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.
And then there are the bears. The Kodiak brown bear — taquka'aq in Alutiiq, Ursus arctos middendorffi to science — is the largest brown bear on Earth, found only on this archipelago: big males can top 1,500 pounds standing ten feet tall, fattened on salmon runs and berry slopes. About 3,500 of them share the island with the town, most inside the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge, which has protected two-thirds of the island since 1941. Bear viewing — by floatplane, boat, or guided hike — is the island's signature wild experience.
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.
