Portlock, Alaska - The Town Without A Road

Some towns fade away.

Portlock, Alaska didn't fade... it emptied.

And no road has ever led back.

Transcript

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Before Portlock, Alaska was abandoned. It was avoided, not by strangers, not by outsiders, but the people who lived there. Men who had spent their entire lives in the wilderness began refusing to enter the forest behind their own homes. hunters stopped hunting. Fishermen stayed close to the shoreline, and families who had built their lives there began leaving. One by one. They didn't leave because of war. They didn't leave because of disease and they didn't leave because of weather. They left because they believed something was living in the forest above their town, something they couldn't see, but something they could hear, something the native people had warned about for generations. Portlock Alaska still exists today, but there is still no road leading to it, and no one has ever moved back. This is the story of the town that walked away. I'm your host, Amanda, and welcome back to Let's Get Weirdish. I was doom scrolling of course on TikTok, and I came across this TikTok that says in 2019, 600 people simultaneously disappeared from a small town in Alaska. The FBI closed the case three days after, and here's what they found. Okay, first off, this is not true, but if it is, I couldn't find anything on it. Also, if you hear this weekend, you know. That storage door on the outside of the camper is broken and it's windy today. We're trying. We're trying, guys. The caption on this says the town of Portlock, Alaska, population 612 vanished overnight on October 23rd in 2019. Okay. It says that dispatcher in Anchorage received a call saying they're all leaving. Everyone is going into the woods. Police arrived eight hours later. The town was empty, cars parked food left on the tables. Children's backpacks in the schools. Every trail led to the northern forest to mazan. The tracks ended in a clearing. The ground was blackened and scorched. Perfect circle 40 meters wide. FBI claimed it was a mass evacuation due to a gas leak. Okay? Basically what they're trying to say is that these people got on a spacecraft and left. So I had never heard of this. I started digging. None of this is factual, and I know this. and because Portlock was abandoned way before this. This is one of those, grab your attention TikTok stories. If you're listening to this and you have proof. Otherwise, send it my way. I wanna hear it. But until then. We're gonna tell the real story. There is no road to Port Lock Alaska. There never has been. Even when the town was alive, when the children played alongside its shoreline and smoke rose from chimneys, there was never a road connecting it to the outside world. Also, if I pronounce most of the words wrong, the, the names, the towns, all of the things. If you've been here a while, you know, just ignore it. Portlock existed at the edge of Kana Peninsula along a protected inlet called Port Chatham. Mountains. Rose sharply behind it. Covered in the dense spruce and altar forest, so thick that even an experienced outdoorsman struggled to move through it. In front of it was the water. Cold, gray, and often violent. If you wanted to reach Portlock, you came by boat. If the weather turned, you waited. If the boat didn't come, your ass stayed. isolation wasn't, and still isn't unusual in coastal Alaska. And if you know me very well, you know, I would love to move to Alaska and live off grid. Okay. It's, it's a dream one that'll never happen, but a dream all the same. Portlock was more cut off than most it existed in a pocket of land where the forest met the sea and stopped everything else from following. This kind of makes me think of Bush people. Did y'all watch that show the Alaskan Bush people? I was a huge fan. Whether some of it was fake or not, I was fully invested in these people. Cringey or not. I go, I go through my phases. Back in the gap, it was honey boo boo. Why? I don't know. I love my trash tv. Not that Alaskan Bush people was trash tv. Okay. That's not what I'm saying right now. It's a thousand pound Sisters. shout out to the thousand pound sisters fan. Y'all don't listen. I'm sure, but you know what? If you ever do. I am here for it. I'm here for all of it. The brother is my favorite, though. I will say that. Anyway, back to the story. The town itself formed gradually in the early 19 hundreds. A salmon cannery opened along the shoreline, drawing fishermen and workers to the area. Small homes were built close to the water supply. Boats arrived with food, equipment, and mail. By 1926, Portlock had its own post office. This wasn't a temporary camp. It was a functioning settlement, and at its peak, port lock's permanent population was estimated between 30 and 50 residents. With seasonal cannery workers bringing the number higher during peak fishing months. Families lived there year round. People raised children there. It was remote, but it worked Until people began to notice something wasn't right. The forests surrounding Portlock were different from the shoreline. They were darker, denser. The terrain rose quickly into steep, uneven ground cut with streams and ravines Visibility dropped quickly beneath the tree. Canopy. Hunter still entered those woods. It was necessary But over time some began reporting things. They couldn't explain heavy footsteps behind them when there was nothing visible movement through the brush that didn't match known animals. the sense, clear and unmistakable that they were being watched. If you're a hunter, especially living in the wilderness in Alaska, you pretty much know all of the animals that are around what they sound like, how they act. So these people were probably freaking the hell out. At first, these experiences weren't spoken about publicly. They were shared quietly between fishermen, between hunters, between men who trusted each other. One of the most widely remembered incidents involved a gold prospector named Alvin King. King worked alone in the inland areas near Portlock. During the 1930s, prospectors like him, moved through the remote terrain, searching for gold and streams and soil. He carried supplies and a rifle because bears, you know. When King didn't return, people went looking for him. His body was eventually found in the wilderness. Accounts preserved through oral history in nearby Eck describes severe trauma. His body was crushed. His rifle was reportedly discovered, bent beside him, not broken at the stock from age, but bent with force. There was no widely accepted explanation, no clear answer. That satisfied the people who lived there. And after that, people became more cautious. This caution wasn't imagined decades later. It was documented in the words of people who had lived nearby. In interviews recorded many years later, elders from Nan, whose parents and grandparents had lived during port lock's active years, spoke openly about what they had been told. One elder John O'Leary explained in a film interview that people in Portlock and the surrounding region believed something dangerous lived in the mountains. He described how people avoided certain areas entirely. Another resident interviewed during the same expedition stated plainly, they knew something was there and that's why they left. I, those statements weren't dramatic. They were calm, matter of fact, spoken as remembered truth. Long before the cannery existed. Here's, uh, definitely a word that I don't know how to say, so we're gonna just go with it. Sug Sug Piac, the Sug Piac people lived in the region. They had their own name for what lived there Naac. it was large. Walked upright, lived in the mountains and forest above Port Chatham. The Suk Pak families passed warnings down through generations. They avoided certain areas. They did not hunt there. They did not travel there unnecessarily. in interviews, Nan elders confirm these warnings have been part of their upbringing. One explained that their parents told them never to go into those woods, not because of bad weather, not because of the terrain, but because of what lived there. By the 1940s, Portlock was already declining economically. Not to mention all of the missing people who just walked into the woods and never came back. The cannery shut down jobs disappeared. Supply runs became less frequent. Families began relocating to nearby villages like Nan and Port Graham, both reachable by boat alongside the same coastline. The Portlock post office officially closed in 1950. Without the cannery and the post office, there was no longer any infrastructure supporting the town. The last residents left the same way, always traveled by boat. They packed their belongings, boarded vessels, and did not return. No one rebuilt. No road was ever constructed. Portlock simply stopped existing as a community. For decades, Portlock remained empty. Buildings collapsed slowly under the snow and rain. Wood rotted, metal rusted. The forest reclaimed the space. The shoreline remained unchanged, still accessible only by water still cut off. In 2021, a Discovery Channel Expedition team traveled to Portlock while filming the series. Alaskan Killer Bigfoot. Shout out discovery channel so you can totally go watch this. they arrived by boat just as residents had decades earlier. They established camp near the shoreline. They brought cameras, equipment, and experienced outdoorsmen. They also brought local guides, familiar with the region. Among those interviewed was Nan o Lake resident, John O'Leary, whom we spoke about a minute ago. He confirmed the stories have been passed down directly to him from older generations. During the expedition, crew members reported hearing unexplained noises in the forest beyond the camp heavy movement sounds of something traveling through the brush at night, they reported hearing splashes in nearby water. Not small splashes. Big ones large enough to suggest something with significant weight, which makes me think that something was throwing boulders into the water because for them to all hear it, it had to be something big, and I don't. Let's see people cannon balling into the water in Alaska. It's pretty freaking cold. My brother-in-law actually works in Alaska and heated the polar plunge and the water there is just freaking nuts. So yeah, I say boulders. Crew members describe feeling watched, not briefly, but continuously. Despite being equipped and experienced, they did not attempt to travel deep into the forest. What? That's why they were there. You have to go. You're supposed to go. That makes me disappointed. I'm gonna have to watch the documentary. And they remained near the shoreline where visibility remained open. Where departure remained possible after completing their filming, they left like everyone before them by boat today. Port locks still exists physically, but only as remains. There is no electricity, no maintained structures. No permanent residence. No road leaning in, no road leaning out. Satellite images show faint outlines of what once stood there. Occasionally. Fishermen anchor offshore. Hunter's passed through briefly, but no one has chosen to rebuild. Not in over 70 years, the land remains, the forest remains, The mountains remain, and Portlock remains exactly where it had always been at the edge of Alaska, beyond the reach of roads, beyond the reach of explanation waiting. So no, in 2019, aliens did not come get. The people of Portlock Bigfoot, chased him out. Just goes to show. As most of you should already know, don't believe everything you see on TikTok. Until next time, keep it weird.