E. Donnall Thomas Jr.

The approach to Thorne Bay by road is a drive through winding miles of dark, towering conifers—a landscape J.R.R.Tolkien might have populated with elves and dwarves.This is part of the world’s largest temperate rainforest and, despite its beauty, I feel a sense of release when I break into the open at the head of the bay.This afternoon,two bald eagles stands guard in the treetops near the city limits.It is early September, and the pink salmon drifting down the nearby Thorne River at the end of their life cycle have attracted a contingent of carnivores.

Everyone who spends time outdoors in Alaska confronts the cycle of life and death in the North.Do the same principles apply to communities?The residents of Thorne Bay, and those in a number of towns in the state’s Panhandle,have had to wonder recently.

There is archaeological evidence of a human presence in this region dating back nearly 8,000 years.Preserved in tidal mud along the Thorne River estuary, a spruce-root basket found 10 years ago is one of the oldest artifacts of its kind.Shell middens, rock art and fishcamp artifacts establish Native presence near Thorne Bay long before recorded Western history.

	Robert Spencer Ingram
	One-sixth of the area within the Thorne Bay city limits is actually water, so travel by boat and floatplane is common.

While vessels of Russian, Spanish and British origin all plied nearby waters during the early days of Alaska’s European exploration, none of these colonial powers established permanent settlements.American surveyors eventually named Thorne Bay in honor of Frank Manly Thorn, superintendent of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey from 1885-89, with a misspelling of his name in the original record that persists today.Despite its attractive topography, the site remained largely uninhabited by Westerners until the early 1900s, when fishermen built a saltery on the south side of the bay and loggers began to float high-grade spruce down the Thorne River.

The town’s modern transformation began in 1954 when the Ketchikan Pulp Co., a subsidiary of the Louisiana Pacific Corp., negotiated a 50-year lease that granted extensive logging rights within the Tongass National Forest.Attracted by protected waters and nearby timber resources, Ketchikan Pulp established a floating camp in 1961, and Thorne Bay soon grew into the largest logging camp in the world.

As the operation grew, Ketchikan Pulp built permanent quarters on shore for its employees and eventually ceded them to the state, which owned the land, and allowed their occupants to purchase them.The town of Thorne Bay incorporated in 1982, around the time it reached its peak population of 700 to 1,200 permanent residents.After a period of administrative consolidation, the Thorne Bay Ranger District became the headquarters for U.S. Forest Service activities on the northern half of Prince of Wales Island, employing some 50 people full time and a similar number of seasonal workers.

In 1999, the U.S. government banned logging in previously designated roadless areas within national forests.The Tongass was initially excluded from the logging prohibition, but that exemption was revoked in 2000 and logging on nearly 10 million acres of the Tongass came to a halt.When the original 50-year timber lease expired in 2004, the Forest Service did not renew it.

Ron Niebrugge/WildNatureImages.com

The area around Thorne Bay is part of the world's largest temperate rainforest - a landscape J.R.R. Tolkien might have populated with elves and dwarfs.

As loggers pulled out, the Forest Service reduced its workforce by nearly half and Thorne Bay’s population fell below 400.

But a few residents didn’t want to leave and set about finding ways to help their community survive.

Fortunately, the area offers resources beyond timber.The Inside Passage draws boaters year-round and outdoor recreational seasons stretch from April with steelhead through December with waterfowl and blacktail deer.The island’s extensive road system, a legacy of logging days, offers access to other communities. Carefully measured development of tourism and recreation clearly offered the town its best chance of post-timber survival.

Robert Spencer Ingram

Longtime residents Jim and Jeannie McFarland neatly illustrate the new paradigm. Jim began working for the Forest Service in Thorne Bay in 1981, commuting from Ketchikan. Now, the McFarlands operate a lodge on the south side of Thorne Bay and a boat and motor dealership in town. Running two demanding businesses may not be how they once envisioned their retirement, but they were always committed to Thorne Bay.

Tim Woody

“Those of us who really wanted to stay simply found ways to make it work,” Jim said.

Harvey and Brenda McDonald were also Forest Service employees when they arrived in 1984 to work in fire management and administration. They recognized that for Thorne Bay to survive the transition from timber to tourism it needed a better way for visitors to navigate the area, and access to the entire island.Harvey became Thorne Bay’s representative on the Inter- Island Ferry Authority, created in 1997.

“The Alaska Marine Highway System served us well for years up to a point,” he said.

But the AMHS ferry service to Prince of Wales Island didn’t run often or conveniently enough to satisfy the anticipated growth in vehicle traffic. The IFA secured funding to launch the Prince of Wales in 2001, providing daily service between Ketchikan and Hollis.In 2006, the Stikine began service between Coffman Cove, Petersburg and Ketchikan.

	Robert Spencer Ingram

“We feel that the Inter-Island Ferry has provided a tremendous boost to the local economy,” Harvey said.

And the McDonalds’ reason for those long hours of work for their community mirror that of the MacFarlands.

“Our kids are here,” Brenda said, “and now our grandchildren are, too. We plan to stay.”

While the thrust of its mission has shifted from timber management to recreational support services, the U.S. Forest Service’s Thorne Bay Ranger District headquarters remains an important component of the local economy.

But the Forest Service isn’t the only important regional institution with headquarters in town. The Thorne Bay School District is one of the most diverse and geographically far-flung in the nation, and superintendent Lauren Burch commutes hundreds of miles by floatplane in the course of a day’s work, visiting schools from Port Alexander on the southern end of Baranof Island to Hyder—on the mainland, just a stone’s throw from British Columbia— and in between at Whale Pass, Coffman Cove, Port Protection, Naukati, Kasaan and Hollis.

The district’s smaller schools face formidable difficulties, as do many Bush schools.

“When enrollment drops below 10 students, we lose funding for the school,” Burch said.“That’s a constant threat in many of our smaller communities, where the loss of one job by the head of a household with three kids can make the difference between having a local school or not.”

The town seems to have successfully adapted to its new economic base. In addition to the 19 Forest Service cabins in the Thorne Bay Ranger District available for public use, the town offers a dozen or so private lodges, B&Bs and cabin rental services, and a growing number of small charter-fishing operations.But the town can only grow so much without losing its character and charm, and without risking business failures. As one lodge owner put it, “The niche is getting full.”

And filling the niche brings mixed blessings. Once widely renowned for the quality of its black bear hunting, changesIn the local bear harvest have led to new restrictions.On the other hand, the litter that blighted the area in its logging heyday has largely disappeared, ,a reflection of increased civie pride.

The towns ambience unfailingly derives from the sea.The smell of salt water permeates the air, and it’s hard to fi nd a place in town that doesn’t include a view of the bay—one-sixth of the area within the city limits is actually water.Residents of nearby fl oating homes and the bay’s “South Side” commute to town by skiff as casually as suburbanites travel to work by car.The boat harbor serves as the epicenter of the town’s social life, and when locals want to enjoy the outdoors, they are more likely to travel by boat than automobile.

A mile inland another world awaits, populated by wolves, blacktail deer and the largest black bears in the world.The Thorne River supports some of the strongest steelhead and salmon runs on the coast.And between land and sea, the town of Thorne Bay endures, still the kind of place where neighbors help neighbors without being asked and drivers wave at each other on the streets.If the sound of children playing outdoors is an honest measure of a town’s soul, then that may be the surest indication that those who chose to stay and make Thorne Bay work have done their job.

E. Donnall Thomas Jr.

E. Donnall Thomas Jr. divides his time between homes in rural Montana and Thorne Bay. He has written 14 outdoor books and his latest, How Sportman Saved the World: The Unsong Conservation Efforts of Hunters and Anglers, is available from Lyons Press. Son wrote about fall hunting and fishing on the Kodiak in the Nov. 2008 issue.