Anchorage Daily News

TOGIAK

POPULATION: 783 (2006)

LOCATION: At the head of Togiak Bay, 67 miles west of Dillingham, in Togiak National Wildlife Refuge.

DESCRIPTION: A traditional Eskimo village with a fishing and subsistence lifestyle, where about 93 percent of the population is wholly or partly Alaska Native. The economic base is primarily commercial salmon, herring and herring roe-on-kelp fisheries. Almost three of every 10 residents hold commercial fishing permits; fishermen use flat-bottom boats for the shallow waters of Togiak Bay. Nearby is an onshore fish processor and several floating processing facilities. Seal, sea lion, whale and walrus are also harvested. A few residents trap. There is one school, attended by about 230 students.

HISTORY: In 1880, Old Togiak, or Togiagamute, was located across the bay with a population of 276. Heavy winter snowfalls made wood gathering difficult at Old Togiak, so gradually people settled at a new site on the opposite shore. Many residents of the Yukon-Kuskokwim region migrated south to the Togiak area after the devastating influenza epidemic of 1918-19. A school was established in an old church in 1950. A school building and a National Guard Armory were constructed in 1959. Togiak was flooded in 1964, and many fish racks and stores of gas, fuel oil and stove oil were destroyed. Three or four households left Togiak after the flood and developed the village of Twin Hills upriver.

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