Biohazard Cleanup Near Downtown Angoon Angoon, AK

Angoon is a city on the west side of Admiralty Island in the Hoonah-Angoon Census Area, Alaska, and it is the largest permanent settlement on the island.

The Tlingit name Aangóon means roughly isthmus town, and the city sits on an isthmus at the mouth of Kootznahoo Inlet, about 60 miles southwest of Juneau.

Angoon was incorporated as a city on May 7, 1963, and is a second-class city with a mayor-council form of government.

The 2020 census counted 357 residents in 130 households in Angoon, down from 459 in 2010, and about 80 percent of residents were American Indian and Alaska Native.

Admiralty Island has long been the home of the Kootznoowoo Tlingit people, whose name means fortress of brown bears, and Angoon is the headquarters of the Angoon Community Association, a federally recognized tribe.

Angoon first appeared on the 1880 census as the Native village of Augoon with 420 residents, all members of the Tlingit tribe.

In October 1882 the village was destroyed in the Angoon Bombardment by United States Naval forces under Commander Edgar C. Merriman, after a dispute over blankets following the accidental death of a Tlingit shaman in a whaling accident.

In 1973 Angoon won a 90,000 dollar settlement from the United States government for the 1882 bombardment.

After the North West Trading Company switched to herring processing, many Tlingits moved to nearby Killisnoo for work at the fish plant, returning to Angoon after Killisnoo was destroyed by fire in 1928.

Fishing and fish processing are the mainstays of Angoon's economy today, and the city is looking into non-diesel electric power generation to reduce local electric bills.