Commercial salmon fishing reached Kasilof in 1871 from the sailing bark Washington. Captain Slocum (then 27) sailed from San Francisco to Australia, where he met and married Virginia Walker (then 21). Sailing on to Kasilof his crew harvested and salted salmon. But a storm blew up, Washington drug anchor and beached. Slocum fitted a small boat for a trip to Kodiak. There he chartered a ship to haul his salmon from Kasilof to San Francisco. This enterprise hints that someone knew about Kasilof salmon before the Washington left San Francisco. In 1898 Slocum became the first person to sail solo around the world.
In 1878 Alaska Commercial Company harvested Kasilof salmon for their saltry. Four years later Francis Cutting built Cook Inlet's first cannery, Alaska Packing Company of San Francisco, on the east bank of Kasilof River. Cutting first set up a plant at Sitka in 1878. After operating there only two years, he dismantled the cannery and moved it to Kasilof.
In 1890 George Hume built a cannery just upstream from the Cutting cannery. That same year Cutting's 133-foot sail ship, Corea, grounded in Cook Inlet and was wrecked. Because of the loss of supplies, only Hume's cannery operated at Kasilof that year.
Hume's cannery was short lived, however. In 1892, Alaska Packers Association (APA) formed and swallowed both Kasilof canneries, making the former Cutting cannery its base for operations in Cook Inlet. In these years the cannery doubled as a trading post. In 1897 Jefferson Moser brought the Albatross to Alaska to conduct a government investigation of the fisheries. Moser said the Kasilof labor force in 1897 consisted of 35 white fishermen. Other records indicate natives fished as well. Employees at the cannery in 1897 included 100 Chinese, 20 natives and 10 whites. Moser returned yearly for fisheries enforcement and reported seeing several streams barricaded in 1899. Lawless fishermen used barricades to catch fish. The eyes of the Albatross weren't immune to money. Moser joined APA in 1905.
During WWI the U.S. endorsed canned salmon and bought it for servicemen. A price boom followed that threw wealth at Alaskan fisheries. After the war the salmon price flopped. In 1920 some 151 canneries operated in Alaska. By 1922 that number fell to 83. The APA cannery at Kasilof was among the casualties, though they struggled into operation a couple more times.
The Watchman's Cabin at the McLane Center Museum is the only remains of the first Kasilof cannery.
