It lies just off the northeast corner of Kodiak Island, across the Narrow Strait.

From 1808 to 1818, Spruce Island was the hermitage of Herman of Alaska, later glorified as a saint and considered the patron saint of the Russian Orthodox Church, in the Americas.

The island was referred to as New Valaam (Russian: Ново-Валаамский) by St. Herman, and is a site of pilgrimages by Orthodox Christians.

In 2008, a group of commentators and researchers—led by the mayor of the northern Siberian city of Yakutsk—argued that the island should, legally, still belong to the Russian Orthodox Church, as the Russian Empire had no authority to sell "religious property" as part of the Alaska Purchase.

This article about a location in the Kodiak Island Borough, Alaska is a stub.