Wrangell’s Rich History



Town of Wrangell



The Nolan Center Museum



While in Wrangell, we visited the James & Elsie Nolan Center, an excellent museum housing old photographs and items of interest from Wrangell’s early political history, the fur farms, the missionaries, and the gold rush periods as well as Native art.  Wrangell had its origins as Redoubt Saint Dionysius, a fort built by the Russians in 1834 to prevent encroachment by Hudson’s Bay Company traders.  The Russians later leased the fort to the Hudson Bay Company in 1839 until 1849 when the Company fort known as Fort Stikine was abandoned.  After the U.S. purchased Alaska, the Army occupied the site for a few years after 1867; the U.S. Army built another fort, renaming the settlement Fort Wrangell.  Wrangell was a rugged, tough community with no amenities like wooden walkways, running water, drainage, or sanitary facilities.  The Naturalist John Muir, who visited the area in 1879, described Wrangell as a “rough place.”  Wrangell also had more than its share of lawless folks, even the famous Lawman Wyatt Earp who stopped here on his way to the goldfields, had served as Deputy Marshal for 10 days and said Wrangell had “all sorts of flotsam from every corner of the earth.”  Another interesting museum display is that of two large granite rocks embedded with garnets.  Garnets were mined near Wrangell and shipped to the manufacturing operation in Minneapolis.  Garnets were used for jeweled hatpins, watch fobs, umbrella rib-caps, hair clips, cosmetic boxes, and other items.  Operations continued until 1922.  The operation was founded by eleven women, the first all-woman corporation - the Alaska Garnet & Manufacturing Corp.



Photo of Fort Wrangell



Photo of the early "Rough" Wrangell



Granite Embedded with Garnets