By: Susan A. Kaplan and Richard H. Jordan and Glenn W. Sheehan
In 1912 William B. Van Valin, an elementary school teacher stationed in Sinuk, Alaska, ushered his students aboard the schooner New Jersey. The class sailed to Sledge Island, or Ayak, a small uninhabited island off the south coast of Seward Peninsula (see map on p. 5), to have a picnic celebrating the end of the […]