| listed in the July 2001 issue of Environmental History (6:3)
Alberni
Valley Museum
4255 Wallace Street
Port Alberni, BC V9Y 3Y6
Alberni Valley Museum photograph collection, ca. 1880–1994, ca. 13500
photographs. The collection consists of photographs depicting the forest
industry (logging and sawmill operations) and communities in the Alberni
Valley and West Coast of Vancouver Island, including Port Alberni, Bamfield,
Tofino, and Ucluelet. Photographs include those depicting individuals,
families, schools, and scenes of the built and natural environment.
Collection includes photographs of MacMillan Bloedel Alberni Pacific
Division headquartered in Port Alberni.
British
Columbia Archives
655 Belleville Street
Victoria, BC V8W 9V1
de Wolf, Allan, 1887–1967, ca. 1900–1959, 3043 photographs; 16 film
reels. Allan de Wolf was a professional engineer who worked in British
Columbia’s forestry and mining industries from 1920–1935 and in the
1950s. The collection consists of de Wolf’s films (1925–1935 and 1951–1953,
copied 1985) pertaining to engineering, logging, and mining projects
in the Kootenays as well as family events.
Department
of Special Collections
Davidson Library
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
Whitehead, Richard S., ca. 1909–1974, 2 linear feet. Richard S. Whitehead
received his B.S. and M.A. degrees from mit. From 1946 to 1969 he worked
for the County of Santa Barbara, California as director of planning.
Among his projects were the first master plan for airports in the county
and planning for the Lake Cachuma recreational area. He also helped
acquire six county beach parks and several inland parks. He was a licensed
land surveyor and registered civil engineer, and a member of the State
Water Pollution Control Board. He was the author of Citadel on the Channel:
The Royal Presidio of Santa Barbara, Its Founding and Construction,
1782–1798, edited by Donald C. Cutter. Whitehead died in Santa Barbara,
August 25, 1988. The papers are primarily concerned with land use and
planning.
California
State Historical Society
North Baker Library
San Francisco, CA 94105-4014
Alaska Commercial Company, 1868–1918, .5 linear feet. Established in
1868 with the intention of obtaining exclusive rights for taking seal
furs from the Pribiloff Islands, the Alaska Commercial Company (ACC)
is credited with helping to open up the Alaska Territory to settlers
and to various commercial enterprises immediately following the U.S.
purchase of the territory from Russia. The founders of the Alaska Commercial
Company were among the pioneering Jewish families of San Francisco.
Louis Sloss was the company’s first president, and Lewis Gerstle its
vice-president. The original stockholders also included Simon Greenewald,
Hayward M. Hutchinson, Albert Boscowitz, William Kohl, August Wasermann
Gustave Niebaum, and General John F. Miller.
The business of Hutchinson, Kohl, and
Company had obtained equipment, stores, and other property relating
to the fur sealing business from the Russian government shortly before
Alaska was purchased by the United States. The ACC then purchased these
assets from the Hutchinson firm in 1868. ACC also became the sole and
exclusive agent for the Hutchinson firm to take seals from the Komandorski
Islands in Siberia. In 1870 General John F. Miller (who later became
a U.S. Senator) was elected the company’s new president and held this
office for 12 years. Amidst fierce competition for leasing rights, ACC
was awarded an exclusive twenty-year lease under certain restrictive
conditions, by the acting U.S. Treasurer in 1870. The lease gave the
company the rights to take 1,000,000 seals from the Pribiloff Islands
in the Bering Sea from 1870–1889. The seals from these islands constituted
about 90 percent of all fur-bearing seals and had a superior grade of
fur that commanded a high market price.
While the main business of the company
from its inception was its lease with the U.S. government for fur seals,
large numbers of land furs were secured along the Aleutian Islands,
the Seward Peninsula, the Yukon Valley, Kusoquim Valley, and the district
around Bristol Bay, Kodiak, and Cook’s Inlet. Other skins included ermine,
mink, wolf, wolverine, marten, lynx, beaver, land otter, fox, bear,
and sea otter. All skins were shipped to San Francisco for counting
by U.S. Treasury officials, then shipped to London for auction by the
firm of C. M. Lampson and Company. By 1890, ACC had branched out into
many other ventures in Alaska. They had built 6 salmon canneries, each
organized as separate corporations with their own staff and fishing
fleet. They also maintained an extensive chain of trading posts, located
at various points on the mainland coast, the Yukon River and its tributaries,
the Aleutian and Komandorski Islands in Siberia, and in the Yukon Territory
in Canada. The stores provided the natives, miners, and prospectors
with staple foodstuffs, clothing, tools, and tobacco.
ACC chartered the Excelsior, the first
steamer to leave San Francisco in 1897 after the start of the Klondike
stampede, and transported passengers to Alaska throughout the gold rush
years. The company built four steamboats to carry passengers to Alaska,
and during its peak years, operated ships of all descriptions. By 1901,
severe competition among Yukon Valley businesses made profit impossible.
ACC merged with two rival trading firms, the International Mercantile
Marine Company and the Alaska Goldfields, Limited. With its new associates,
ACC organized two subsidiary corporations: The Northern Commercial Company,
which took over almost all of the mercantile activities of the group,
and the Northern Navigation Company, to handle transportation. In 1902,
acc sold to the Northern Commercial Company all of its mercantile assets
except sawmills and mining claims. At the same time, acc sold to the
Northern Navigation Company all of its floating property except ocean
steamers, in addition to fuel, ship stores, supplies, and goodwill.
ACC became little more than a holding company during its last years.
The ACC records contain two volumes of
official minutes of regular monthly and special Board of Trustees’ meetings
and annual stockholder meetings, from October 19, 1868–October 19, 1918.
Information contained in the two volumes includes acc bylaws and amendments,
the names of stockholders and the number of shares owned by them, the
names of ACC officers and trustees, the inventory of the ACC’s
purchase of Hutchinson, Kohl and Company’s Alaskan assets, plans to
obtain sealing leases from the U.S. and Russian governments, stock dividends
declared and assessments made on stockholders, plans to build, purchase
and sell ships, the number and kinds of skins sold for ACC by Lampson
and Company, inventories of ACC’s assets at various dates, plans
to increase stores and ships during the Alaskan gold rush, sales of
ACC property, stores and other assets, copies of some legal documents
and newspaper clippings of stockholders’ meeting announcements.
National
Archives — Pacific Alaska Region
6125 Sand Point Way NE
Seattle, WA 98115
Peterson, L. Kenneth, 1934, 98 page diary + album of 96 photographs.
Peterson participated as a field assistant in a U.S. Geological Survey
team that mapped the Mt. Constance quadrangle on Washington’s Olympic
Peninsula in 1934 for Public Works Project FP no. 113. Peterson related
the day-to-day activities of the survey team and his personal observations
in a ninety-eight-page diary dating from June 5–December 3, 1934. Along
with the diary, the collection consists of ninety-six photographs mounted
in an album, following the sequence of events and activities noted in
the diary. The photographs are captioned with names, dates, and locations.
In his diary and album, Peterson describes and pictures the locations
surveyed, road and trail conditions, camp life, recreational activities,
and wildlife encountered. The team, led by Stanley Druhot, traveled
by pack train, automobile, and on foot.
National
Archives — Pacific Alaska Region
6125 Sand Point Way NE
Seattle, WA 98115
Bureau of Land Management (RG 49), 1966–1969, 1 cubic foot. Reindeer
Range Study Area Photographs from the Northern District Office, Fairbanks.
Oregon State
University
Archives Department
Administrative Services B094
Corvallis, OR 97331-2103
Forestry Alumni Association, 1918–1987, .3 cubic feet and 1 reel microfilm.
McCulloch’s Newsletter, seventeen issues total, was written by W. F.
McCulloch (Forestry faculty member) to former students serving in the
military during World War II. The Fernhopper Newsletter includes one-page
letters and several-page publications to alumni and was published between
1918 and 1946. The Oregon State Forester, begun in 1948, is published
annually by the Forestry Alumni Association. It includes news of the
College of Forestry and an extensive alumni news section.
University
of Washington Libraries
Manuscripts, Special Collections, and University Archives
Seattle, WA 98195
Edmondson, Walles Thomas (W. T.), 1916– ; 1940–1998, 32 cubic feet.
Professor of zoology at the University of Washington. Edmondson’s book,
The Uses of Ecology: Lake Washington and Beyond, documents the cleanup
and recovery of Lake Washington in Seattle.
Washington
State Historical Society
Hewitt Research Library
315 North Stadium Way
Tacoma, WA 98403
J. Neils Lumber Company, 1922–1964, 8 linear feet. Includes correspondence
and photographs of a lumber company that operated in Libby, Montana,
and Klickitat, Washington (company-owned town). The move into western
timber and Neils’s early efforts at sustained yield and conservation
are well documented.
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