Remembering Talkeetna’s honorary mayor Few, if any, have left a paw print on Alaska quite like Stubbs.  The rusty orange cat who served as honorary mayor of Talkeetna lost the last of his nine lives in July, and his passing was mourned by fans across the state and the nation. He was 20 years old. Legend has it that Stubbs was elected as a write-in candidate for mayor in 1998, despite the fact that Talkeetna, a town of 900 south of Denali National Park, is unincorporated and does not hold mayoral elections. Regardless of how he gained power, Stubbs rarely made controversial decisions in office and his gentle leadership earned him national notoriety and media fame. He spent most days lying around his office at Nagley’s General Store and taking pictures with the stream of tourists who would stop by for an appointment. Occasionally, he would pad into the…

I recently ate a home pack of our Alaska Gold Salmon and, as I often do afterwards, thought to myself, “Wow! This is really good stuff!” It made me think about just how special our Alaska Gold salmon really are. It took only a bit of research to discover that… Of the total world salmon supply sold for food, only around 12% of it is wild Alaskan. (A huge portion of the remainder is Atlantic aka farmed salmon.) Of all the wild Alaska salmon, only about 1.5% of that is caught by the traditional hook and line methods like we use. Of the line-caught Alaskan king salmon and coho salmon out there, 30% is from our fishermen-owned cooperative, which has been known for its fastidious attention to quality and integrity for over 70 years. So, the salmon we catch is the best 1/20th of 1% in the world! 1/20th of…