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.
The salmon brought the outsiders. A saltery went up in the area in 1883, and in 1885 Mike Martin — scouting for an Oregon canning company — bought 160 acres at the creek mouth from the Tlingit leader Chief Kyan. Martin and the Nova Scotian George Clark set up a saltery and a general store, the creek's first salmon cannery followed within two years, and the Klondike stampede of 1896-99 washed thousands of prospectors past the new dock. On August 25, 1900, Ketchikan incorporated — and because the towns that beat it to a charter later dissolved or consolidated, it stands today as the earliest extant incorporated city in Alaska.
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.
