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| Mountains Surrounding Zeballos |
We left Queen Cove around 14:00 and continued up Esperanza Inlet into the Zeballos arm. We arrived at the community of Zeballos around 16:00 greeted by tall mountains rising straight out of the sea. Zeballos was once a busy gold mining town during the 1930’s and 40’s. We toured the local museum, which houses an excellent display of old photographs and artifacts highlighting Zeballos’ gold mining era. Over 30 claims were staked in the area and by 1940 Zeballos had many hotels, restaurants, stores, a bank, school, hospital, library, and a newspaper (the Zeballos Miner). World War II caused a shortage of both supplies and miners, which finally stopped production in 1943. The town went from 1300 residents down to only 35! We took a self-guided walking tour and read the informative plaques located in front of several historic buildings. As an interesting side note, the present Community Hall built in 1941 floated off its foundation in a tidal wave that hit Zeballos during the 1964 Alaska earthquake. Throughout the 1960’s, the town’s support came from the Zeballos Iron Mine; iron was separated from its tailings and loaded on ships bound for Japan. Today, Zeballos' main employer is the logging operation of Western Forest Products (WFP). Zeballos also has a fish hatchery and continues to be a popular summer sport fishing destination. In fact, we were lucky to find a moorage spot at the small marina among all the fishing boats. Things seem to be looking up for Zeballos once again; we noticed a beautiful new building that houses a nice café with space for additional shops – a positive sign for future tourism. We also learned that a new school is being built and that the Natives from the abandoned village in Queens Cove (which we had visited earlier) moved to Zeballos in new Government houses.
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