Long before the first cannery, the mouth of Ketchikan Creek was a summer fish camp of the Tongass and Cape Fox Tlingit — the Taant'a Kwáan, the "Sea Lion Tribe." The name they left on the water, Kitschk-hin, is conventionally translated "thundering wings of an eagle," and the modern Tlingit spelling is Kichx̱áan. Captain George Vancouver had sailed through in 1793, naming Revillagigedo Island and Behm Canal and marking the sea-stack of New Eddystone Rock, but for another ninety years the creek stayed what it had always been: a salmon place.
And through every boom, the poles kept watch. Ketchikan holds the world's largest collection of standing totem poles, spread across four destinations — Saxman Totem Park south of town, Totem Bight State Park to the north, Potlatch Park beside it, and the Totem Heritage Center downtown, which since 1976 has preserved unrestored nineteenth-century poles retrieved from Tlingit and Haida village sites. The carving tradition never stopped: master carvers still raise new poles, and the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian communities remain the living center of the town's art.
Why People Visit Ketchikan Alaska
Because it is the concentrated version of Southeast Alaska: a walkable historic waterfront where the totem poles are real, the salmon run through downtown, the rainforest starts at the last streetlight, and the fjords are a floatplane ride away. First port of call, and for many travelers the one they remember longest.
