Kodiak is home to the largest Coast Guard base in the country. But the island also hosts another military entity: the U.S. Navy. Construction work is currently underway at the Naval Special Warfare Center Detachment Kodiak.
The U.S. Navy first established a significant presence on Kodiak Island in 1939, during the World War II era. The Navy’s main base became what is now Coast Guard Base Kodiak and only remnants of its defense sites exist today. Still, the Navy maintains a facility for cold weather maritime training on the island referred to as the Naval Special Warfare Center Detachment Kodiak.
According to state documents, the Naval Special Warfare Center on Spruce Cape has been in operation since 1987.
One former Navy SEAL who did his training in Kodiak years ago, Chadd Wright, said in a YouTube video that students training to be SEALs typically spend about a month going through cold weather survival in the backcountry.
“While we were up in Kodiak we would go out on long range patrols, missions, heavy, heavy land navigation in full gear," Wright said. "The packs we used man, were just unbelievably heavy.”
That also involved foraging for food in tide pools, building debris huts for shelter and other cold weather training.
The local Navy SEAL training also utilizes the city-owned Monashka Reservoir area. The City of Kodiak renewed a 10-year agreement with the Navy on Oct. 1, 2024 that gives Navy SEALs permission to enter city property for the purpose of training exercises without having to ask the city each time.
A few years ago in April, 2022, Gov. Mike Dunleavy sent a letter to the then Secretary of the Navy, Carlos Del Toro, encouraging him to expand operations for Navy SEAL training in Alaska.
Although the facility on Spruce Cape is not expanding, the Navy is currently making improvements to its local infrastructure.
A Public Affairs Specialist for the Navy Region Northwest, Liane Nakahara, said via email that the agency is working on various military construction projects in the area.
She said these infrastructure improvements involve renovations and upgrades to the facilities’ utilities and exterior, but do not expand the footprint.
Roughly 10 years ago, the Naval Special Warfare Center Detachment Kodiak completed a 25,000 square-foot expansion to accommodate growing participation in SEAL qualification training classes according to reporting from the Kodiak Daily Mirror.
It is unclear how long the current construction will take but Natura Richardson with Island Trails Network told KMXT that the Navy’s work will not impact the public trail or access at Spruce Cape. She also said that the Navy told her the cables running along the trail near the point of Spruce Cape will be removed once the project is done.
In the coming years the Navy plans to have an operations facility within Coast Guard Air Station Kodiak on the local Coast Guard Base. Sen. Lisa Murkowski requested $10,000 for the planning and design of this Navy facility from a Senate subcommittee on June 4.
