People had lived on that shore for a very long time. The Sugpiaq and Alutiiq made Resurrection Bay home for more than seven thousand years before Frank and Mary Lowell settled here in the early 1880s. The town itself dates to August 28, 1903, when John Ballaine and a party of pioneers landed to build a railroad north into the resource-rich interior. They named it for William H. Seward, the U.S. Secretary of State who had pushed through the 1867 Alaska Purchase — the deal mocked at the time as ‘Seward's Folly.’ The town belongs to the bay; the name it shares with half a dozen far-off places.
What's with Resurrection Bay? Seward sits at the very head of it — a long, deep fjord on the Kenai Peninsula where the mountains drop straight into salt water and the harbor never freezes. The Russian navigator Alexander Baranov gave the bay its name in 1792, after sheltering here on the Orthodox Sunday of the Resurrection; he liked the cove so well that he built a shipyard, and in 1793 his men launched the schooner Phoenix, probably the first ship ever built on the northwest coast of North America. Deep, ice-free, and ringed by ice, the bay is the whole reason Seward exists: it is the door Alaska's interior opens through.
Why People Visit Seward
Seward blends marine science with glacier access and harbor life. Visitors mix easy waterfront walks with boat tours, public art, and museums, all beneath the mountains. It is dramatic, friendly, and photogenic, with year-round appeal in its parks, paths, and public spaces. Frontier railroad history and the wild coast sit side by side here — history and everyday Alaska life together in a welcoming way.
