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Location of five graves. When Col. (later Brigadier General) Benjamin B. Talley's scouts landed on the island on 27 May 1943 they found the remains of a fur trapper's cabin and two graves with the dates 25 March 1926 and 30 Mar 1930 inscribed on markers. They neglected to write down the names. The other remains, including a prehistoric skull, represent remains that were removed from other sites, such as remains from Amchitka, during WWII and repatriated to the Aleut Corporation. Corporation representatives reburied the remains here.

The trapper's cabin once loated here was built in the 1920s. Blue fox were planted on Shemya in 1911 after A. B. Sommerville leased the Semichi Islands for use as fox farms. In 1922, Fred Schroeder of the Aleutian Fur Company bought out Sommerville, planting foxes on Agattu and building trapper cabins on Shemya and Alaid. All of these islands, including Attu and Rat, were farmed on rotation by Attuan natives to allow fox populations to recover.

In a 1988 interview, Innokenty Golodoff described trapping on Shemya in 1938. Innokenty, his brother Willie, Willie’s wife Julia, and their children Mary and Michael, along with three other adults traveled to Shemya in late fall. They took two dories, 5 hp motors, gas lanterns, fuel, tobacco, and staples such as flour, sugar, tea, and coffee. The cabin, a one-room frame structure, was located on the eastern shore of Alcan Harbor. Each man set about 10 traps and checked them on foot. They wore homemade sea lion–gut raincoats and sea lion–flipper boots in foul weather. When conditions permitted, they motored to Alaid and Nizki and trapped there.


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