Ketchikan, Alaska

Ketchikan is--as all Akaskan towns are--grand in size, but minuscule in population, in the winter months, that is. During the summer every Alaskan town's population expands a hundredfold to accommodate the docking tourists. Up to 20,000 tourists descend on her ports daily in the summer but in the winter they say that one is lucky to spot even ten people in the streets.

They have 18 hours of daylight here and up to 12 feet of rain in the summer. I dare not even speak of winter..it is that depressing. The locals board up their homes and businesses and migrate South to the rest of the 50 mainland states for the winter months and return in the summer to earn from the tourists what will sustain them for the rest of the year.

Ketchikan was the first town established in all of Alaska during the Gold Rush. It was where miners procured their supplies before venturing off into the wilderness to pan for gold, hunt, or fish for salmon.

Like all native Indians across North America, the different clans of the Alaskan Indians have been driven off of their lands. Few remain and are exerting maximum effort to perpetuate their race and culture. We visited the Saxman village where a living culture of Tlingit Indians live to this day. Their history is a series of bloodbaths against conquering foreigners (Russians, Americans) yet in spite of the death toll from the wars and the outbreaks of tuberculosis brought on by the white man, the Tlinrich have endured. Their children pledge to carry on what their forefathers started.

We also watched a lumberjack show starring the world's champion log rollers and log climbers--real athletes seen on ESPN's lumberjack competitions, which the children truly enjoyed.