About Ketchikan Times
An independent visitor guide to Ketchikan, Alaska, for cruise passengers and other visitors.
Ketchikan Times is a free, independent guide to Ketchikan for cruise passengers, who came ashore here a record 1,523,796 times in 2025, and for travelers who arrive by plane or state ferry and stay a while.
A Ketchikan port day often comes with rain, since the airport averages close to 150 inches a year, and it rarely feels long enough. Our aim is to make those hours count, whether that means a floatplane over Misty Fjords, the original 19th-century poles at the Totem Heritage Center, crab on the harbor or an hour browsing the galleries on Creek Street.
Ketchikan's story runs deeper than its storefronts. Our history pages point you to the best reading on Tlingit and Haida heritage, the cannery and pulp-mill eras and Creek Street's red-light past, and our totem parks guide shows where to see the poles for yourself.
What you can expect from us
- Planned around the ship. Day plans sized to your port call, walking times measured from the downtown berths, and a weather tool for your dates.
- Sourced, dated facts. Hours, prices and seasons are taken from the City of Ketchikan, the Ketchikan Gateway Borough, the Visitors Bureau, the Forest Service, Alaska State Parks and the businesses, and every page says where a fact came from and the day we checked it. When we could not confirm a 2026 price or schedule, we tell you.
- No pay to play. We have no tie to the city, the borough, the Visitors Bureau or any cruise line, and rankings cannot be bought.
Our editor
Greg Peters publishes and edits Ketchikan Times. Before this, he spent over a quarter century founding and running digital media and technology businesses. One of them, Inform, was an online video network that supplied news clips from the Associated Press and other partners to thousands of publishers. His education: a business degree from the University of Georgia, then an MBA and a Master of International Management from Thunderbird School of Global Management.
Nothing goes up on Ketchikan Times until Greg has read it. Our editorial policy explains how we check facts and fix mistakes, and our disclosure explains how the site earns money.