Ketchikan Points of Interest

A tour of totem pole sites near Ketchikan is easy to man­age in one day. The hair will stand up on your arms as you con­sid­er the crafts­man­ship and the depth and com­plex­i­ty of each totem’s unique message

Dol­ly Arthur was Ketchikan’s most famous madam in the hey­day of Creek Street. Her house, pre­served much as she left it, fea­tures antiques caches and gar­ish décor. Tours are pro­vid­ed for a fee.

Hear shrieks and squeals of excite­ment as kids wade around in tide­pools with their buck­ets find­ing all man­ner of crit­ters – eels, bull­heads, snails, her­mit crabs, sea urchins, sea anemones, starfish, blim­mies (eel­type fish), small octo­pus, eel­grass, clams, mol­lusks, and kelps.

Here you’ll find real peo­ple who make a liv­ing on the ocean com­ing off their boats – more often than not cov­ered in fish slime.

Every spring the hatch­ery sends 700,000 king salmon smolt on the adven­ture of a lifetime.

Mil­lions of oys­ters get their start in Ketchikan each year, right at the OceansAlas­ka Mar­i­cul­ture Research and Train­ing Facil­i­ty, a mod­ern new aqua­cul­ture endeav­or locat­ed on George Inlet near Ketchikan. OceansAlas­ka is a non-prof­it ven­ture ded­i­cat­ed to the pro­mo­tion of shell­fish­ing as an eco­nom­ic dri­ver for South­east Alas­ka. Grow­ing oys­ters and large clams (called geo­ducks) is tricky. You need the right water tem­per­a­ture, non-acidic…  ...more

See­ing what the glac­i­ers left behind is as stun­ning as view­ing the glac­i­ers them­selves. Imag­ine the force it took to carve U‑shaped val­leys with 3,000-foot sheer cliffs ris­ing above the water (not to men­tion that they extend anoth­er 1000-feet below water!)

BOOMbal’s been a craze here since 2010, mak­ing great use of a 1946-era build­ing that was pur­chased and ren­o­vat­ed by the Ketchikan Area Arts and Human­i­ties Coun­cil. The clas­sic hard­wood floors of the Main Street Gallery are per­fect for a two-step, rhum­ba or jit­ter­bug – and you could learn any of these along­side an eclec­tic mix of folk – from fish­er­men and artists to high school­ers and sum­mer workers.

Mas­ter wood carvers pro­duce his­toric rat­tles, posts, masks and totem poles. World-class weavers, prac­tice an art form going back thou­sands of years. Using cedar bark and spruce tips, Native weavers made items essen­tial to liv­ing in a rain­for­est: jack­ets and clas­sic con­i­cal rain hats, and water­tight stor­age baskets.

Impec­ca­bly restored Grum­man Goose amphibi­ous air­craft is a piece of trans­porta­tion his­to­ry in Ketchikan