Cordova Hot Spots

On Wednesday and Thursday, we got to experience the “rain” part of southast Alaska’s temperate rainforest.  The skies were gray, the clouds hung close and the rain just kept a-dripping. We took the mornings off, and ventured into town for lunch and afternoon explorations of Cordova hotspots.

We tried, once again, to have lunch at the Kayak Cafe, whose soup-and-sandwich menu looked really yummy. Alas, the owners were on holiday until June 10.

Other than Baja Taco, the only restaurant open for lunch was the Powder House Bar & Grill. Located inside a former storage shed for railroad explosives, it sports a funky Alaska huntin’-&-fishin’ interior, and not great food. All of the other eateries in town were closed for good – it’s tough to operate in a small town with intermittent tourism and locals who are good cooks and organize a lot of potlucks. 

Our first stop on the Hot Spots tour was the Ilanka Cultural Center, “a gathering place to promote the diverse indigenous presence in our community.”  Operated by the Native Village of Eyak, it features historic artifacts from the various tribal groups who historically shared the area’s resources – the Eyak, Alutiq, Ahtna and Tlingit people – and current art created by members of tribes from all around the northern climes.

Model of an Eyak subterranean sod homes.

Displays of traditional garments, both ceremonial and everyday.

This modern cedar wood carving by an Aleut artist represents the transformation of human, heron, puffin, and sea otter spirits.

Totems are an important aspect of the culture of the tribes represented in the Ilanka center. Totems tell stories, using symbols to reflect bits of a community’s history, its values, and its traditions.

Among the Tlingit, “shame poles” were sometimes carved to embarrass and ridicule people who owed society because of their wrongdoing.  Remember the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill? The Valdez oil tanker ran aground just upstream of Cordova, dumping more than 10.8 million gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound and contaminating more than 1300 miles of pristine wilderness coastline – heavily damaging habitat for salmon, herring, sea otters, seals, and seabirds – and devastating the fishing industry. Although news reports at the time blamed the “drunk captain,” he was later prosecuted on several criminal charges and exonerated in court. He claimed that Exxon made him a scapegoat, and post-accident investigations supported his claim: the real cause was cost-cutting, mismanagement and outright illegality by company executives. As BBC journalist Greg Palast reported in 2008 (read it and weep):

“Forget the drunken skipper fable. As to Captain Joe Hazelwood, he was below decks, sleeping off his bender. At the helm, the third mate may never have collided with Bligh Reef had he looked at his RAYCAS radar. But the radar was not turned on. In fact, the tanker’s radar was left broken and disabled for more than a year before the disaster, and Exxon management knew it. It was just too expensive to fix and operate…The cover story of the Drunken Captain serves the oil industry well. It falsely presents America’s greatest environmental disaster as a tale of human frailty, a one-time accident. But broken radar, missing equipment, phantom spill teams, faked tests — the profit-driven disregard of the law — made the spill an inevitability, not an accident.” 

Even if Exxon had been motivated to atone for the mis-management that caused this disaster (which they were not), Prince William Sound’s remote location, accessible only by helicopter, plane, or boat, made effective response efforts nearly impossible.   The region is still recoveting from the damage today, nearly 40 years later.

So a Tlingit totem artist carved an Exxon Shame Pole.

Coincidentally, I was going through some old teaching files at home while writing this blog post and came across some contemporaneous editorial shaming about Exxon’s response.

Yep. More about fallout from the Exon Valdez fiasco anon.

Crystal, Dominique and I all made contributions to the local economy in the Ilanka gift shop.

I brought home this gorgeous circle scarf, “Honouring the Salmon: Determined to be strong and reach our goals.”

The Cordova Center, our second stop, is just down the block from the Ilanka Center. And what a Hotspot! Completed in 2015, the complex was 20+ years in the making. It includes municipal offices, a theater, meeting rooms of various size. a commercial kitchen, a museum and the public library, all grouped together in a gorgeous building. Not bad for a town of 2500.

I made a bee line (naturally) for the Cordova Public Library

Patrons can check out baking sheets, muffin pans, exotic cake pans, cookie cutters, a pasta maker and just about any kind of kitchen utensil.

Wonderful kid spaces.  

Next stop was a short hop across the atrium to the Cordova Historical Museum.  This is a first class museum, with highly professional, well presented exhibits. We spent about an hour inside and learned a lot about the region’s history.

Nets used to commercially fish different varieties of salmon in this basin. First, a purse sein, which encircles the fish.

Next, a gill net, which is stretched across a passage to trap larger fish by the gills. Smaller fish, including most females, are supposed to be able to pass through the openings safely.

Pictures of salmon canning production from the New England cannery, from the walls of the Orca Lodge.

The Million Dollar Bridge in all its no-longer-passable glory.

Schematic showing how copper ore was transported from the Kennecott Copper Mine by an aerial tram and the railway to reach the Port of Cordova.

A rail car from the line that used to travel across the bridge before it was converted to automobile traffic.

Our favorite Wild Thing, the Northern Sea Otter, is huge – up to 5 feet long and up to 100 pounds in weight. They are also a apex predator, with jaw strength equivalent to a black bear, flat, fracture-resistant teeth, and strong canines capable of cunching through crabs, urchins, clamshells …pretty much anything they can get their little paws on.  (And they look so cute and cuddly floating by…)

A lens from the Cape Elias Lighthouse. Lighthouses in this area were short and stubby because visibility is limited: mountains rise steeply on all sides of the water and their are a lot of low-hanging clouds. Almost all lighthouses are decomissioned today, having been replaced by on-board navigationa systems.  This lighthouse, located on a remote island 60+ miles from Cordova, is still operating with an automated system. The boathouse is available as a vacation rental.

One large gallery is dedicated to the Exxon Valdez disaster and its aftermath, showing both impacts from the spill and the lemonade that locals made from the mess they were handed.

After years of litigation, a jury ultimately awarded local defendants both civil damages and punitive damages of $5 billion dollars. But Exxon appealed – and appealed – and appealed again – and ultimately got to our friends on the Supreme Court who reduced the punitive amount to $500 million. (Exxon also filed a claim against the US Coast Guard for reimbursement of cleanup costs – I don’t know how that one ultimately came out.)

A Trustee Council was eventually created to oversee the ~$900 million dollars that Exxon had to cough up for the Valdez disaster.

But locals still had to fight to get the dollars directed to long term solutions. In 1993, fishermen mounted a blockade across the Valdez Narrows, stopping oil tanker traffic for three days. Following this action, the Council approved a five year ecological assessment project aimed at understanding impacts to salmon and herring populations, at a cost of $22.4 million.

Another beneficiary of Trustee $$ was the Cordova Center.

The Prince William Sound Science Center was incorporated in early 1989 by a group of Cordova fishermen, scientists and resource managers “to develop a community-based organization to serve as a repository for the knowledge gained from nearly 30 million acres of coastline, wetlands, estuaries, mountains, rivers and streams – all while engaging residents with education and entrepreneurial endeavors.”

When the Valdez ran aground, this brand new group sprang into action to address the spill and to collaboratively develop long term plans for the health of the region.  Today, this Science Center hosts dozens of programs, from monitoring to tracking seabirds to supporting development of kelp farming. 

We exited through the museum’s delightful art gallery-cum-gift shop.  First up was a marvelous display of Copper River birdlife made by Cordova kids from fabrics and yarn.

We dined that evening (again) at the Reluctant Fisherman.

Thursday’s weather was a repeat, so after breakfast and another lazy morning….

…we returned to Baja Tacos for lunch. This time I took note of their extensive sticker collection – always a goos source for Signs of the Times.

Our afternoon Hot-spot visit was to The Net Loft, which the folks at the Ilanka Cultural Center described as “magical.” It is truly a mecca for crafters. The delightful owner stocks an incredible array of yarns, fabrics and sewing sundries, art supplies, writing supplies, cooking supplies – you name it. And the shop hosts all kinds of classes and workshops, both in person and on Zoom, including the “Birds by Hand” project that we saw in the Cordova Center gallery/gift shop the day before.  What a great gift for those long, dark Alaska winters! 

We closed out the afternoon back at the Orca Lodge losing badly to Gary at pinochle..