Winters are mild and summers are cool on the Northwest Coast. A mountainous area dotted with offshore islands, it extends 2,000 miles north from what is today San Francisco, California to Anchorage, Alaska. With the Pacific Ocean, rivers, and streams all teeming with fish, and dense forests full of wildlife and plants, early settlers had no need to farm.

In the 1700s, the 400 coastal miles around Sitka, Alaska, were controlled by the Tlingit, who were said to use technology to improve their living conditions. Skilled woodworkers and fishermen, they built enormous canoes, multi-family plank houses facing the sea, and intricate totem poles to decorate their villages. Clans celebrated events with special feasts called potlatches.

After Danish explorer Vitus Bering's 1741 crossing of the Bering Strait, explorers and fur traders from Russia, Spain, France, Britain, and America ventured to the Northwest Coast. In 1867, the United States purchased the Russian colony of Alaska. In 1971, the U.S. returned 44 million Alaskan acres to the Tlingit, the Inuit, and other original owners.