Prince of Wales Island (Tlingit: Taan) is one of the islands of the Alexander Archipelago in the Alaska Panhandle. It is the fourth-largest island in the United States (after Hawaii, Kodiak Island, and Puerto Rico) and the 97th-largest island in the world. Geography and ecology The island is long, wide and has an area of , about one-tenth the size of Ireland and slightly larger than the state of Delaware. Approximately 6,000 people live on the island. Craig is the largest community; founded as a saltery in the early 20th century, it has a population of 1,500. Some 900 people live in Klawock, a long-established village that grew with the fishing industry. Hollis was a boom and bust mining town from 1900 to about 1915. Abandoned, it was re-established as a logging camp in the 1950s. It now has a population of 100 and is the location of the ferry terminal. Mountain peaks, all but the tallest of which were buried by Pleistocene glaciation, reach over . Fjords, steep-sided mountains, and dense forests characterize the island. Extensive tracts of limestone include karst features such as El Capitan Pit, at , possibly the deepest vertical shaft in the United States. Moist, maritime conditions dominate the weather. The Tongass National Forest covers most of the island. Within the forest and on the island are the Karta River Wilderness and the South Prince of Wales Wilderness. Many of its wildlife, such as the Prince of Wales flying squirrel (Glaucomys sabrinus griseifrons) and Prince of Wales Island ermine (Mustela haidarum celenda) are found nowhere else. The island is in the Prince of Wales-Hyder Census Area. History Prince of Wales Island is the homeland of the indigenous Tlingit people. Tlingit word , which translates to "crabapple country". The Tlingit name for the island is , meaning "sea lion". The island is traditional Tlingit territory. The Haida migrated into the area in the late 18th century. Abandoned Haida villages still have Tlingit names. In 1741, Aleksei Chirikov, commanding a ship on Vitus Bering's second voyage of exploration out of Kamchatka, made the first recorded European landfall on the northwest coast of North America at Baker Island off the west coast of Prince of Wales Island. He did not stop for any length of time there. The next European arrival was in 1774, when Juan Pérez led a Spanish expedition sailing in a boat from La Paz,