The island's human story is one of the longest in Alaska. Alutiiq — Sugpiaq — people have lived on the Kodiak Archipelago for more than seven thousand years, masters of the skin kayak and the rich, rough water, and their descendants are here still: the Alutiiq Museum in town holds one of the deepest archaeological records in the state, and the city's own Alutiiq name, Sun'aq, is older than every other name it has carried. Vitus Bering's expedition sighted the island in 1741; the Russians who followed came for sea otter fur, and the century that followed was brutal for the people who had always lived here — a history the island tells plainly today.
The modern town wears three uniforms: fisherman's raingear, Coast Guard blue, and rocket-crew white. Base Kodiak is the largest Coast Guard installation in the United States, guarding the most dangerous fishing grounds in the country; the Pacific Spaceport Complex on Narrow Cape has launched rockets over the Gulf since 1998; and Fort Abercrombie's WWII gun emplacements stand in spruce and salmonberry above the sea cliffs, a state park now, remembering the war that first brought the military north.
Why People Visit Kodiak Alaska
Kodiak offers Alaska in concentrate — the deepest Russian heritage in the state, a 7,000-year Alutiiq homeland, a top American fishing port, and the only place on Earth to meet the Kodiak bear at home. People come for the bears and the fishing, and find the Emerald Isle: green, rain-washed, and genuinely wild ten minutes from town.
