the harbor end of Killisnoo Island, which is where we were developing, and he retained the other half for his family. So the Aubertine Trust property, that’s where most of the manufacturing plant was on that portion of the property, is still in Jacobson’s heirs, or the Aubertine Trust….

There were people that had salvaged out of the buildings, like the store building that was still standing. Most of the structural material somebody had taken out of them: the two-by material – 2” x 8”, 2” x 10”. Somebody had already been in there [the store] when I first saw it and taken most of the usable lumber out....Probably people that were building and rebuilding in Angoon, much the same that had happened with Hood Bay cannery later.

We used the tanks. We built an addition onto Angoon Trading Store using the stays out of one of the tanks. They were 3” x 6” clear Douglas fir. Beautiful stuff. 100 years old when I started building. Perfect shape.

Figures 128-131. Top: In 2008 the main ditch-fed reservoir for Whaler’s Cove Lodge is a pleasant pond. Three boilers rest just inside the treeline next to a boathouse on the Aubertine property.  Bottom: Tom Aubertine points to a boiler. Near the lot line is a steam engine on a concrete pedestal.

In 1891 Killisnoo had a reservoir plotted on USS 5 midway between the school (labeled “S.H.” in the upper left of Figure 107) and church (Figure 106). The island’s feeble seeps were channeled to it by way of intersecting ditches, some over four feet deep to bedrock, according to historic photographs. The ditch and reservoir system and a creek across Killisnoo Harbor (requiring a boat to access) were used by Atka villagers as water sources (Kohlhoff 1995:120). A secondary reservoir about 150’ south of the one plotted in 1891 (Figure 107) must have been in use by then, as such a feature was enlarged by Richard Powers to serve the lodge. In 2008 a grassy embankment retained a small pond of dark water, backed up to a few spruce and hemlock trees (Figure 128). Water retention has been improved with a black pond liner. Evidence of the reservoir’s historic origins was lacking.

At least eight boilers were observed in the former Killisnoo industrial area. Three (Figure 129) are located just inside the treeline immediately next to one of the boathouses on the Aubertine property. Another five or six boilers were found another 30’ further inside the treeline (Figure 130). The large artifacts are rusty and overgrown with vegetation, and appear to have not moved for decades.

Several rusty artifacts from the herring plant have been moved and landscaped into the grounds of the lodge, but only one large stationary machine was noted in its original position. Located near the boundary of the lodge and Aubertine properties is a steam engine on a concrete pedestal, mounted with the power shaft parallel to the shore (Figure 131).

Intertidal Features and Artifacts

Killisnoo’s intertidal zone was not extensively inspected in 2008. Piling stubs ground flush and buried beneath the beach gravels are likely present offshore, as are isolated artifacts, and local resident Frank Sharp as well as Richard Powers mentioned sport divers bringing up historic artifacts from the harbor where the dock was located. But the only features recorded in 2008 consisted of an extensive scatter of industrial debris on a long reef marking the southeast end of the beach (Figures 132-133), and a pair of pilings.

Figures 132-133. Killisnoo’s wide gravel beach is bounded on the southeast by a reef that at low tide reveals an extensive scatter of industrial debris. The barnacle-clad ferrous and cuprous artifacts on the reef are fast deteriorating into unidentifiable flakes and lumps of metal.

Within the reef scatter are remains of two boilers, cable, chain, pulleys and gears, vehicle axles and tire rims, barrel hoops and other sheet metal items, angle iron, pipe and wire in various diameters, and some glass and ceramic items. Metals represented include iron/steel, copper, brass, and lead alloys. The scatter shows in a 1945 photograph of the Aleut departure (Figure 112), so it holds more than 65 years of antiquity. Industrial debris from Killisnoo has been discarded there into recent decades, according to Tom Aubertine.

The pair of pilings consists of one at the vegetation line onshore and another about 20’ offshore perpendicular from it, approximately 80’ southeast of the marine ways. Tom Aubertine believes these mark the former location of Killisnoo’s original historic marine ways.

Figures 134-135.  Left: Archaeologist Becky Saleeby holds a leather boot fragment observed in the former residential portion of Killisnoo. Right: Domestic artifacts such as this transfer-printed ceramic bowl fragment were observed on the surface of the old Killisnoo village area.

Terrestrial Archaeological Deposits

Several localities within the current resort have disturbances revealing black organic deposits and historic artifacts. Intact deposits revealed by natural exposures (primarily the rootwads of fallen trees), were observed in two places. The most extensive evidence is northwest of the resort where the historic village of Killisnoo was destroyed by the 1928 fire. Large metal artifacts like stove parts protrude through the forest floor. Smaller artifacts noted on the surface included leather and ceramic items (Figures 134-135), as well as enamelware utensils. Second-growth timber covers most of the area and the sod and moss were sufficient to hide most cultural features, but clam shell clusters showed in several places. Bits of rotten planks could be discerned – sometimes in isolation and sometimes in clusters defining a building footprint. Near the far northwest end are several concentrations of rotten planks from buildings that either escaped the 1928 fire or were built later.

Richard Powers

They also had some bunker fuel, and once petroleum products came in there were two big wood-stave tanks that they had bunker fuel in. They were pretty close to where our generator building is. In fact we’ve had to do some soil remediation there…. Up until we started doing that you could still dig in there – you find some chunks of that. It looks just like tar. Solidified bunker oil.

Figure 136. Inland from the marine ways is an exposure of densely packed shell overlain and penetrated by solidified bunker fuel from the old Killisnoo industrial plant.

The second deposit of archaeological interest is an exposure of densely packed shell less than 50’ inland from the old marine ways (Figure 136). Overlying the shell and worked into it was a layer of crusty black bunker fuel visible in 2008; since then bioremediation has almost totally removed the oil, according to Richard Powers.

Figures 137-139. Top: Displayed on the lodge are recovered firearms – relics of the 1928 fire that destroyed the old village. Middle & bottom: The Hasselborg Cabin is adorned with saw blades – from the 1928 fire, as well as the herring plant’s steam whistle (the cone at left).

Scavenged Artifacts

In addition to a few large industrial artifacts landscaped into the grounds for the enjoyment of lodge patrons, smaller artifacts have been collected for display. Arranged on the southeast exterior wall of the lodge is a collection of firearm parts – mostly metal barrels and actions – recovered during lodge development (Figure 137). One specimen has a fire-warped barrel, and the sheer number of specimens (at least 30 on display) attests to the speed of the 1928 fire – people had no time to salvage essential items such as shotguns and rifles.

Almost as useful were the large saws needed not only to provide firewood for domestic use but to cut the large quantities of industrial boiler cordwood. As with the firearms, the large number recovered and displayed at Killisnoo gives a sense not only of how common the tool was in the typical Killisnoo household but also of the speed of the fire that prevented their owners from saving them. A one-story frame cabin immediately southeast of the lodge, named the Hasselborg Cabin after one of Admiralty Island’s notable historic characters (Orth 1967:409), has its entrance flanked by saw blades (Figures 138-139).

Finding Artifacts

I had friends in the 1960s who dove at the end of the dock and found bushel-baskets of opium bottles and rice wine bottles. Hundreds of them!
Richard Powers

My son who is a diver…says that that’s really good diving off of where the [Killisnoo] dock was, because they threw all their trash off into the water… Artifacts!
Frank W. Sharp

In the 1960s people came over and dug on the island – people traveling through. People used to scuba dive out front and find bottles. Most of those in the lodge came from there. Those rusty rifles came from our excavations for various projects. Beads have been found here. But I don’t dig.
Tom Aubertine

Inside the lodge building is a collection of glass bottles found at Killisnoo, arranged in a display case for visitor enjoyment (Figure 140).

Killisnoo Cemetery

The Killisnoo cemetery (SIT-749) is a collection of graves south of the Killisnoo industrial complex, on a surveyed parcel fronting the south shore of Killisnoo Island (Figure 120). Vegetation consists of second-growth timber and a dense cover of berry bushes and ferns, hiding several types of graves. Cut and polished stone markers with Christian motifs numbered in the dozens, with Japanese, Tlingit, and EuroAmerican surnames appearing on them. Granite, marble, and limestone were included in the collection, and dates of death ranged from the 1880s to the 1930s. Some stones are damaged, and some are no longer erect. Grave fences of concrete, wood, and wire mesh were observed in various states of disrepair (Figure 141). An elaborate wooden Chinese grave house is falling down, though major structural elements and paint are still discernible (Figure 142). At least one example of Tlingit formline design was noted – carved in stone (Figure 143).

Figures 141-144. The Killisnoo cemetery contains several types of monuments. The elaborately painted Chinese grave house includes a wooden plaque with the date 1899. Some have Tlingit formline art – like this dog salmon. On the north edge are 5 wood Russian Orthodox crosses marking Aleut internments

On the north edge of the cemetery are the remains of five wooden Russian Orthodox crosses said by Tom Aubertine to mark the Aleut cemetery from the World War II era (Figures 144-146). Both Aubertine and Powers remember at least a dozen standing at one time, decades ago. The crosses are scattered within an area approximately 25’ by 50’ in size, and none are upright. Instead they are broken and laying on the ground or against a tree. Two prone crosses have stubs protruding from the sod nearby to suggest their original location (Figures 145-146).

Figures 145-146. Left: Two Russian Orthodox crosses including this example may be near their original position. Right: The wooden Russian Orthodox markers have barely legible Cyrillic lettering not of names but rather of scripture.

All five crosses show traces of faded white paint, and Cyrillic letters in black appear to spell out religious scripture rather than names. A votive candle was nestled in the moss at the base of one cross. Another cross is of newer wood than the others and has Russian lettering “sans seraph” rather than the others’ more ornate style, suggesting it might be a replacement for an older marker.

Summary

The site of the Killisnoo herring plant still holds one large stationary machine, at least eight boilers, at least one large intertidal artifact scatter, and an extensive tract of second-growth forest hiding the archaeological remnants of the residential district that burned in 1928. There are no standing buildings that date to the operational period of the plant or the later World War II Aleut occupation. Numerous artifacts have been recovered by the existing landowners – Richard Powers and the Whaler’s Cove Lodge, and to a lesser extent Chris and Tom Aubertine. The many saw blades as well as gun barrels and actions salvaged from the site over the years attest to not only the utility of those two tool types during the early twentieth century but also the speed of the 1928 fire that destroyed the dwellings in which many of those tools resided. Other artifacts displayed by the lodge include glass bottles, a cooper’s anvil, and the herring plant’s steam whistle. The former residential portion of the site indicates considerable potential for buried archaeological remains.

The only evidence of the Aleut presence at Killisnoo is the collection of Russian Orthodox crosses along the north edge of the cemetery. Identical white wooden Russian Orthodox crosses can be seen in archival photographs of the Killisnoo cemetery taken long before World War II, reflecting the local Tlingit Indian’s conversion to that faith in the late 1800s. But the Aleut association with these particular markers is certain; Tom Aubertine and Richard Powers mentioned that occasional Aleut visitors care for the graves, such as Alice Petrivelli in the documentary film “Aleut Story.”

Part of a series of articles titled
World War II Aleut Relocation Camps in Southeast Alaska.

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World War II Aleut Relocation Camps in Southeast Alaska - Chapter 4: Killisnoo Herring Plant, pt. 1

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