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Kodiak Maritime Museum is the only organization in the U.S. solely dedicated to preserving Alaska's illustrious maritime heritage.

Mission

Dedicated to the recognition and preservation of Alaska’s rich maritime heritage.

Background

Kodiak Maritime Museum is a nonprofit corporation that began its voyage in 1996 to educate the public about Alaska’s commercial fishing industry and maritime heritage and to preserve this history for posterity.

The people of Kodiak and all of Coastal Alaska have depended on Alaska’s wealth of marine resources since the first people arrived in the region thousands of years ago. But it was the expansion of Alaska’s commercial fisheries during the 1900s that brought tremendous change to Coastal Alaska.

During this time, Kodiak grew from a small fishing village to one of the top two fishing ports in the nation. Whaling stations, salmon canneries, herring plants, and halibut, crab and groundfish processing plants throughout the Kodiak Archipelago employed thousands of people and kept Kodiak's fishing fleet — the largest in Alaska — busy year round.

The last 100 years in the fisheries were spent making history rather than recording it. But when KMM's founders witnessed the fisheries undergo drastic changes in the 1990s, they knew it was time to launch an effort to preserve firsthand accounts and artifacts from this illustrious and dramatic part of the state’s history.

Much of Alaska’s maritime heritage is housed in museums on the West Coast. KMM is setting a new course to preserve Alaska's maritime history in a maritime heritage center on Kodiak's working waterfront.

Annual Celebration

If you missed the last three Tastes and Tales from the Sea annual fundraisers, don’t worry. The fourth event is underway and, like fine wine, it gets better with age. The 2006 Tastes and Tales is Saturday, April 22 at the Elks Lodge. Tickets will go on sale in March, but don’t wait until the last minute to get them. Tickets sell out every year and it’s no wonder: Chef Joel Chenet of Kodiak prepares a white-tablecloth five-course fresh seafood dinner unmatched anywhere in Alaska.

The annual celebrations include talks by maritime historians such as Patricia Roppel, author of one of Alaska’s classic history annals, Salmon from Kodiak, and Pennelope Goforth, author of Sailing the Mail in Alaska, who highlight Kodiak’s rich maritime heritage. Between courses, dinner guests also have fun bidding on the many Tastes and Tales silent auction items. So come enjoy the exquisite tastes of our island bounty and the stories of our unique maritime history. It’s worth celebrating!