Recently 'Knute1' posted a link to a 1200+ page publication that was prepared for a U.S. Congressional committee in 1911.

In the Department of Commerce and Labor documents, spanning 1904 to 1911, was a neat inventory list containing 60 Krag rifle serial numbers. Also listed, were Krag accessories, three .30 cal. Gatling Guns and five 1.65" Hotchkiss mountain guns.

I got to wondering: why so much ordnance at a non-military post - (Two little islands, 240 miles north of the Aleutians, and 300 miles S.W. of the Alaskan coast)???

Well, I'm reading through the collection of documents!

There's Sex (seal sex), pirates, poaching, lawyers, inter-agency rivalry, bitchy dueling environmentalists, the fur trade, corporate greed, 'target practicing' Natives, the Russian Orthodox Church, alcoholism, a company store, the San Francisco Earth Quake, and Teddy Roosevelt.

I'm 2/3 of the way through .... God, finding the buried gems is boring! Lots of deceit, rivalry, ego, and hidden agendas.

It kind of starts in 1904 with the responsibility for administering the Pribilof Islands of Alaska passing from the Treasury Department to the Dept. of Commerce & Labor. Young assistant agent, Walter I. Lembkey, while stranded in the Aleutians at Dutch Harbor, is "promoted" by his Bosses' death ...

The 1904 ordnance inventory:

---