Kodiak, AK news and local guide

In 1792 Alexander Baranov, chief manager of the Shelikhov-Golikov Company, moved its post from Three Saints Bay, founded in 1784 and too hard to defend, to St. Paul's Harbor, which became the nucleus of modern Kodiak. A warehouse built there, now the Baranov Museum, served one of the company's key posts for harvesting sea otter pelts. The Russians fought with and enslaved Native people in this era, Orthodox missionaries settled on the island by the end of the 18th century, and the capital of Russian America moved to Sitka in 1804. By the mid-19th century sea otters were nearly extinct and European diseases had killed about 85 percent of the Native population. After the United States bought Alaska in 1867, Kodiak became a center of commercial fishing, with canneries throughout the island in the early 20th century. The town was severely affected by the 1912 eruption of Novarupta, about 160 miles to the northwest. Sources Wikipedia: Kodiak, Alaska