Ketchikan Totem Poles: Four Sites Compared

Ketchikan sits in the traditional territory of the Tlingit and Haida peoples, and the pole carving tradition here never stopped. In the 1930s a joint US Forest Service and Civilian Conservation Corps program hired retired Tlingit and Haida carvers to repair and reconstruct weathered poles from abandoned villages, using traditional hand tools and pigments made from clam shells and salmon eggs. That program shaped two of the four sites you can visit today.

The result is a town where you can see original poles recovered from abandoned village sites, Depression-era reconstructions, and contemporary carvings, often within a few miles of each other. For the wider picture of the area, see our things to do in Ketchikan overview.

Here is what each official source publishes. Where a source says nothing, we say so, because that gap is the single most useful fact for planning a self-guided visit.

- Totem Bight State Historical Park: a $5.00 per person day-use fee, open 7:00am-6:00pm year-round, free on-site parking, at milepost 10 on North Tongass Highway. Reconstructed poles plus a Tlingit clan house. - Saxman Native Village: no official page publishes self-guided admission or hours. Secondary sources disagree, citing figures from $5 to $8. Cape Fox Tours runs guided visits separately. - Totem Heritage Center: a City of Ketchikan museum at 601 Deermount Street, open 8:00am-5:00pm daily May through September and 1:00pm-5:00pm Monday to Friday October through April. No admission price is confirmed on an official page. - Potlatch Totem Park: privately run, at 9809 Totem Bight Road. The official site confirms an entry fee exists but never states the amount, and publishes no hours.

A pole is read from the bottom up, and the figures at the base are usually the most important to the story. Crests, animals and human figures record family lineage, clan identity, events and rights, much like a carved document. They were not worshipped and are not religious idols in the way early visitors often assumed.

At Totem Bight you can see the craft itself up close. Carvers there worked with traditional hand tools and made pigments from clam shells and salmon eggs. At Potlatch Totem Park an active carving center lets you watch carving in progress. If you want context before you go, the Southeast Alaska Discovery Center downtown is a good primer for $5.00 per person in season.

The one sentence worth carrying away comes from Alaska DNR's own park page: the poles were not worshipped, they were silent storytellers, because there was no written language. Everything else on this page follows from that. A pole is a record, and the question to ask in front of one is whose record it is.

This is the single biggest choice between the four sites. Original 19th-century poles recovered from abandoned villages at Village Island, Tongass Island and Old Kasaan are kept indoors at the Totem Heritage Center, which holds 33 of them with 16 on permanent display. Wood exposed to this rainforest climate does not survive long outdoors, which is why the originals live inside.

The poles standing outside at Totem Bight and Saxman are a mix. Some at Saxman are originals relocated from abandoned Tlingit villages, others were carved or reconstructed under the 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps program. Potlatch Totem Park's centerpiece is a 42-foot Raven pole carved for the park. Neither kind is fake. Replicas are carved by Native artists using traditional methods, and the indoor originals are the fragile survivors.

Short on time and want to see the real thing? The Totem Heritage Center downtown is the answer. It holds 33 original 19th-century poles indoors, and no other site can match that. Want poles standing in a forest setting you can walk through? Choose Totem Bight, where the $5.00 fee and posted 7:00am-6:00pm hours make planning simple. Want to watch a carver at work? Potlatch Totem Park has an active carving center, though you will have to ask on site about the fee.

If you are calling by cruise ship and time is tight, a guided option removes the transport problem. The North Tongass Highway sites sit about 10 miles from the docks, and our getting around page covers your options.