Salmon made the human geography of much of coastal Alaska. For Native Alaskans, salmon runs spawned fish camps and villages. When the United States purchased Alaska, white newcomers established salteries and canneries at these traditional fishing places. Some of these processing plants grew into year-round villages, which then turned into towns.Cordova is one such town.In 1889, the Pacific Steam Whaling Co. constructed the Orca Cannery on the Odiak Slough in present-day Cordova, which was then called Eyak. In 1895, the cannery relocated 4 miles north.Eyak was renamed Cordova in 1906, when Copper River and Northwestern Railway moved in to the old Odiak cannery buildings and started building a railroad from Cordova to the Kennicott mine. The town became a supply and transport center for the productivecopper mine, but from its very beginning, Cordova has been a fishing town.
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