Redoubt Lake, or Kunaa Shak Áayi, is a long, narrow lake on

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

, near

Sitka, Alaska Sitka (; ) is a municipal home rule, unified Consolidated city-county, city-borough in the southeast portion of the U.S. state of Alaska. It was under Russian America, Russian rule from 1799 to 1867. The city is situated on the west side of Ba ...

. It is located in a glacially-carved valley in

Tongass National Forest The Tongass National Forest () in Southeast Alaska is the largest U.S. National Forest at , an expanse larger than 10 U.S. states and 75 U.N. member nations. Most of its area is temperate rain forest and is remote enough to be home to many s ...

. It was named ''Ozero Glubokoye'', meaning "deep lake", in 1809 by the Russian navigator Ivan Vasilyev. Redoubt Lake is one of the largest

meromictic lake A meromictic lake is a lake which has layers of water that do not intermix. In ordinary, holomictic lakes, at least once each year, there is a physical mixing of the surface and the deep waters. The term ''meromictic'' was coined by the Austria ...

s in North America. Its water is fresh to a depth of , below which is a dense, saltwater layer. The lake's maximum depth is with a mean depth of . Its surface area covers .Redoubt Lake Sockeye Salmon Enhancement and Monitoring
Tongass National Forest, US Forest Service It has been theorized that the lake was once a former fjord that was cut off from the ocean via

isostatic rebound Post-glacial rebound (also called isostatic rebound or crustal rebound) is the rise of land masses after the removal of the huge weight of ice sheets during the last glacial period, which had caused isostatic depression. Post-glacial rebound ...

, leading to seawater being trapped. In the early 19th century Redoubt Lake was part of

Russian America Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

. The Russians established a small settlement near the lake's outlet known variously as Ozersk Redoubt, Ozyorsk Redoubt, The Redoubt, Seleniye Dranishnikova, or Dranishnikov Settlement. Salmon traps were set in the lake and the catch was salted and dried at Ozersk Redoubt. Between 1817 and 1832 the Russians at Sitka and Ozersk Redoubt salted an average of 20,000 salmon annually.The fishermen's frontier: people and salmon in Southeast Alaska
by David F. Arnold, William Cronon Fish harvests by the Russians at Redoubt Lake sometimes exceeded 50,000

sockeye salmon The sockeye salmon (''Oncorhynchus nerka''), also called red salmon, kokanee salmon, blueback salmon, or simply sockeye, is an anadromous species of salmon found in the Northern Pacific Ocean and rivers discharging into it. This species is a ...

per year. Annual escapements possibly exceeded 100,000 sockeye. In the 1980s, sockeye escapement or returns of adult fish had declined to an average less than 10,000 annually. Some years the numbers measured in the low hundreds.

Notes

Lakes of Alaska Meromictic lakes Lakes of Sitka, Alaska Glacial lakes of the United States {{SitkaAK-geo-stub