King Cove

Tucked into a narrow valley at the end of the Alaska Peninsula, King Cove is a fishing town hemmed in by rugged mountains that drop straight to the water. It takes its name from Robert King, a settler recorded living here back in the eighteen eighties.

The town really began in nineteen eleven, when Pacific American Fisheries built a salmon cannery on the shore. That cannery ran almost without a break for decades and grew into one of the largest in North America. Of the first ten founding families, five paired a European father with an Unangan, or Aleut, mother, and that blended heritage still defines the community. King Cove incorporated as a city in the late nineteen forties. Its economy still rides almost entirely on commercial fishing and seafood processing, just as it has for more than a century.