Talk:Yakutat, Alaska

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Meaning of the name Yakutat

I'm not sure that I agree with the "canoe bobbing" citation - I heard a presentation by a Tlingit lecturer last week that indicated the name meant "place where the canoes rest." I suppose I could be confusing this with something else but I'm pretty sure I remembered it right. If it's worth anything, this site corroborates my memory. -Etoile 18:56, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

In Frederica de Laguna's work on the Tlingit of Yakutat she lists a number of different derivations for the name. It is likely that the name was originally Eyak, then adopted by the Tlingit. As time passed a Tlingit meaning was attributed to the name, but different families or groups had different derivations. De Laguna discussed the name with her informants and none came to a decisive conclusion. Another theory is that the name definitely contains yaakw "canoe", and is followed by the root of the verb yadaa "flow, ebb (as in tide)". It's hard to say, really. If you can find the Yakutat IRA corporation or non-profit group they may have an "official" explanation for the name, or can get one from local elders. — Jéioosh 06:09, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

The speaker I heard on board the Oosterdam last week was Fred White, if I remember his name correctly; if he was not the speaker then he was the elder who sat in the audience and was introduced at the end of the lecture. As a representative from the local tourism group I would trust him as an "official" source. I found an interview with him here (I don't think that's him in the picture!) and he also taught Tlingit language classes. I am comfortable trusting his statement about "where the canoes rest" but I would be fine with including alternatives in the article text. -Etoile 23:23, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Fred White is definitely a Tlingit speaker, and is a knowledgeable Yakutat elder with a long history in the area. I would feel most happy with the Tlingit words used to derive this meaning, but I will take Fred's word for it. I'll make the change, and I'll ask around for the derivation. — Jéioosh 19:06, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Total Area

Does anybody know the total area of the Borough (land+water)?--Whhalbert 07:56, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

The Russia Fort was built in 1796 and destroyed in 1805. 209.193.0.177 (talk) 06:24, 7 July 2008 (UTC) George Ramos

My daughter's Feb 3rd, 2011 Weekly Reader news pamphlet had a lovely chart showing the largest cities by population and by size. I was shocked to see they listed Yakutat, Sitka, Juneau, and Anchorage as the 4 largest cites by land area. I realize this is straight out of a US Census Bureau data table, and no actual thought went into this claim. I just hope that people realize that Alaska does not have counties. Instead Alaska has boroughs. There is also a wiki on the North Slope Borough claiming it to be the largest 'county-level political subdivision'.

Here is one of the questions from the weekly reader: What can you conclude from the chart? A) Alaska has many large cities. B) Few people live in Chicago, Illinois. C) People enjoy living in Juneau, Alaska. --Broecher (talk) 02:32, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Bogosity check

This has been bothering me for quite some time. Someone needs to go over this article again. To wit:

• The 2010 Census population is 662, as confirmed at both the Census site and the Alaska Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development's Community Information Summaries site. I don't know where 4,035 came from, but it's obvious that the 2010 Census information hasn't fully made its way onto a lot of these pages yet.
• Yakutat is a "city and borough" in name only. Specifically, the City of Yakutat was dissolved and a borough was incorporated in its place, inexplicably called the City and Borough of Yakutat even though it's actually just a borough. CIS refers to it as such:
  • "Incorporation Type: Home Rule Borough"
  • "The City of Yakutat was formed in 1948, but in 1992 the city was dissolved and a borough was organized for the region."
  • See also the borough's charter, which refers to it as a borough called "City and Borough of Yakutat." Unless you'd rather just take what some disconnected entity says at face value and call it a "reliable source," or even just make stuff up on your own.
• Speaking of which, the article states: The city and borough has a total area of 9,459 square miles (24,500 km2). 7,650 square miles (19,800 km2) of it is land and 1,809 square miles (4,690 km2) of it (19.12%) is water. The borough's certificate of incorporation (as found here) states that the borough consists of 2,878 square miles of land and 8,492 square miles of "submerged lands and tidelands." Please tell me where this respective math adds up by any stretch of the imagination. Furthermore, there is the caveat that "only 321 square miles of the 8,492 square miles of tidelands and submerged lands" fall within "the jurisdictional limits of the State of Alaska."

By this point, I am rather sick and tired of having to point out in article after article that copying and pasting PD material without verifying its authenticity by checking it against other sources is just so bogus.RadioKAOS (talk) 22:22, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Change title back to Yakutat, Alaska

Other Alaskan city-boroughs all have shorter Wikipedia titles. See Anchorage, Alaska; Juneau, Alaska; Sitka, Alaska; Skagway, Alaska; Wrangell, Alaska. For consistency, perhaps this article should be titled Yakutat, Alaska. Or does common local usage actually employ the longer name? --Joseph Hewes (talk) 19:22, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Requested Move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was move. Cúchullain ^t/c 21:06, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

---

Yakutat City and Borough, Alaska ? Yakutat, Alaska – Per Joseph Hewes. Don't think this requires any further explanation; all the other Alaskan city-boroughs are titled this way on Wikipedia. I live in Alaska and everyone just calls it "Yakutat", never "Yakutat City and Borough", so it's not different from Juneau or Sitka in that regard.relisted --Mike Cline (talk) 10:50, 29 June 2012 (UTC) -Kudzu1 (talk) 08:35, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately, this is where Wikipedia enters the realm of "'original research' or 'making shit up?' You decide." Or, to be kind, acting on something while indications are that not all relevant sources have been consulted. Let me reiterate the most important point, emphasis intentional: YAKUTAT'S CHOICE OF NAME IS PERHAPS UNFORTUNATE, AS THE ENTITY IS A BOROUGH, NOT A CITY-BOROUGH. The article was tagged with {{Disputed}} for a good reason. You really should take the time to peruse the State of Alaska website and gather the information found there before continuing to perpetuate the falsehood that Yakutat is a city-borough. Yakutat's municipal charter (hosted online by the Alaska Local Boundary Commission) refers to it as a borough. Its entry in the Alaska Community Information Database also refers to it as a borough. I would have believed that this was the fault of individuals only consulting the Census Bureau. However, I've been going through FactFinder as time allows, and it returned references to the City and Borough of Yakutat, and a separate Yakutat CDP. Providing further confusion, the 2010 Census reports that the Yakutat CDP contains 100 percent of the borough's population. That means that the settlements in the Cape Yakataga/Icy Bay area are presently unpopulated (or at least have been reported as such by the Census).

Anchorage, Juneau and Sitka went through unification (or a combining of the governments of a borough and a city or cities), and are classified as unified home rule municipalities. On the other hand, Haines, Skagway, Wrangell and Yakutat all went through consolidation, which is a legally distinct but related process. All four of these communities saw the dissolution of their city governments and effective replacement with a borough government. Wrangell is classified as a unified home rule borough, itself a misnomer since with only one government before, there was nothing to unify. Haines and Yakutat are classified as home rule boroughs, with Skagway a first class borough (under general law, meaning that stricter adherence to state statutes applies than a borough with a home rule charter). Haines had an existing borough. The Haines Borough was for decades the only third class borough (meaning that they were very limited in function), and through consolidation was reclassified. The preexistence of a seperate city and borough in the case of Haines made it easy, basically requiring changing a few words in Haines, Alaska to reflect the change from city to CDP. However, Skagway and Yakutat also consist of a borough and a CDP coterminous with the former city.

It's hard to say whether separate articles are necessary in the cases of Skagway and Yakutat. The distinction between borough and CDP does need to be made, as right now the articles are misleading if not downright false. The aforementioned Cape Yakataga/Icy Bay is a separate community within the borough from Yakutat, even if it is or may be unpopulated at present. Similarly, Skagway has Dyea.RadioKAOS (talk) 22:49, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

• Relisting comment - Please provide Support or Oppose positions supported by policy/guideline rationale. Thanks --Mike Cline (talk) 10:50, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
• Support The WP:AT nutshell test—is the proposed name is recognizable? Yes. Unambiguous? Yes (if the city and borough are coterminous). Consistent with usage in reliable English-language sources? Looks like it. --BDD (talk) 20:05, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

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Area

Why is the area of this 100 sq miles. There's no way that Yakutat is 100 sq miles. Yakutat is longer than 100 miles. Julianstout (talk) 06:46, 26 August 2022 (UTC)