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.
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.
