Naknek is located beside Bristol Bay which supports the largest sockeye salmon fishery in the world. It's a legendary part of Alaskan history where fishing boats crowd in enormous lines to drop off their catch at the many canneries.
June showed the slow beginning of the season. With a quiet hum of fishermen preparing boats in dry docks and buses of cannery works being brought in from King Salmon airport. No lines of boats yet, just a quiet disused cannery building on rotting piles.
While walking through the old cannery, my friends and I were accompanied by a distant radio playing old songs from the 1940's and '50s, like something out of a post apocalyptic video game. We found the music's source in an old mechanics shop that looked like it's employee had left for a break and not come back in decades.
The carpenter's shop had a collection of photos hung up with fishermen and cannery workers going about their day, or posing with their boats. One of the caretakers on site happily pointed out his fathers portrait along with an old picture of what is now his boat.
Down on the beach at low tide we could see the rotting pilings of the old cannery we had just walked through. As we walked back to the car I was drawn to an old lodging building for cannery workers and its bright complementary colors, appropriately named the "Hilton".
Driving back to King Salmon, I was amazed by the massive yards of shipping containers. I knew that 46% of the worlds sockeye harvest comes from Bristol Bay but imagining each of these containers being shipped south full of fish really put that amount into perspective.
