What's with Ketchikan? Ketchikan is Alaska's First City — its earliest extant incorporated city, the Salmon Capital of the World, and the first Inside Passage port of call. It clings to the shore of Revillagigedo Island where the Tongass rainforest meets Tongass Narrows — a town built on pilings and boardwalks, stitched together by salmon, cedar, and rain. The Tlingit fished this creek for centuries; the canneries turned it into a boomtown; the totem poles made it a world capital of Northwest Coast art. Every version of Alaska starts here.
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.
Why People Visit Ketchikan Alaska
Because it is the concentrated version of Southeast Alaska: a walkable historic waterfront where the totem poles are real, the salmon run through downtown, the rainforest starts at the last streetlight, and the fjords are a floatplane ride away. First port of call, and for many travelers the one they remember longest.
