[4] On the other hand, Native American Placenames of the United States says that the river's name may come from the Yupik word alagnaq, a kind of red berry.

[5] The United States Geological Survey says something similar, citing Richard H. Geoghegan, a philologist, who said the native word referred to a wild raspberry.

[1] It begins as the outflow of Kukaklek Lake in Katmai National Park and Preserve and meets the sea at Bristol Bay.

The earliest documented records of humans settling there were 9000 years ago; stone tools dating from this time have been found in middens at abandoned camps near the river.

The first known all-year winter villages weren't constructed until about 2300 years ago; house development and town size to contend with climate change occurred rapidly at around this time.

People from as far away as the Yukon River area came to get jobs at the canneries, and before long cash income allowed subsistence users to buy food store items such as coffee, tea, sugar and salt.

The 1912 eruption of Mount Katmai nearby only mildly devastated the region and the Yu'pik Indians continued to keep food caches at the site.

Growing erosion around the Kvichak River banks made canning more difficult by the 1920s, and the cannery was closed in 1936 and burned down during a 1937 fire.

[7] In 1918 the Spanish flu epidemic broke out and ravaged the villages throughout June 1919, killing 39 natives and creating 16 new orphans.

In June 1927 Russell Merrill of Anchorage Air Transport flew to the canneries at the river junction, making it the first plane to land at Bristol Bay.

Jay Hammond, who would later become the 4th governor of Alaska, was one of the major fishing charters in the area, first flying to it in 1946 and meeting with friend Bill Hammersley, who first came there in 1940.

As the legislation for Katmai National Park did not allow any hunting and fishing, the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act established Alagnak Wild River to allow protection of wilderness but legal, limited sport and subsistence hunting and trapping, along with fishing.