Port Walter is located on the

southeastern The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each se ...

side of

Baranof Island Baranof Island is an island in the northern Alexander Archipelago in the Alaska Panhandle, in Alaska. The name Baranof was given in 1805 by Imperial Russian Navy captain Yuri Lisyansky, U. F. Lisianski to honor Alexander Andreyevich Baranov. It ...

in Sitka City and Borough,

Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S., ...

. It is made up of two parts: Little Port Walter and Big Port Walter. Little Port Walter was the home of a

herring Herring are forage fish, mostly belonging to the family of Clupeidae. Herring often move in large schools around fishing banks and near the coast, found particularly in shallow, temperate waters of the North Pacific and North Atlantic Oceans, i ...

saltery Salting is the preservation of food with dry edible salt.

during the turn on the century and the ruins can still be seen. Little Port Walter had a small community at one time but has been replaced by a research station that studies the life cycles of several species of

Salmon Salmon () is the common name for several list of commercially important fish species, commercially important species of euryhaline ray-finned fish from the family (biology), family Salmonidae, which are native to tributary, tributaries of the ...

. There is a staff of 3–15 state and federal employees running the research station year-round. There is a dock, and the harbor itself is a safe anchorage.

Climate

Little Port Walter has an

oceanic climate An oceanic climate, also known as a marine climate, is the humid temperate climate sub-type in Köppen classification ''Cfb'', typical of west coasts in higher middle latitudes of continents, generally featuring cool summers and mild winters ( ...

(

Köppen Köppen is a German surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Bernd Köppen (born 1951), German pianist and composer * Carl Köppen (1833-1907), German military advisor in Meiji era Japan * Edlef Köppen (1893–1939), German author and ...

''Cfb'') that borders a

subpolar oceanic climate An oceanic climate, also known as a marine climate, is the humid temperate climate sub-type in Köppen classification ''Cfb'', typical of west coasts in higher middle latitudes of continents, generally featuring cool summers and mild winters ( ...

(''Cfc''), with only four months having average temperatures above . It receives an average annual precipitation of over and as such is the wettest permanent settlement in the United States and among the wettest in the world with lengthy climate records. As many as seventy-eight days per year see over of rain and/or snowfall per year, while in October 1974 of rain fell and in January 1985 . The record daily precipitation was on 6 December 1964. The driest month was February 1989 with , while the hottest day on record was August 12 of 1990 with and the coldest January 2 of 1966 with overnight. The heaviest snowfall in a month was in December 2001.

Demographics

Port Walter appeared once on the 1940 U.S. Census as an unincorporated village of 21 residents. This was actually referring to "Big Port Walter." It has not reported again on the census, and was later annexed into Sitka.

References

External links

* {{Sitka Borough, Alaska Geography of Sitka, Alaska