What is the history of Hyder, Alaska?
The Nisga’a, who lived around the Nass River, called the head of Portland Canal “Skam-A-Kounst,” meaning safe place, probably because it served them as a retreat from the harassment of the Haidas on the coast. They travelled in the area seasonally to pick berries and hunt birds. The area around the Portland Canal was explored in 1896 by Captain D.D. Gaillard of the United States Army Corps of Engineers. In 1898, gold and silver lodes were discovered in the region, mainly on the Canadian side in the upper Salmon River basin. The Stewart brothers, for whom the British Columbia Stewart, British Columbiatown was named, arrived in 1902. Hyder was originally called Portland City, after the canal. In 1914, when the United States Postal Service told residents that there were too many cities named Portland in the United States (see Portland for a list), it was renamed after Frederick Hyder, a Canadian mining engineer who envisioned a bright future for the area. Hyder was the only practical poin
