Upon 'Thundering Wings'

Ketchikan's name grew from a Tlingit account in which people of the Ne X Adi, later the Saxman Bear Clan, climbed Deer Mountain about three hundred years ago, saw the image of an eagle with open wings on a large rock at the head of the creek, and named the place Keech Ka Xa haan, later reduced to Keech Xaan, which white settlers changed to Ketchikan. For countless generations Tlingits made summer fish camps at the salmon-rich creek, and by the mid-1880s the same natural wealth drew the first white settlers to the banks of Fish Creek and inspired pioneer commerce. Mike Martin, an Irish-born Portland cooper, arrived on August 15, 1885 to work at the nearby Loring saltery, and in late 1886 Ketchikan's modern development began when Capt. A.W. Berry reestablished the Cape Fox Packing Company cannery there from Boca De Quadra, later renamed the Tongass Packing Company. After the cannery burned in August 1889, its foreman George W. Clark acquired the site, started a salmon saltery, and opened a trading post and general store; in 1890 he sold a half-interest to Martin, creating Clark and Martin, at a time when Ketchikan had 40 people, including 26 natives and 14 whites. The partners expanded their business, acquired substantial land properties deeded by resident natives, and Ketchikan became an important mining supply waystop for prospectors headed to the Cassiar District and to strikes at the future sites of Juneau and Douglas during the 1880s. On March 4, 1892, the Ketchikan U.S. Post Office opened with George Clark as postmaster. In the summer of 1897, Yukon gold news and gold discoveries near Ketchikan, along with later copper finds, brought the town's first major settlement boom in 1898-99, fueled heavily by migrants from Wrangell after railroad plans from their town to the Canadian gold fields were canceled in favor of a Skagway route. These settlers formed the core of Ketchikan's future city, but Clark and Martin went bankrupt amid new competition and falling demand for salted salmon, leading to the sale of assets that included 160 acres for platting a townsite. On August 25, 1900, Ketchikan incorporated as Alaska's new Gateway City with 460 townspeople and about 800 area residents. Mike Martin became the first mayor, while George Clark left for Nova Scotia by 1901, and Martin, later known as the Father of Ketchikan, remained a civic leader until his death in 1916.

Saxman, Alaska · United States