Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Port Alexander, AK

Port Alexander (Lingit: Shee Yat'aḵ.aan) is a city and harbor at the southeastern corner of Baranof Island, Alaska, in the Prince of Wales-Hyder Census Area.

As of the 2020 census, the population was 78, up from 52 in 2010.

The city was incorporated on May 5, 1938.

There is no written record of a permanent Tlingit settlement at Port Alexander, though native structures found there in 1794 suggest it was used in the pre-contact era, perhaps as a summer fish camp.

George Vancouver anchored HMS Discovery and HMS Chatham in nearby Ship Cove on August 1, 1794, and his 1798 chart of southern Baranof Island shows the outline of Port Alexander.

One source credits the name Port Alexander to Mikhail Tebenkov, director of the Russian-American Company, who may have named it for Alexander Baranof, the first governor of Russian Alaska.

In the early twentieth century Port Alexander was one of the most important fishing ports in Alaska, with hundreds of small trolling boats catching in excess of 5 million pounds of salmon per year in the 1920s.

The Bureau of Fisheries reported that 1913 was the first year of large-scale fishing at Port Alexander, with an estimated 300 power boats and 400 hand-trolling boats.

The U.S. Forest Service estimated the summer population at 1,000 to 1,200 during the fishing boom; a post office opened in 1926, and by 1928 the town had a church, six general stores, six restaurants, three bakeries, and a hotel.

Many of the fishermen were Norwegian immigrants, and the "Fredheim" seaman's home mission built in 1927 was still being supported by its organization in 1955.