Thorne Bay, AK

Thorne Bay sits on Prince of Wales Island, a city shaped almost entirely by the timber industry that arrived in the early 1960s. Ketchikan Pulp Company moved a floating logging camp from Hollis to the bay in 1961; shore facilities, roads, a shop, barge terminal, and log-sort yard followed. During the big logging era of the 1960s and 1970s, Thorne Bay was described as the world’s largest logging camp. The bay and Thorne River were working infrastructure: logs arrived by truck or raft, were graded and bundled, and headed onward to mills.

ATTRJefferson Moser / Public domain

Timber operations changed after the pulp mill closed and the log-transfer facility was dismantled, but the town kept its island role. Thorne Bay incorporated in 1982 and now connects through Prince of Wales Island’s road system, floatplanes, and boats. The old logging story still greets drivers through The Claw, a giant log-handling grapple at the entrance, while Thorne Bay School serves students from preschool through high school. Forest Service work, public education, local services, and visitor traffic fit alongside the shoreline and thick Tongass forest. Thorne Bay is an Alaska city where a company camp became a municipal community without losing the bay, the woods, or the machinery that made its name.