Little Port Walter was the home of a herringsaltery during the turn on the century and the ruins can still be seen. Little Port Walter had a small community at one time but has been replaced by a research station that studies the life cycles of several species of salmon. There is a staff of 3–15 state and federal employees running the research station year-round. There is a dock, and the harbor itself is a safe anchorage.
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Climate
Little Port Walter has an oceanic climate (KöppenCfb) that borders a subpolar oceanic climate (Cfc), with only four months having average temperatures above 50 °F or 10 °C. It receives an average annual precipitation of over 226 inches or 5,700 millimetres[3][4] and as such is the wettest permanent settlement in the United States and among the wettest in the world with lengthy climate records. As many as seventy-eight days per year see over 1 in (25 mm) of rain and/or snowfall per year,[5] while in October 1974 69.23 in (1,758.4 mm) of rain fell and in January 1985 61.67 in (1,566.4 mm). The record daily precipitation was 14.84 in (376.9 mm) on 6 December 1964. The driest month was February 1989 with 0.63 in (16.0 mm), while the hottest day on record was August 12 of 1990 with 88 °F (31.1 °C) and the coldest January 2 of 1966 with 0 °F (−17.8 °C) overnight. The heaviest snowfall in a month was 94.2 in (2.39 m) in December 2001.
Climate data for Little Port Walter, Alaska (1991–2020 normals,[6] extremes 1936–present)
Port Walter appeared once on the 1940 U.S. Census as an unincorporated village of 21 residents. This was actually referring to "Big Port Walter."[10] It has not reported again on the census, and was later annexed into Sitka.
^Mean monthly maxima and minima (i.e. the highest and lowest temperature readings during an entire month or year) calculated based on data at said location from 1991 to 2020.
