Discover Ketchikan Gateway Borough

If you’re looking for a hotel in Ketchikan Gateway Borough, you can tailor your trip to your interests: options include urban cultural attractions, insights into the region’s history, and experiences in forest and coastal landscapes. For planning, it’s worth considering your arrival, destinations in Ketchikan, and activities in other places mentioned separately.

Getting here and finding your way around

Ketchikan International Airport is on Gravina Island. From Ketchikan, you can reach it by ferry; the ferry connects the city and the airport. Check the ferry schedule for your travel day when planning your arrival. In Ketchikan Gateway Borough, the bus system serves large parts of the area, including Ketchikan and Saxman. Services include regular routes and supplementary paratransit services. A seasonal Downtown Shuttle also runs between the cruise ship docks and key destinations downtown. These details offer different points of reference for arriving and getting around Ketchikan; they do not describe all locations in the borough in the same way.

Exploring Ketchikan on foot and along Creek Street

Downtown Ketchikan is a relatively small area that’s easy to explore on foot. You’ll find historic buildings and streetscapes shaped by the city’s development in the early 20th century. There’s also public art, interpretive displays, cultural sites, museums, galleries, and community spaces. Views of the water and connections to the working harbor are also part of downtown’s character. In a compact area, you can find different perspectives on city life and its history.

Creek Street has a distinctive historical connection: it features a wooden boardwalk and buildings on stilts. Its past is linked to fishing, maritime trade, and Creek Street’s former role as Ketchikan’s red-light district. During seasonal salmon runs, many fish may travel upstream, attracting wildlife to the area. This seasonal change adds an experience of nature to the area’s architectural and social history.

Museums, Tlingit culture, and regional topics

Exhibits at the Tongass Historical Museum offer insights into the people, businesses, and events that shaped the community in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They focus on the community’s development over several decades. The Southeast Alaska Discovery Center takes a different approach: its interactive exhibits cover the Tongass rainforest, regional wildlife, and land use in southeastern Alaska. A small theater shows short films about Ketchikan and the surrounding region, including Tongass National Forest. The museum and Discovery Center therefore offer different ways to explore these subjects—one through community history, the other through landscapes, wildlife, and land use.

Saxman Totem Park showcases hand-carved Tlingit totem poles in a wooded coastal setting. The carvings and their surroundings bring together cultural exploration and a sense of the landscape. Visitors interested in history, culture, and nature will find a variety of subjects at the places mentioned, rather than a single, all-encompassing attraction.

Activities and wildlife viewing

Ketchikan Gateway Borough Parks and Recreation offers swimming, soccer, arts and crafts, roller skating, basketball, and racquetball. The activities range from exercise in the water and on the field to creative pursuits and other sports. At Herring Cove, seasonal salmon runs offer opportunities to observe birds, marine life, and occasionally black bears. Since these wildlife-viewing opportunities are linked to the salmon runs, the season is an important consideration when planning.

For a hike at Settlers Cove State Recreation Site, there are two trails with different descriptions to choose from. The Lunch Falls Loop Trail is an approximately one-mile loop through the forest that offers access toward the beach. The Lunch Creek Trail connects to a 3.5-mile continuation across U.S. Forest Service land leading to the Emery Tobin Lakes. The descriptions differ in both length and route and destination; consider which hike best suits your planned timeframe and interests.

Also note the status of the Rainbird Trail when planning: following a landslide in Ketchikan on August 25, 2024, it is closed indefinitely. Check its status before visiting.

Discover more destinations: Ketchikan, Gateway, Matanuska-Susitna Borough, Aleutians, Wade Hampton Census Area, Denali, Juneau, Hoonah-Angoon Census Area.

Go to the main travel overview: Alaska.