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| The Inside Passage of Southeast Alaska! |
Islands in the Pacific. The Alexander Archipelago.
A Quick of History of the Inside Passage
On August 20, 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt established the Alexander Archipelago National Forest Reserve, which formed the heart of the 17 million acre Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska. The Tongass National Forest is still today the largest national forest in the United States.
The Alexander Archipelago is an archipelago, or group of islands, off the southeast coast of Alaska. The islands are the tops of the submerged coastal mountains that rise steeply from the Pacific Ocean. Deep channels separate the islands and cut them off from the mainland. The northern part of the Inside Passage winds its way among the islands.
The largest islands are Chichagof Island, Admiralty Island, Baranof Island, Wrangell Island, Revillagigedo Island, Kupreanof Island, and Prince of Wales Island. All the islands are rugged, densely forested, and have an abundance of wildlife.
Ketchikan on Revillagigedo Island and Sitka on Baranof Island are the largest towns on the islands of the Alexander Archipelago. The largest town of the region, Juneau, is actually on the mainland and also the capitol city of Alaska. Oddly, even though Juneau is on the main land, there are no roads to the capitol city. This has been a major concern of the Alaskan people for many years and still arises on voting ballots to move the capitol city to Anchorage where roughly 50 percent of the states population resides.
Tourism, fishing, and logging are the main industries of the islands and towns.
The archipelago was visited by the Russians in 1741 and was later explored by Britain, Spain, and the United States. Control of the islands passed from Russia to the United States with the Alaska Purchase in 1867.
The archipelago received its name from Alexander Baranof, the head of the Russian fur trading company, the Russian-American Company, in the early 1800s.
Inside Passage Southeast Alaska
The Inside Passage of the Alaska Panhandle and coastal British Columbia is a route for oceangoing vessels that travel between the mainland and coastal islands along a series of passages. Ships using the route can avoid some of the bad weather in the open ocean, and to visit the many isolated communities along the route. It is heavily traveled by cruise ships, freight lines, fishing craft and ships of the Alaska Marine Highway and British Columbia Ferries systems.
The name Inside Passage is also used to refer to the ocean and islands around the passage.
The Alaskan portion of the Inside Passage, in the north, extends 500 air miles from north to south and 100 miles from east to west. The area contains 1,000 islands, 15,000 miles of shoreline and thousands of coves and bays. British Columbia's southern portion of the route is of similar extent, and includes the narrow, protected Strait of Georgia between Vancouver Island and the B.C. mainland, as well as the wider and more exposed Hecate Strait near the Queen Charlotte Islands.
Created on 02/14/2006 10:11 PM by Admin
Updated on 02/17/2006 02:50 PM by Admin
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