[6] This may change as the City of Dillingham will likely petition the State of Alaska to increase the size of its boundaries to include most of Nushagak Bay and Wood River, to gain revenue from the Nushagak District and Wood River Special Harvest Area commercial salmon fisheries.

[11] Prices have since rebounded due to techniques to improve fish quality and enhanced marketing efforts, and were back up to $2.35 per pound in 2013, rising to $3.02 in 2016 when reporting ceased.

[13] Dillingham is also the headquarters for nearby Togiak National Wildlife Refuge, home to walruses, seals, terrestrial mammals, migratory birds, and fish, as well as one of the largest wild herring fisheries in the world.

Togiak National Wildlife Refuge was established to conserve fish and wildlife populations and habitats in their natural diversity, including salmon, to fulfill international treaty obligations, to provide for continued subsistence use, and to ensure necessary water quality and quantity.

[14] In 2010, the City of Dillingham voted to re-authorize its position opposing the proposed Pebble Mine, a large gold-copper-molybdenum prospect located at the headwaters of Bristol Bay.

The resolution explains that the value of the fishery totals about $100 million a year; that the commercial wild salmon fishery has been the backbone of livelihoods for more than 100 years; that the future of the renewable resource industry depends on its freshwater stream reputation; that local residents depend on subsistence activities which in turn depend on Bristol Bay's pristine freshwater streams and habitat; and that Pebble threatens to destroy the last great wild salmon fishery on the planet.

See: Historic Locales & Confusion Over Place Names Around Dillingham As of the census[17] of 2000, there were 2,466 people, 884 households, and 599 families residing in the city.

[20]) Dillingham and its surrounding areas were inhabited by the Yup'ik people for millennia, who lived off of the land and sea.

In 1883, the Arctic Packing Company constructed the first cannery and seafood-processing plant in Bristol Bay at Kanulik, across the river from the site of modern-day Dillingham.

By 1903 a total of ten canneries had been built along the Nushagak, including four within the city's current limits, producing as many as one million cases of canned salmon, annually.

Most of these canneries were closed in the 20th century for a variety of reasons, including coastal erosion, siltation, consolidation, and general changes in the industry, such as shifting focus to frozen fish.

In 1901, the Alaska-Portland Packers Association built a cannery near Snag Point, at what is now the city's central business district.

Despite extensive travels throughout the territory, neither Dillingham nor his subcommittee ever set foot in the Bristol Bay region.

In 1918 and 1919, the global Spanish flu pandemic struck Bristol Bay, leaving no more than 500 survivors around Dillingham.

It was soon succeeded by the Beacon of Dillingham, a newspaper closely aligned by the unions of resident fishermen and cannery workers.

With the call letters KDLG and operating at 670 kHz, the station continues to provide education, entertainment, and important safety information to the fishing fleet and the surrounding communities.

Dillingham attracted national attention in 2006, when it installed 80 cameras at city-owned facilities and locations, such as the docks, harbor and police station,[22] all funded by a Department of Homeland Security grant.

[23] The city justified the cameras by stating that they enhanced the ability to monitor and enforce security measures at those properties.

On August 9, 2010, a DHC-3T Texas Turbine Otter crashed near Dillingham due to fog and reduced visibility.

On September 2, 2015, President Barack Obama visited Dillingham, as a part of his second-term trip around Alaska to call attention to climate change.

Beginning in 1880, when census enumerators visited the present area of Dillingham at the northwest side of Nushagak Bay, they recorded only one village, that of Anagnak.

Anagnak was apparently located on the Wood River near where it flows into Nushagak Bay and it reported 87 Inuit residents.

But this was apparently not the village with the post office, but the location of the former cannery of Bradford from the 1890 census and the 1900 "New" Kanakanak, and featured just 36 residents.

Because of the influenza pandemic preceding the 1920 census, it caused much upheaval and movement of native persons all over Alaska, with the survivors of decimated villages relocating to new locales.

The campus serves an area of approximately 55,000 square miles (140,000 km2) and a total of 32 communities as far south as Ivanof Bay, as far north as Port Alsworth, as far west as Togiak, and east to King Salmon.

The main campus is located in Dillingham with outreach centers in King Salmon, Togiak, and New Stuyahok.

The Bristol Bay Campus also hosts an Alaska Sea Grant Marine Advisory Program (MAP) Agent.