And then there are the bears. The Kodiak brown bear — taquka'aq in Alutiiq, Ursus arctos middendorffi to science — is the largest brown bear on Earth, found only on this archipelago: big males can top 1,500 pounds standing ten feet tall, fattened on salmon runs and berry slopes. About 3,500 of them share the island with the town, most inside the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge, which has protected two-thirds of the island since 1941. Bear viewing — by floatplane, boat, or guided hike — is the island's signature wild experience.
Russian Alaska began here. In 1784, Grigory Shelikhov planted Russia's first permanent settlement in Alaska at Three Saints Bay, on the island's south end; in 1792, Alexander Baranov moved the post north to a deep, defensible harbor he named Pavlovskaya Gavan — Paul's Harbor — and made it the capital of Russian America's fur empire. Today's Kodiak grew straight from that harbor, and its Russian layer is the deepest in the state: the c. 1808 Russian-American Magazin, now the Baranov Museum, stands among the oldest Russian buildings in America.
Why People Visit Kodiak Alaska
Kodiak offers Alaska in concentrate — the deepest Russian heritage in the state, a 7,000-year Alutiiq homeland, a top American fishing port, and the only place on Earth to meet the Kodiak bear at home. People come for the bears and the fishing, and find the Emerald Isle: green, rain-washed, and genuinely wild ten minutes from town.
