 Having been Tlingit territory and then under the jurisdiction of Russia, Great Britain, and the United States, Wrangell has the unique status as the only Alaskan city to have been governed under four "flags".Fish traps were constructed in the late 1890s on the nearby mouth of the Stikine River and in the Zimovia Strait.These contributed to the growth of the fishing and fish canning industries in Wrangell, which provided much of the economic life for the town before the rise of logging in the 1950s.