By the latter part of the century two Spaniards, Juan Francisco Bodega y Quadra and Francisco Mourelle, explored villages not far away for a month in 1775. The Russians came shortly afterward, established a trading company by 1799, and focused on killing sea otters for their pelts.
When the United States bought Alaska from Russia on Oct. 18, 1867 — over the objections of the Tlingit — it had more to do with asserting U.S. influence in the Pacific than commandeering the riches of its forests.
Soon enough, officials such as J.W. White, a captain in the U.S. Revenue-Marine Service, began to eye Alaska’s trees, writing in 1876, “When the forests of Oregon and Washington are gone, Alaska will be our permanent supply.”
As timber became more valuable, federal officials fought to claim the forest as their own. Between the 1930s and 1960s, they repeatedly burned cabins and smokehouses at Indigenous fish camps. While Alaska Natives returned year after year to these sites, to catch salmon and herring they relied on year-round, Forest Service officials referred to them in disparaging terms such as squatters.
The year 1951 could have augured the death of the spruce. That was when Ketchikan Pulp & Paper Co. and the Forest Service signed a 50-year contract to cut down 8.25 billion board feet — enough to fill 1.6 million log trucks. It ranked as the largest timber sale in the agency’s history. A second 50-year contract with Alaska Lumber and Pulp Co. followed five years later.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had risen to 315 parts per million.
At the time, Forest Service researchers called old growth in the Tongass “decadent climax forest stands.” The spruce tree growing on central Prince of Wales already fit that description. As it climbed, it acquired several of the hallmarks of what naturalist Richard Carstensen lovingly calls “age and decrepitude,” including delicate plants hanging off its branches. These epiphytes ranged in texture and color, from the orange moss known as Antitrichia curtipendula to the light-green lichens belonging to the genus Usnea, known more commonly as old man’s beard and witches’ hair, respectively.
To harvest big trees more easily, however, the government had to build roads across Prince of Wales. In the mid-1960s it constructed one about 200 yards away from the old spruce, paving it with shot rock from a quarry.
For companies seeking to supply the growing market for paper and for rayon, made from cellulose, these large trees were ideal.