Kodiak was settled long before statehood, with Indigenous Alutiiq people thriving on fishing and hunting on the archipelago for thousands of years before contact. Russian traders established a post at Three Saints Bay in 1784 and moved it to Paul's Harbor in 1792, making Kodiak the first capital of Russian Alaska. When the United States purchased Alaska in 1867, Kodiak continued as a hub for fishing, canning, and maritime trade. Its founding reflects both Native endurance and frontier ambition. The town's story highlights survival in rugged environments, where storms, whales, and fisheries defined life. Kodiak's heritage is rooted in wilderness, resilience, and the ability to thrive where ocean and frontier meet.
In 1792, the Russian fur trader Alexander Baranov moved the company headquarters from Three Saints Bay at the south end of the island to a deep, defensible harbor on the northeast coast and named the new settlement Pavlovskaya Gavan — Paul's Harbor. For the next twelve years, until the capital moved to Sitka in 1804, this was the capital of Russian Alaska — and Kodiak today remains the oldest continuously inhabited town in the state. The Alutiiq (Sugpiaq) people had lived on the Kodiak Archipelago for at least seven thousand years before the Russians arrived, and the Alutiiq name for Kodiak is Sun'aq. Vitus Bering and Aleksei Chirikov sighted the island in 1741 during the Second Kamchatka Expedition, Stepan Glotov became the first Russian to land in 1763, and Grigory Shelikhov — the "Russian Columbus" — founded the first permanent Russian settlement in North America at Three Saints Bay in 1784. The Russian Orthodox spiritual mission to North America arrived at Kodiak in 1794, and among the monks was Saint Herman of Alaska, who spent most of his life on nearby Spruce Island, founded an orphanage and school for Alutiiq children, and was canonized in 1970 as the first Orthodox saint of North America and the patron saint of Alaska. The Russian-American Company magazin — the warehouse Baranov's men built around 1808 to store sea otter pelts — stands today as the Baranov Museum, the oldest Russian-era wooden structure in Alaska, a National Historic Landmark since 1962. Holy Resurrection Cathedral, whose parish was founded in 1794, is the oldest Russian Orthodox parish in the Americas, and Saint Herman's relics rest there today. The United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867. On June 6-8, 1912, the Novarupta-Katmai eruption — the largest volcanic eruption of the twentieth century — buried Kodiak in up to eighteen inches of ash, and residents were evacuated to the U.S. Revenue Cutter Manning. On March 27, 1964 — Good Friday — the M9.2 Great Alaska Earthquake, the largest ever recorded in North America, sent a series of thirty-foot tsunami waves into the harbor that leveled downtown Kodiak, the fishing fleet, the canneries, fifteen lives, and eleven million dollars in damage. By 1968 the rebuilt fleet had made Kodiak the number-one U.S. fishing port by dollar value. The Coast Guard took over the former Naval Operating Base in 1971; Coast Guard Base Kodiak is today the largest U.S. Coast Guard installation by area. The island itself is 3,588 square miles, the second-largest in the United States after the Big Island of Hawaiʻi — green from spring through fall under sixty-seven inches of annual rain, and the only place on Earth where the Kodiak brown bear (Ursus arctos middendorffi) walks. They call it the Emerald Isle.
Why People Visit Kodiak Island Alaska
- Tour the Baranov Museum (Kodiak History Museum) on Marine Way — the c. 1808 Russian-American Company magazin, the oldest Russian-era wooden structure in Alaska, National Historic Landmark since 1962, the oldest documented log structure on the West Coast of North America.
- Visit Holy Resurrection Russian Orthodox Cathedral on Mission Road — the oldest Russian Orthodox parish in the Americas, founded 1794; the current building is a 1945 rebuild. Saint Herman of Alaska's relics rest inside. Photography respected; exterior blue-onion-domed silhouette is the iconic Kodiak skyline shot.
- Tour the Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository — opened 1995, preserving and interpreting more than 7,000 years of Alutiiq (Sugpiaq) culture, language, masks, and artifacts as an active cultural-revitalization institution.
- Walk Fort Abercrombie State Historical Park — 1939 WWII coastal artillery emplacements and observation posts in dense spruce forest with dramatic ocean views, the location of the first secret radar installation in Alaska.
- Watch the working St. Paul Harbor — Kodiak's commercial fishing fleet at the heart of one of the top U.S. fishing ports by dollar value: seiners, longliners, crabbers, halibut boats.
- Drive past Coast Guard Base Kodiak — the largest U.S. Coast Guard installation by area at approximately 23,000 acres; not visitor-accessible, but the silhouette is part of every Kodiak day.
- Climb Pillar Mountain — the 1,270-foot peak directly above downtown, site of the Pillar Mountain Wind Farm and the city's signature visual backdrop.
- Book a bear-viewing flight or charter into the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge — 1.9 million acres covering roughly two-thirds of the island, the only habitat on Earth of the Kodiak brown bear. June through September is the peak window when bears congregate at salmon streams.
- Take a Spruce Island day trip — Saint Herman of Alaska's monastic home for nearly four decades; reachable from Kodiak by small boat.
- Sport fish for salmon, halibut, Pacific cod, or rockfish out of St. Paul Harbor — all five Pacific salmon species run Kodiak waters in summer.
- Drive south to Chiniak — the road system out of Kodiak runs about 45 miles, mostly along coast, through spruce forest with bay views the whole way.
- Ferry to or from Homer on the Alaska Marine Highway — the ten-hour Shelikof Strait crossing through the heart of the Aleutian-arc geography.
