Ketchikan

An unpretentious Victorian-style restaurant on the Gilmore Hotel's ground floor, Annabelle's serves pastas, steamer clams and other seafood dishes, and several kinds of chowder. Prime rib on Friday and Saturday evenings is a favorite, and the lounge, which has a jukebox, has a friendly vibe.

Martin Smith, one of Southeast's, if not Alaska's, most inventive chefs, owns this restaurant in a tiny, blue-and-white waterfront house about 1½ miles outside town. The interior is a cozy spot to dine, but try to get a seat on the back deck.

Take a break from salmon saturation at this Old Town Ketchikan spot on historic Stedman Street. The café serves hearty Filipino cuisine beloved both of locals and cruise-ship staffers hungry for a taste of home, and the linoleum-and-tile 1950s interior is a wonderful time warp.

The 1920s-era roots of this space adjacent to the New York Hotel come through in the antique bar and fixtures, creating a casual yet elegant place to enjoy a meal while staring out the plate-glass windows at life on busy Stedman Street, or admiring the mural by local artist Ray Troll that spans one wall. The menu includes reasonably priced seafood, salads, and burgers, along with Mediterranean-influenced fare.

A favorite with locals, the Ocean View serves decent burgers, steaks, pasta, pizzas, and seafood, but the main draws are the authentic and very filling Mexican dishes. Three tables in the back look out to the Tongass Narrows.

A tiny coffee shop and bakery, Sweet Mermaids is a great choice for breakfast. If you're here for lunch, try the salmon chowder—the perfect antidote for a rainy afternoon.

Authentic Northwest Coast art is the specialty of this crowded gallery run by local Tsimshian artist Ken Decker and his wife. Well-known Southeast artists such as Haida basket weaver Holly Churchill and Tlingit carver Gene Chilton exhibit their work here.

This was once Ketchikan's red-light district. During Prohibition, Creek Street was home to numerous speakeasies, and in the early 1900s more than 30 houses of prostitution operated here. Today the small, colorful houses, built on stilts over the creek waters, have been restored as interesting shops. When the fish are running, the Creek Street footbridge makes a stellar viewing platform for salmon and trout, as well as the sea lions and other animals that eat them.

Young locals pack into lively, informal Fat Stan's, a cute spot with a decent selection of beers, wines, and spirits. You can snack on pizza as you sip.

The gallery, a light and cheery space run by the Ketchikan Area Arts and Humanities Council, showcases established artists and rising stars. It's well worth a visit.

A book lover's bookstore with creaky floors and cozy quarters, Parnassus stocks many Alaskan titles.

Get out your camera and set it for high speed at the fish ladder, a series of pools arranged like steps that allow fish to travel upstream around a dam or falls. When the salmon start running, from June onward, thousands of fish leap the falls or take the easier fish-ladder route. They spawn in Ketchikan Creek's waters farther upstream. Many can also be seen in the creek's eddies above and below the falls. The falls, fish ladder, and a large carving of a jumping salmon are just off Park Avenue on Married Man's Trail. The trail was once used by married men for discreet access to the red-light district on Creek Street.

A 2½-mile paved walking path–bike trail parallels the road from Ketchikan to Saxman Native Village, named for a missionary who helped Native Alaskans settle here before 1900. A totem park dominates the center of Saxman, with poles representing human- and animal-inspired figures, including bears, ravens, whales, and eagles. Saxman's Beaver Clan tribal house is said to be the largest in Alaska. Carvers create totem poles and totemic art objects in the adjacent carver's shed. You can get to the park on foot or by taxi, bicycle, or city bus. You can visit the totem park on your own, but to visit the tribal house and theater you must take a tour.

In business since 1972, Scanlon carries the prints of well-known Alaska artists, including Byron Birdsall, John Fehringer, Barbara Lavallee, Rie Muñoz, and Jon Van Zyle. The gallery also exhibits jewelry, glasswork, and pottery.

Design, art, clothing, and collectibles can all be found at stylish Soho Coho. Also here are T-shirts featuring the work of owner Ray Troll—best known for his wacky fish art—and works by other Southeast artists.

This impressive public lands interpretive center contains exhibits—including one on the rain forest—that focus on the resources, Native cultures, and ecosystems of Southeast. The U.S. Forest Service and other federal agencies provide information on Alaska's public lands, and a large gift shop sells natural-history books, maps, and videos about the region's sights. America the Beautiful–National Park and Federal Recreational Land Passes are accepted and sold.

Completed in 1904 and Ketchikan's oldest house of worship, St. John's has an interior constructed of red cedar cut in the Native-operated sawmill in nearby Saxman. When cruise ships are in town, a docent is on hand to answer questions.

Ketchikan is known for its public art, and this bronze monument by local artist Dave Rubin provides a striking introduction. The Rock (2010) depicts seven life-size figures representative of Ketchikan's history: a Tlingit drummer, a logger, a miner, a fisherman, an aviator, a pioneer woman and Tlingit Chief George Johnson (the sculpture's only specific portrayal). The piece is located on the waterfront next to the Ketchikan Visitors Bureau. For a complete listing of Ketchikan's public art, galleries, museums, and cultural organizations, pick up a copy of Art Lives Here, the bureau's free guide.

Native artifacts and pioneer relics revisit the mining and fishing eras at this museum in the same building as the library. Exhibits include a big, brilliantly polished lens from Tree Point Lighthouse, well-presented Native tools and artwork, and photography collections. Other exhibits are temporary, but always include Tlingit items.

About a quarter of the Ketchikan bus tours include this park that contains many totem poles and has a hand-hewn Native clan house. Totem Bight sits on a scenic spit of land facing the waters of Tongass Narrows. Master Native carvers crafted the first replica poles here as part of a U.S. Forest Services program that began in the late 1930s. The tools the carvers used were handmade in the Native style, and modern paints were used to re-create colors originally made using natural substances from clamshells to lichen. The clan house, open daily in summer, was built to resemble a type that might have held several related families. Note the raven painting on the front: each eye contains a small face.

Gathered from Tlingit and Haida village sites, many of the Native totems in the center's collection are well over a century old—a rare age for cedar carvings, which are eventually lost to decay in Southeast's exceedingly wet climate. Crafts of the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian cultures are also on display inside the facility, and outside stand several more poles carved in the three decades since it opened. The center offers guided tours and hosts classes, workshops, and seminars related to Northwest Coast Native art and culture.

This small park on a traffic island across from St. John's Episcopal Church is the site of the Chief Kyan Totem Pole, now in its third incarnation. The current replica was erected in 1993, and was restored and re-raised in 2005. The original was carved in the 1890s, but over the decades it deteriorated and it was replaced in the 1960s. The 1960s edition is housed in the Totem Heritage Center.