Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Kasaan, AK

Kasaan is a second-class city in the Prince of Wales-Hyder Census Area on Prince of Wales Island, and its name comes from the Tlingit Kasaʼaan, meaning "pretty town."

Kasaan is one of the main historical communities of the Kaigani Haida and the northernmost Haida settlement, established by the Haida in protohistoric times or earlier as part of a migration across the Dixon Entrance from Haida Gwaii.

Kasaan is the headquarters of the Organized Village of Kasaan, a federally recognized Alaska Native tribe of Haida people.

In the maritime fur trade era, the nearby trading site of Kaigani was one of the most popular on the Pacific Northwest coast, but trade also brought disease: the first smallpox epidemic hit Kasaan in 1794, and the 1862 epidemic killed over 70 percent of all Haida people, while the first official census in 1880 listed only 173 people at Kasaan.

Residents moved from their former village on Skowl Arm, now called Old Kasaan, starting in 1893 and mostly in 1902 to 1904, after the Kasaan Bay Mining Company persuaded the village leaders to relocate closer to a copper mine, with the promise of jobs and a school.

Old Kasaan was completely abandoned by 1904 and its remains were partly destroyed by fire in 1915; it was declared a national monument in 1916, removed from the National Park System in 1955, and the Forest Service established a 38-acre Old Kasaan Village Historical Area there in 1957.

In 1938, five historic and three replica totem poles were moved to New Kasaan, and the relocated poles and a relocated house were designated the Chief Son-I-Hat's Whale House and Totems Historic District in 2002.

Kasaan first appeared on the 1910 census as an unincorporated Native village with 129 people, and it formally incorporated as a city in 1976, administered by a mayor and city council with elections on the first Tuesday of October.

The 2020 census counted 30 people in Kasaan, living in 10 households in 18 housing units, with a median age of 39.5 years, and every resident living in a rural area.

Kasaan's population was 49 in 2010 and fell to 30 in 2020, a drop of 38.8 percent.