Petersburg
Petersburg Borough · USGS GNIS name record 1424228
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USGS GNIS Populated Place names in all 50 states and DC. Features in the historical extract or explicitly named historical are excluded; duplicate decision records with identical identities and coordinates are collapsed. GNIS points identify names, not legal or neighborhood boundaries, current occupancy, school attendance or a statistical population. Nearby Census places and tracts remain separately named geographies. Name completeness and currency vary; this is not a claim to include every locally used neighborhood name.
Original USGS record for Petersburg ↗Dataset snapshot 2026-09-02 · Source record edited 02/24/2025 · NAD83 · approximate source location
USGS description & history
population 1,592, on N end of Mitkof I., at N entrance to Wrangell Narrows, 32 mi. NW of Wrangell, Alex. Arch.
Known as the "Little Norway" of Alaska. Petersburg is inhabited largely by Scandinavians whose chief occupations are fishing, canning, lumbering and fur farming. The town frew up around a salmon cannery and a sawmill built in 1897-99 by Peter Buschmann, after whom it was named. A post office was obtained in 1900 (Ricks, 1965, p. 51). Two old storage plants, five canneries, and a sawmill are maintained here as well as an experimental fur farm under the diretion of the University of Alaska. Petersburg's population was 1,252 in 1945; 1,323 in 1950. It is an outfitting point for game hunters and is well known for its "Petersburg" shrimp taken from nearby waters (Colby, 1945, p. 146).
Source notes may describe earlier conditions.Source files & checksums
SHA-256 20c96936a3ba430b345eed1c7395b6aab52875aac8e1e2905fab37b388cab381
SHA-256 45ad8d56b3bb4990ad8105cdda15ee7d2f07afd6941afe75b783f29b02723697
SHA-256 919fac887628b8547ec1b24fae319522a9481a56909c3914d1e0a2b56783147c