What made Wrangell boom was gold — not its own, but everyone else's. The mouth of the Stikine was the natural gateway to the goldfields of the British Columbia interior, and Wrangell lived three separate rush-town lives: the Stikine strike of 1861, the Cassiar rush of the 1870s, and the Klondike stampede of the late 1890s. Thousands of prospectors poured through, and the town turned as raw as any in the north — Wyatt Earp filled in as marshal for ten days on his way to Nome, Soapy Smith hid out here when Skagway got too hot, and the naturalist John Muir came in 1879 to wonder at the glaciers up the river. Each rush faded; the river stayed.
Between and after the rushes, Wrangell made its living from the sea and the forest. Fish traps went in at the mouth of the Stikine in the 1890s, and salmon canneries grew into the backbone of the town, packing the runs that came down the river every summer. When canning gave way in the mid-twentieth century, a lumber mill took its place, and Wrangell settled into the role it still plays — a working Inside Passage town of fishermen, loggers, and harbor hands, far quieter than the cruise ports to the north. When statehood arrived in 1959 the new state finally outlawed the fish traps that had thinned the Stikine runs, and the salmon slowly came back.
Why People Visit Wrangell
Wrangell rewards the off-the-path traveler. It pairs living Tlingit culture with easy reach of the Stikine and bear country, and you can see totems, petroglyphs, and a working harbor in a single walkable day. It feels authentic, green, and quietly adventurous — an Alaska town that stayed itself — with year-round appeal in its trails, parks, and waterfront.
