PORTLOCK

NAME: Portlock COUNTY: Kenai Peninsula ROADS: 4WD GRID: 1 CLIMATE: Heavy coastal rain in summer. Snow-Ice in winter. BEST TIME TO VISIT: Mid Summer via boat or bush aircraft

COMMENTS: Accessible only by boat or via bush-plane beach landing. Located near the head of Port Chatham just east of the abandoned mining town of Chrome at 59.13.330 N and 151.44.583 W. There is a remote fishing lodge operation near this site. Some of this area is also regarded as Alaska Native lands. REMAINS: Mine tunnel, house pilings, rusted cannery equipment

Named after Capt Nathanial Portlock of the Royal Navy who landed here in 1787. The area had also been claimed by the Spanish and Russians until the US purchase of Alaska form Russia in 1867. A U.S. Post Office was opened at Portlock in 1921. While this was primarily a cannery town at that point, there was also Chromite mining nearby at the mining site known as Chrome. Portlock- Chatham Bay was also the site of a Territorial Boarding School for children from the surrounding smaller fish-camps, mines and villages. After a series of unexplained events and deaths, the town was suddenly abandoned en-masse around 1949 and the Post Office closed in 1950. Many older residents of the nearby towns of Seldovia, Port Graham and Nanwalek are descendants of Portlock families and consider the Portlock and Chrome areas haunted. Submitted by: Alex Clark

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