The nickname, though, came from the map, not the paperwork: northbound ships entering Alaska from Puget Sound make Ketchikan their first port of call, and "Alaska's First City" stuck. What the ships found was a salmon empire. By 1936 seven canneries were packing roughly 1.5 million cases a year, and Ketchikan wore the title Salmon Capital of the World. All five Pacific salmon — king, sockeye, coho, pink, and chum — still run the local waters, and every August you can watch them climb the fish ladder on Ketchikan Creek in the middle of downtown.
Long before the first cannery, the mouth of Ketchikan Creek was a summer fish camp of the Tongass and Cape Fox Tlingit — the Taant'a Kwáan, the "Sea Lion Tribe." The name they left on the water, Kitschk-hin, is conventionally translated "thundering wings of an eagle," and the modern Tlingit spelling is Kichx̱áan. Captain George Vancouver had sailed through in 1793, naming Revillagigedo Island and Behm Canal and marking the sea-stack of New Eddystone Rock, but for another ninety years the creek stayed what it had always been: a salmon place.
Why People Visit Ketchikan Alaska
- Creek Street — the boardwalk on pilings, Dolly's House Museum, the salmon ladder, and Married Man's Trail over the hill.
- The totem circuit — Saxman Totem Park, Totem Bight State Park, Potlatch Totem Park, and the Totem Heritage Center's unrestored 19th-century poles.
- Misty Fjords National Monument — granite fjords, waterfalls, and New Eddystone Rock by floatplane or boat up Behm Canal.
- The Tongass — rainforest trails from Rainbird to the Deer Mountain climb; bears at Herring Cove in late summer; eagles everywhere.
- Town life — the Great Alaskan Lumberjack Show, waterfront seafood, Cape Fox Lodge above downtown, and the summer salmon derby.
