Rebuilding Alaska: breathing new life into Kake's historic Cannery: reconstruction project to incubate business and stimulate rural Alaska economy.

• Author: Goodrich, Bethany
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Building Alaska

It was approaching dusk in April when something out-of-the-ordinary, yet strangely familiar, caught Casimero Aceveda's eye. "It was like something being reborn," says Aceveda. The lights in the old cannery were on for the first time in almost forty years.

Aceveda is the tribal president for the community of Kake. A predominately Tlingit village of approximately 650 residents, Kake is located on Kupreanof Island in Southeast Alaska. Like many of its elder residents, Aceveda grew up in the days when the salmon cannery was thriving.

"People were happy they were working. Our sisters and aunties would babysit the younger ones. Our dads fished and our moms worked on the cannery. It was a central part of our life," remembers Aceveda.

At its peak, the Kake cannery was a force to be reckoned with. In 1930 it exported 615,000 full cases of salmon, more than double what its competitors produced.

"Everyone was working, everyone was doing things, and things were going well. The cannery was really the hub of employment and activity at the time," says Aceveda.

As the political, environmental, and economic atmosphere that stimulated the canning industry waned, Kake's cannery joined others across the region in collapse.

"When the cannery closed down around 1980, everybody had started putting away their fishing boots and were going into the woods to go logging, so it switched from one entity to the other and the cannery kind of fell to the wayside. The community altogether changed," says Aceveda.

Breathing new life back into Kake's historic cannery buildings has been a dream for Aceveda and his community for decades. Although tinged with nostalgia for the past, the cannery restoration project has more to do with securing Kake's future.

"This is about all entities working together for the common cause of economic development and education for our kids. They need to step up and help themselves, but they can't do that unless we can offer a space for them to go and do it," says Aceveda.

Teetering on Catastrophe

In 1997, the US Department of the Interior and National Park Service recognized the Kake cannery as a National Historic Landmark. After two of the buildings later collapsed, the cannery was added to a less celebrated list: the "Eleven Most Endangered Historic Places" by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

The need for help was urgent. After years of working tirelessly with state and federal agencies, Kake's call was finally answered on Christmas Eve, 2014. Gary Williams...