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The creek had a wilder era, too. From 1903 to 1954, Creek Street — the boardwalk on pilings over the water — was the town's red-light district, home to as many as thirty establishments; sportsmen joked it was the only place where both the fish and the fishermen went upstream to spawn. Dolly Arthur, its most famous madam, worked the green house at Number 24 from 1919 on, and her home survives as Dolly's House Museum. The discreet back path over the hill earned its own enduring name: Married Man's Trail.
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.
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.
