Wrangell

Town in southeast Alaska; population (1990) 2,500. It is situated on the north end of Wrangell Island in the Alexander Archipelago, 130 km/80 mi north-northwest of Ketchikan. At the centre of Alaska's logging activity, it also has fishing and canning industries, and was a supply point for miners heading up the Stikine River during the Yukon gold rush of the 1890s. Russian fur traders established the town in 1835 as a fortification against the Hudson's Bay Company; the latter occupied it, nevertheless, in 1840.

The town and island were named after Ferdinand Petrovich Wrangel, explorer and the first governor (1829–35) of Russian America. Shakes Island, in Wrangell Harbor, is noted for its Tlingit totem poles.