Seward daily gateway., 1924-09-22


 United States Army airmen flew to
 Asia along the Aleutian Island chain
 and emphasized what navigators have
 known all along-that the shortest
 way across the Pacific is by the
 Great Circle route," near Alaska
 there has been a growing recognition of the need of naval base in Alas
 kan waters. Corduva, most recently
 mentioned as a possible selection, is
 described in a bulletin from the Ma
 tional Geographic Society as "a sort
 of American Kirkwall, since 1t has
 Alaska's ,Scappa Flow at it's door,"
 Cordova is on Cordova bay, a deep commodious, we'll protected harbor it.
 self, says the bulletin. But that is only the beginning of harbor facili- ties. Just around an island corner is
 Orca bay, also an excellent haven; and
 Orca is vestibule to Prince William Sound, Alaska's Scapa Flow.
 Here is huge anchorage, bulwark- ed from the Pacific by islands, dotted with others, and with it's margins opening up into great fjords which spread out in every direction like the tentacles of an octopus. Many navies could float in the open waters of Prince William Sound; or, if unusual weather conditions brought rough | water even beyond it's island bulwark, could find snug, peaceful heavens in it fjords of behind it's high islands.
 Prince William Sound can be ori- ented by the fact that it's waters from the extreme northeastern corner of the Pacific ocean. The oceanward line l of Alaska's panhandle" extends roughly in a straight line to the northwest, and this line is continued to the innermost part of Prince Will l fam Sound. There the corner is form ed, and the general direction of the coastline veers off at right angles to | extend into the Alaskan peninsula and sweep off along the Aleutians to- ward Asia. A group of islands has fenced this corner off and made a huge deepwater sound out of it.
 The town of Cordova has not yet reached it's majority, but it has be- come the modest metropolis of the Prince William Sound region, though | several of it's competitors are we'll | over score of years old. Unlike | most Alaskan towns. Cordova was made by copper, not gold. It is the port for the rich copper mines of the Copper river and the coast terminous of the Copper River and Northwestern Railway, the first railway of consider | able length to be built in Alaska. The 1 town is not at the mouth of the Cop per river, being situated some 20 odd | miles farther west along the coast | The river develops broad marShy | delta, whose coast is without harbor | sites.
 The need of Alaska for railroads | was dramatically illustrated by the 1 in the Copper iver Valley. | Vastly rich copper mines existed 200 | miles up the valley, but even pure copper nuggets Gone weighing three tons was discovered) could not be brought out save at a cost greater | than their value. The first train from l the mines in 1911 carried 250,000 tons of ore to Cordova; and in one week in 1916 the port shipped ore worth more than 00,000-about the price paid | to Russia by the United States i'll 1S67 for the entire territory.
 Cordova and Valdez, it's neighborlng competing port, are two of the very l few survivals of the Spanish names given to Alaskan places by early Spanish 1avigators. For, though it is not generally known, the Spaniards considered Alaska their own, possibly | following out the somewhat inclusive claims of Balboa, who, when he waded into the Pacific off the Isthmus of Panama, asserted that he was taking possession of all lands washed by the ocean from Pole to Pole. In common with numerous places given Russian designations by the Muscovite own CTS of the region, the features named by the Spanish discoverers were blithely renamed by Cook, who came later on the scene, and by Vancouver.